Not too familiar with illustrator

[POOP]

I'm making a poster for a new aquarium shop and I want to add a image from good maps to it and I was wondering how do I do that on illustrator without opening a separate file, I want to put it where the blue box is.

http://i48.tinypic.com/71qtnb.jpg

http://i45.tinypic.com/wqydew.jpg

If I manage to get that image there will it lose quality if its stretched? If it's not possible to get that image onto illustrator how do I do it?

[iamtheblues]

Hi and welcome to the forum. Normally in Illustrator you would create a new document then go to the File Menu and choose "Place" to get your map onto the artboard.
But in this case, Illustrator says the 71qtnb.jpg is in the wrong format. I converted it to a .png file which Illustrator could use.
The map is low resolution and will not enlarge well.

I did a bitmap trace (using Illustrator CS6) and managed to get a vector version that looks reasonable at a larger size.

Attached is a .zip file (+5MB) containing the Illustrator file I created (saved as CS) with the "placed" .png included and a .pdf equivalent.

If you aren't satisfied with the results, then it's a case of tracing the map by hand.

Bob.

[Albacore]

Google maps can only be saved really as bitmaps (photo) so in Illustrator you use the Place command from the file menu. The quality of google map bitmaps may or not be good enough for your poster, I would try printing from your own computer, to see if it had the quality that you were looking for. If it is not then a hand trace of the map is require and there are quite a few tutorials on this subject, also you can use Google earth and the Pro version, as a way to do this have a look at this method: http://dodona.wordpress.com/2010/03/...e-illustrator/
Please remember you need permission to print google maps: http://support.google.com/maps/bin/s...531&page=ts.cs

Your map will not be a map if you stretch it, look at the sizes of both the rectangle & the map and if you want to re-size hold down Shift when resizing to constraining with the Selection Tool or use path info on top menu bar with the chain link pressed down as it also constrains the width & height to the same aspect ratio.

[POOP]

Thank you so much, I appreciate what you did for me a lot. You've been a great help, If I have any more questions I'll post here again.

[mwenz]

If you have Acrobat installed or another PDF print driver, print to it and then import the PDF. You might find that the image comes in better and once scaled down, the image resolution is pretty acceptable.

Take care, Mike

[Albacore]

Haven't tried that Mike in Acro but will it not be just a bitmap in sections which you will have to put together.

[mwenz]

The PDF comes in ungrouped and is in sections, yes. One can deleted the text one doesn't want, then group it together so pieces are not inadvertently moved. The images "slices" are 120 dpi and take up a good chunk of the page--larger than I would normally display a map. So the effective PPI increases as the grouped image portion is resized downward.

Take care, Mike