What's the correct way to crop art when saving for web in Adobe Illustrator?

Question

I need to save a bunch of illustrations for web use, and I cannot find any 'crop to art dimensions' option when saving them. I've therefore been creating a new artboard for each illustration by clicking on the art with the artboard tool, then deleting the old artboard.This works OK except the new artboard ignores the stroke, so I then have to go back and tweak all the edges of the artboard before saving, or else the stroke edges get cut off. This gets old after hundreds of illustrations. Is there an easier way to do it?

Answer 1

What you need to do is use Photoshop to create a file with the dimensions you need for your new thumbnail. Indicate the height and width of the pixels. Make sure you put in "72 dpi" for web display.

After that, go back to Illustrator and select your entire file and copy/paste it into Photoshop as a smart object. I do this all the time for social media content and posting to my website.