Solution: How to Get Rid of Extra 1px While Exporting an Artboard in Adobe Illustrator?

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At work in a public library, I design posters and flyers for events quite a lot. I often need to export artwork, created in Adobe Illustrator, to be of a specific size. Especially the ones for screens and TVs of which the units are pixels.

For example, an image for a local TV, a size of 1920 x 1080 pixels (HDTV).
The procedure is quite straightforward. You create an artboard of the specific size (1920 x 1080 px), make an illustration, export the artboard via “Export As” under “File -> Export” menu, check “Use Artboards” and export it as .jpg or .png. Not a big deal, right?

But! More often than not when I check the size of the exported image I notice the annoying unwanted extra pixel to either width or height.

See the screenshot below.

After a bit of online research, I found out what the problem is.
When I start a project most of the time I just create a default file with default artboard size AND default units. In my case the artboard size is A4 and the units are in millimeters.

Of course, I want the units to be in pixels (or points) when I do stuff for screens, not for print. Now notice the XY position of the exact same artboard when I change the units of the documents from millimeters to points (“File” -> “Document Setup” -> “Units”).

This is the root of the problem. Now even when I change the size of the artboard to my desired size (in my example 1920 x 1080 px), the Y position stays the same (297.64 px). And those decimals cause the problem for that extra pixel to the exported file.

Solution:

When you export your artwork for the screens (units in pixels), always make sure the XY positions of the artboard are whole numbers. In this specific case, I just delete those .64 decimals, so the position would be X: 0 px, Y: 297 px.

Just a little note. Make sure you change the document’s units first and after that (when you have units in pixels) delete those unwanted decimals.

That’s it, I hope this info comes in handy to someone. 🙂

Take care.
Blaz

2 Comments

  1. Jackson August 16, 2019
    • Blaz Valentinuzzi August 16, 2019

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