62 Creating Titles in Illustrator

#62 Creating Titles in Illustrator

Here are five high-level concepts that you'll need to know to design titles (and other content) in Illustrator for use in Premiere Pro.

Why Illustrator?

Adobe Illustrator is a great tool for creating vector-based drawings that can scale to any resolution, which is one reason why so many logos are designed in Illustrator. Importing an .ai file, rather than a raster image, lets you scale the image in Premiere Pro without loss in quality.

• There is no option for creating an Adobe Illustrator (.ai) file in Premiere Pro (as there is with Photoshop and After Effects). Remember that most standard-definition video has a resolution of 720x480. Though Premiere Pro can scale Illustrator's vector-based artwork upward or downward, if you design at too high a resolution, some detail may be lost when scaling down for Premiere Pro.
  
  
• Transparent areas in Illustrator will be transparent in Premiere Pro.
  
  
• To edit an .ai file in Illustrator, select the file in the Project panel or on the timeline, right-click it, and choose Edit Original.
  
  
• When you import your .ai file, Premiere Pro merges all layers.
  
  
• As a workaround, you can import a layered .ai file into After Effects as a composition, which gives you access to all layers (Figure 62).
  
  

Figure 62. Though Premiere Pro can't import an Illustrator file with layers, After Effects can import it as a composition, providing access to all layers.