Re: inserting Adobe Illustrator graphics, more experience
- From: CyberTaz <onlygeneraltaz1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 11:40:47 -0500
Hi Henry -
On 3/25/06 12:42 AM, in article C04A183D.178B2%henryn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"henryn" <henryn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There are a few awkwardnesses:
o One must crop the inserted drawing the first time, but it appears that the
size you set at that point remains valid through subsequent updates, I
guess, as long as the overall image size doesn't get larger. On my machine,
the crop tool isn't as stable as I'd like it to be.
Are you referring to 'cropping', 'resizing', or both? I'm unclear also on
what you mean by "unstable". AFAIK, either should remain set in Word unless
you change the settings. Changes to the linked file shouldn't determine
anything other than what displays within the boundary set in the doc. Or am
I missing your point altogether?
o Word sizes "wide" artwork reasonably, apparently for the page width --and
not the current margin setting. (More experimentation...) I wish there was
a bit more user control for special situations.
I believe John addressed this quite well.
o The images somehow acquire a slight ivory background color in some
situations. An annoyance, not a fatal flaw. I haven't systematically
looked at which views of the material have this and which don't.
This could be related to what Illy calls the Artboard, similar to
Photoshop's Canvas. As with other images the graphic is contained within a
rectangle which may appear to be transparent in the creating app, but is
still filled with pixels. Most destination apps will interpret those pixels
as white unless the image file includes a clipping path. If I am correct
about Word treating the AI file as a PNG (see below) you may be able to use
the Set Transparent Color tool in Word to get rid of those peripheral
pixels.
o The Edit-->Links dialog one must use to update individual graphics as one
makes a change in an AI file is non-standard and allows only a fixed column
width for the source file name. So if the source file is buried too deeply
or the name is too long, one may have a problem selecting.
In case you may not have noticed, if you select one of the items in the
list, the full path displays directly below the list, itself, adjacent to
the Source File: label.
Now, I've just discovered a bit more about how the process works.
...Because I screwed up. I saved an Adobe Illustrator file without "Create
PDF" Compatible File" option enabled. When I tried insert that file I got
the following notice inserted into the file as a graphic:
"This is an Adobe ® Illustrator ® file that was saved without PDF content.
To place or open this file in other applications, it should be re-saved from
Adobe Illustrator with the 'Create PDF Compatible File' option turned
on..."
So Word assumes that .ai files contain PDF "stuff" and when you navigate the
Insert-->Picture-->From File to an Illustrator file, that's what it expects
and you want to happen.
Not really. The AI native format w/o PDF compatibility option appears *not*
to be an image file format. Although this is not technically accurate, think
of the 'bare' AI format as being more like postscript. IOW, the exact same
thing happens in InDesign if you attempt to place an AI that hasn't been
saved with the PDF option.
This also strongly implies that the image one sees in the Word file is
derived from scalable PostScript that's in the PDF, and not a bitmap preview
image also included in the Insert'ed file as many people believe. The
result is clearly a bitmap, as a quick scaling experiment with the picture
editing tools clearly demonstrates.
I'm not sure where the idea of a 'bitmap preview' comes from, but most
anymore (I believe) are TIFF. Illy, however, appears to use PDF for the
preview/thumbnail to deliver a graphic rendering of the AI file content to
the destination application. I'll try to find out more about this through
the Adobe Forum if I can. Either way, it seems that it is up to the
destination app to interpret the file as it 'chooses'... Photoshop looks at
the AI file as PDF, whereas it is interpreted by Word as PNG (I'm basing
this on the fact that once the file is inserted into a doc you can use the
Set Transparent Color tool which is not active when you select a PICT).
Thanks,
Henry
henryn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx remove 'zzz'
Regards |:>)
.
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