Saving an Adobe Illustrator file using the Option is in the Illustrator Native Format This is an Adobe® Illustrator® File that was Instead, one gets one page with a repeated block of text: Opening this file in Acrobat, one does not see what is expected at all. However, all of its useful content and attributes is hidden inside Illustrator-specific data streams. Technically, the file is indeed a PDF file. You’d be readily forgiven for looking at this and assuming that this AI file is really a PDF file. An example of an Illustrator document saved with PDF compatibility turned off still looks remarkably like a PDF file: %PDF-1.5 %âãÏÓ Whether or not this option is selected, the resulting AI file begins like a PDF file and has a header indicating PDF compliance. While in some cases Illustrator files can be processed like they are PDF files, it is important to note that they are not PDF files and the number of cases they can be treated like PDF files is very limited.Īdobe Illustrator (here I’m using CS5, but this should apply to other recent versions also) offers users the choice of saving AI files as PDF compatible files in its Save dialog.

Also, Illustrator seems to default to saving files in a PDF-compatible mode. After all, Illustrator files have a %PDF header and start out with XMP metadata syntax that suggests strongly that Illustrator files are PDF files. A question came up regarding how Adobe Illustrator and PDF files are related.

Pdf to illustrator