You've seen a few different solutions for changing the PPI of an existing document in Adobe Illustrator. From here, you can switch back to the vector view by clicking the eye icon (to hide it) or the bin icon (to delete it) or click on the name to choose a different PPI. To alter this, navigate to the Appearance panel and you should find the Rasterize effect. After hitting OK and waiting for a short progress bar, you'll see all your artwork rasterized at the PPI of your choice. Here we can choose one of the default PPI options or enter a custom value. Select all of the artwork, and then in the Effects menu select Rasterize. Whilst unfortunately it doesn't change the "pixel preview" view, it still gives a preview of the pixels.
The best method I've found is slightly hidden. If you place a 300ppi image and look at the info in the links panel. But if you want pixel-perfect results, this doesn't really work well without a lot of exporting and checking results and tweaking. Illustrator has always reported images as a percentage of actual ppi when not at 72. Dirty Solution: Export SettingsĪnother option is just to ignore Pixel Preview and change it in the export settings when exporting to the raster document. If you want a different resolution or want to try a few resolutions, you're out of luck. This approach is also limited to three options for PPI (72 ppi, 150 ppi, and 300 ppi). One option is to create a new document and set the right DPI ( New Document > Advanced > Raster Effect), but this means setting up your artboards again, copying the artwork across, and scaling it for the new size. In my case, it was the latter to use as a background guide to make a 3D model. Or perhaps you have some vector plans at a certain scaled unit size, and you need a raster at the right PPI to show the details you want. Perhaps you're working on some pixel-perfect icons and need them to work on a set of platforms with different PPI screens. I hear the vector fanatics yelling at me already: PPI doesn't matter in illustrator! It's a vector tool!īut there are times when it does matter for certain applications. You have an Adobe Illustrator document you've spent a bit of time on, drawn the artwork, laid out the artboards and clicked Pixel Preview mode before exporting it to a raster document, but the PPI (Pixels Per Inch) is set wrong so the resolution looks completely wrong! How do you fix this? Where is the PPI properties screen?