Expert: Amy - 5/17/2007

Question
I am placing external graphics (photos) in illustator CS file as linked image, but they still take 3-4 minutes to save and are quite large.  I thought this would make smaller file and just be sure to enclose linked image on disk when releasing file to printer. Any suggestions?

Answer
Hi Laura,

I would talk to the printer about accepting PDF files. Illustrator files are just plain HUGE. Many printers prefer PDFs over native files now.

But one thing to check is when you are saving, are you choosing to Save Linked images with the file? I forget where to turn that off in CS but I think it's an option when you are saving.

To reduce the file size a little more (won't help much in this case) you should run the Action in the Actions palette to Delete Unused Palette items. That will save about 500K.

-Amy

Update:  I just happened to stumble upon a guy on Adobe.com forums complaining about a BUG in CS that makes files unnecessarily huge. Especially files that contain nothing but placed linked images. I guess if you add some invisible objects (no stroke, no fill) to an otherwise empty image, you may be able to fix it. Worked for some, not for others. ANother fix, if you have access to 10, is to save the file down to version 10 then open it in 10 and save it.