[OS X TeX] ai, eps, pdf and TeXShop

[Gary L. Gray]

On Oct 19, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Themis Matsoukas wrote:

> I noticed that illustrator files with the extension ai can be  
> displayed in preview.app but not in TS (in TS, ai files open as  
> text). I also noticed that if I save an illustrator file in ai  
> format and then manually change the extension to pdf, TS opens it  
> with no trouble (with the correct bounding box, too). Hence my  
> question: is it possible to teach TS to treat files with the  
> extension ai as if they were pdf? This would save me a lot of time  
> because I normally save illustrator files as eps, then have TS do  
> the conversion to pdf (if I save to pdf in illustrator, I get a  
> graphic whose bounding box is the size of the page, not the size of  
> the graph).

This is a very interesting discovery! It would be cool to be able to  
save as a .ai file and *not* have to do what I describe below.  
Unfortunately, I suspect that what you (now we!) are asking requires  
a change in LaTeX, or at least the graphicx package. With that said,  
you have a couple of options:

(1) If you are using AI CS3, then you can save as a PDF out of  
Illustrator and use the new Crop Area Tool to tell AI to save it with  
the right bounding box. I simply do a select all, double click on the  
Crop Area Tool, and then it to fit crop area to selected art.

(2) If you are using a version earlier than CS3, you can use our  
cropping app, which you can download from:

http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/PDF-Processing-Apps.zip

See:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.macosx/23098/match=pdf+cropper

or:

http://tug.org/mailman/htdig/macostex-archives/2007-January/028421.html

for instructions on how to use it.

Regards,
   Gary


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