Export Adobe Illustrator images from .ai files [closed]

Question

I am looking for a convenient way to export every images found in an AI file. I don't know the AI file format specification, but I guess that if a place a PNG image in an Illustrator Layer the bitmap data of my PNG is still there somewhere.

Is there a tool / SDK / API that you could recommend to perform this operation without opening manually every file ?

For the record, I have over a 100 AI files representing product packages from which I must extract every images found in it in there highest quality.

Thanks again,

Patrick

Answer 1

The bitmap data of your PNG is "still in there somewhere" if whoever created the file embedded it. Otherwise not.

You can use Adobe's ExtendScript Toolkit to do this kind of thing, but I'm pretty sure you have to have a copy of Illustrator.

Warning: ExtendScript is not exhaustively documented.

Answer 2

There's a script made by John Wundes that answers your prayers.

And together with this technique you can run it with Mac.

Though you need to open the AI files you need to export their layers on.