Illustrator cs3 (mac) question

Can't find an answer to this swiftly online, does anyone here know the answer?

Working in Illustrator when i drag and image (jpg,png,tiff etc) from my desktop into an open .ai file the image is automatically embedded, which i assumed was the standard action, however what seems to happen on the other machines here is that Illustrator adds the image as a link to the file, meaning that the images have to be manually embedded. I can't see any option in the Illustrator preferences which would affect this nor can i see anything in the file set-up....

Anyone know why my machine is embedding and not the others...? i've got a temp who has lost some work cos' i showed her how to drag images 'to embed' on my machine assuming wrongly that hers would do it.....

Thanks....

It's probably best to 'Open' the images in a seperat AI window, then drag them across. If you 'Place' them, or drag and drop as you have been, then as soon as you move the image or open the file on a new machine, the link will be broken.

There is obviously a subtle difference between the machines, but I can't help you with that.

embedding the image sort it out but makes file sizes much bigger

File -> Place, then there's a tick box for linking to the image or not, I imagine a drag and drop automates this process and will go with whichever setting was last used within the dialogue window.

I'd always link to images for the many benefits (workflow, colour options, re-editing, etc)... just remember to organise your projects and send your work on correctly.

Arghh... !! now by trying changing the file>place link tick box i've changed my machine to create links to images when they are dragged into a document, but it doesn't seem to be a reversible process.....! Maybe the behaviour was just a glitch on my machine....

File -> Place, then there's a tick box for linking to the image or not, I imagine a drag and drop automates this process and will go with whichever setting was last used within the dialogue window.

^ that didn't work for me either.
haven't heard of auto embed before, other than on plugins.

^ that didn't work for me either.
haven't heard of auto embed before, other than on plugins.

and no Plug-Ins on my mac.... odd, just odd....

you working on it and saving it as an .ai or an .eps file?

The only way I can imagine an auto-embed happening is if you drag an image file to the illustrator icon or open it using File -> Open, this then assumes you are editing an image file and will save-down (or whatever) once the edit is complete... in this way the illustrator file can match colour options of the document to the image that is being opened (meaning your workflow isn't unintuitive).

If pulling an image into an existing/created ai file (whether saved or not) you should never get an auto-embed happening (as far as I'm aware) as there would be a colour space conflict that cannot be resolved without the application making an assumption (potentially ruining your workflow).

You can embed as needed easily enough using the links palette or the large "embed" button with an image selected... I'd avoid this though?

Sorry that's all the thoughts I've got, I vote it was a glitch?!

you working on it and saving it as an .ai or an .eps file?

.ai normally, but i was having the drag>image embedding action even on unsaved files

You can embed as needed easily enough using the links palette or the large "embed" button with an image selected... I'd avoid this though?

Sorry that's all the thoughts I've got, I vote it was a glitch?!

Yep, i can always do the manual embed, and yep... glitch i reckon too...

Thought i was going mad trying to work out how to toggle the action on/off in Illustrator prefs etc....

Didn't want to risk incurring a coppiThat £1 fee so consider this thread resurrected!

I've got an eps file that I need to follow a path one after the other. Now, I was thinking about turning that eps file into a font and assigning it to a keystroke so that I could just put it as text on a path but I'm not sure how one goes about doing that without using Fontlab or similar (which I don't have). Is there a way of repeating an eps file on a path in Illustrator?

I've got CS4 by the way. Thanks. Bye, bye, bye!

um, yeah. make it a brush.
open the eps file, drag it into your brushes window, make it a pattern brush and bob's your uncle.

belm! How did I not think of that?? Matt, I thank you.

no sweat monsieur wools.

matt, your avatar makes me want to go on a maiming, disfiguring and murdering rampage.