Convert AI to PDF
This is the one conversion on this page that loses nothing. An Illustrator file and a PDF are close relatives — both describe drawings as geometry — so the artwork is rewritten rather than rendered. Nothing becomes pixels, and the result is as sharp at poster size as it is on a phone.
Use this without the search next time. Prathom Workbench puts Prathom's tools in your toolbar.
Add to Chrome — freeDrop your AI file here, or click to browse
Up to 50 MB. Deleted automatically after 30 minutes.
What it does
- Vectors preserved — nothing is rasterized
- Sharp at any size, verified at 600 dpi
- The page matches the artwork's own bounding box
- No Illustrator and no Adobe account
How to use AI to PDF
- 1
Add the AI file
Drop it in. Modern Illustrator files are PDF underneath, which is what makes this conversion a rewrite rather than a rendering.
- 2
The drawing is rewritten, not drawn
Ghostscript translates the drawing operators into PDF ones. No resolution is chosen because none is needed.
- 3
Download the PDF
It opens everywhere and stays sharp at every zoom level.
How it works
Ghostscript reads the file's drawing operators and writes them out as PDF
operators, with -dEPSCrop so the page equals the artwork's bounding box.
Nothing is rasterized at any point, and no resolution is chosen because a
vector-to-vector conversion does not need one.
Why this one is lossless when the others are not
Every other conversion from Illustrator on this site turns geometry into pixels. This one does not, and the reason is that the source and the target are already speaking the same language.
An .ai file has been a PDF since Illustrator 9 — Adobe stores its own editable
representation inside a completely standard PDF of the same artwork, so other
software can open it. Converting to PDF therefore means normalizing a file that
is already the destination format, not translating between two different ideas
of what a picture is.
The practical consequence: a curve stays a curve. Enlarge it to a billboard and it is drawn again from the geometry rather than stretched from a grid.
How to check any converter's claim
This is worth knowing because plenty of tools advertise "AI to PDF" and hand back a rasterized page.
Open the result and ask what images it contains. A genuine vector PDF contains
none: pdfimages -list yours.pdf prints a header and nothing under it. A
rasterized one lists a single large image per page, usually at whatever
resolution the tool happened to pick.
Then zoom in. A vector PDF stays crisp as far as your reader will go. A rasterized one goes soft at a predictable point and no further work will recover it.
What to do next with it
Once the artwork is a PDF it becomes a document rather than a picture, and the rest of the toolkit applies: join it to other pages with /merge-pdf, put a password on it with /protect-pdf before sending it outside the company, or hand it to a print shop, which is what they asked for in the first place.
How this differs from Illustrator's own export
Worth knowing if you have the software and are wondering whether to use it.
Illustrator's "Save As PDF" offers a choice that matters: Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities. With it on, the file carries Adobe's private data alongside the standard PDF, so reopening it in Illustrator gives you back every layer and live effect. The file is considerably larger as a result.
This conversion produces the other kind — a clean, standard PDF of the artwork, without the private editing data. It is smaller, it is what a printer wants, and it is not a working file. That is the right output for sending and the wrong one for archiving your only copy.
Keep the .ai. Send the PDF.
Examples
Artwork going to a print shop
Printers ask for PDF and want vectors. This gives them both, so text stays crisp at any size the press runs at.
A logo for a supplier
Anyone can open it, nobody needs Illustrator, and it can still be placed at any size without going soft.
Frequently asked questions
Are the vectors really preserved?
Yes, and it is checkable. The output PDF contains zero embedded images — run any PDF image lister over it and the answer is nothing, because there are no pixels in the file to list. A conversion that rasterized would show one large image per page. As a second check, the same PDF renders 1667 by 1250 pixels at 600 dpi from artwork nominally 200 by 150 points, which only a resolution-independent file can do.
How is this different from AI to PNG?
/ai-to-png produces pixels at a chosen resolution — useful for a website, finite by nature. This produces geometry, which has no resolution and can be rendered at any size later. If the destination is a screen, PNG. If it is a printer, a supplier, or anywhere the size is not yet decided, PDF.
Will the text be selectable?
If the fonts were still live in the Illustrator file, yes — the text carries through as text and can be selected and searched. If the type was converted to outlines before saving, which many designers do to avoid font problems, it is already shapes and stays shapes. Nothing here converts one into the other.
What page size will the PDF be?
The artwork's own bounding box. Without that instruction Ghostscript places a small drawing in the middle of a letter-sized page, which is technically correct and useless — so the page is cropped to the artwork deliberately.
Does my file leave my computer?
Yes. Ghostscript runs on our server, so the file travels for the length of the conversion and no longer. Your file and the result are deleted within 30 minutes by a timer, and nothing is stored, indexed or examined. There is no account, no history and no retained copy.
Further reading
- A Black Box Over the Text Removed Nothing At AllCovering words with a black rectangle is what every general-purpose PDF editor makes easy, and it is the single most common way confidential documents leak. The rectangle is drawn on top. The words are still underneath it, in the file, and any extractor will hand them back in full.
- Converting a PDF to Grayscale Made It BiggerRemoving color sounds like removing data, so grayscale gets used as a compression step. On a document that was already black text on white, the conversion made the file larger — and the reason it did is the reason it sometimes makes a scan dramatically smaller.
- Three PDFs Merged Into Less Than Half Their Combined SizePeople expect a merged PDF to weigh what its inputs weighed, and are surprised when it does not. Joining three copies of an eight-page document produced a file well under half the combined size, and the reason explains something useful about what is actually inside a PDF.