When working in Illustrator you will need to pay particular attention as to how you place or insert images, photos or other art elements into your Illustrator file. There are two fundamental ways that Illustrator handles images.
Linking images creates a representation of the art file you are inserting that is directly linked or connected to the original image on your computer. The image doesn’t’ actually exist inside your Illustrator file. Rather, Illustrator gets a copy each time you open or refresh the Illustrator file. This has several advantages. However, those are beyond the scope of this tutorial. The key disadvantage is that when you send an Illustrator file with Linked files, you must include the original images files. Other wise the file will open with errors and then blank spaces.
Embedding images physically inserts a copy of the image into the Illustrator document. As such, when you send an Illustrator file with embedded images, you need only send the Illustrator file as all of the images are included in the Illustrator file itself. This should be the default method of working with images for this this course.
Ensuring you embed your images rather than linking them is relatively simple.
In Illustrator, in your document, go to File >>> Place. This will open the Image Place dialogue box. Select the image file you wish to use from the location on your computer.
At the bottom of the dialogue box, there is a check box labeled “Link”. Be sure that this box is NOT checked. If you check this it will create a link rather then embedding the image.
Once you are sure that this is unchecked, proceed as you normally would and work with your Illustrator file.
Finally, when you save your file, pay attention to the Illustrator dialog box. I this save box, there is a check box that is called “Include Linked files”. If you have correctly placed your images as embedded files, this check box will not be selectable. If you can select this, it means you have images that are linked files. At that point, check the box, and proceed normally.
Congratulations. You have saved your file with embedded images. You can now send this file to our instructor, a client or collaborating designer without the need to track down all of the images you used in the file.
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