Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 11/11/2008

Question
Hello. I teach 10-12 grade Illustrator and Photoshop.We do a project where they place an image of an animal into ILlustrator, trace over the image and use the gradient mesh to add the color. This only happened to a few (but a few too many), when they opened their image the following day, the shapes drawn with the pen tool were connected with the placed image. They couldn't be separated. Any ideas why?
Thanks! Jen

Answer
Hi Jen,

This probably has to do with how they have saved them. You can separate them by selecting everything and try to either ungroup (object>ungroup) or more likely you have a clipping mask over the entire image (object>clipping mask>release) be aware you may have to do this several times depending on the complexity of the image.

Double check when they save their files that they are saving as .ai (illustrator docs) and not .eps or .pdfs. Also make sure when they are saving as an illustrator file that you do not change anything in the options. A lot of people are tempted to turn off PDF compatibility. Dont! It is a known file corruptor.

Thanks

Kevin