Expert: Amy - 7/25/2007

Question
Hi Amy,

I'm designing some business cards for a special promotion we're doing here, and whenever I sent them over to our printer, she sent them back and told me that I need to embed my pictures. Some of the pictures that are on these business cards I've copied and pasted, or messed around with in photoshop and just copy and pasted. So I guess what my question is, how do I embed pictures after they're already placed?

Answer
Hi Stephanie!

That's do-able.

Copy the image from Illustrator to your clipboard (Ctrl+C),
Switch over to PhotoShop application,
Create a new document (Ctrl+N),
Hit okay to accept parameters,
Paste your clipboard from Illustrator (Ctrl+V),
Choose [ ]pixels in little dialog box,
Switch Image mode to CMYK,
FLATTEN LAYERS <--important
Save as a tiff file with no compression.
Go back to Illustrator,
Select image you want to replace,
Choose File>Place,
Locate your new tiff file, DON'T check LINK and DO check REPLACE.
Most of the time, the new image will pop in exactly where the original was and delete the original at the same time. If it doesn't land in the same spot, do the last step again, only don't check replace. You'll have to manually delete the original (bad) image.

If your files were indeed external (placed, not copied into  Illustrator from the clipboard) but were LINKED instead of EMBEDDED, just follow the last step I gave you where you click on the image and do a replace. It'd be in your best interest, though, to make sure all images in the business card were CMYK tiffs before sending to the printer!

Hope this helps!
Amy