From Illustrator to InDesign

[doublechocolatemuffin]

Hi,

I'm having a problem getting me vectors from Illustrator to InDesign.

Here's what the image I am working on in Illustrator looks like: http://www.newmedia.lincoln.ac.uk/bjtilbrook/paths.png

Heres what the actual vector should look like after I add to the path:
http://www.newmedia.lincoln.ac.uk/bjtilbrook/illustrator.png
And here's how it looks after Copying and pasting the image into InDesign:
http://www.newmedia.lincoln.ac.uk/bjtilbrook/indesign.png
As you can see, the tail of the speech bubble isn't joined into the bubble. It's ignoring the join I did in Illustrator.

How can I get this image into InDesign without loss of quality - as saving as a PNG/JPG or rasterising it creates a Photoshop style blurred look.

I need the vector in InDesign but am not sure how to achieve this.

Hope you can help - thank you!

[morea]

Did you try saving it as .ai or .eps and then file>place in ID?

[PrintDriver]

Try expanding after adding.

[Kool]

I'm not sure about your initial problem but an easy fix when creating speech bubbles is to simply add three points to the oval where you want the tail to go then just pull down the middle point. It's always best to keep stuff like this as a single shape so you don't get weirdness later on. :)

[PrintDriver]

Adding to shape area does make it a single shape. If you hit the expand button after you do it. :D

[Kool]

I meant to say path not shape LOL.

I don't have much experience with the expand feature. I always just avoided overlapping paths on general principles. What exactly does it do? I just created a speech bubble similar to the one above with a separate tail, selected them both and clicked expand and it didn't seem to do anything. :confused:

[morea]

If you merge the two shapes (pathfinder palette) and then expand appearance it should make them into one shape.

[Kool]

Ah ok I get it, just read the help file on expand, plus I wasn't merging them. I had always before used various combinations of compound paths and convert strokes to attain the same basic thing.

I still say my original method in my first post is the easiest way LOL. :p

[morea]

yup, it's a good one! ;)

[budafist]

If you merge the two shapes (pathfinder palette) and then expand appearance it should make them into one shape.

Yup!

[doublechocolatemuffin]

Thank you all so much for your replies. Although I am pretty good in InDesign, I'm still learning Illustrator and I didn't know about the 'Expand' button to convert it into one shape.

And as for the blocky look I get when pasting it into InDesign, my preferences reverted back and it wasn't set to view my work in the high quality display mode. I think my brother may have used the program last and changed it to fast display mode. Now I know about expand in illustrator and I've set the display mode back - everything looks as it should.

PS: I've just reverted back to Illustrator CS2 because anytime I took anything from Illustrator into another program it crashed. ie - when I paste what I've copied from Illustrator it would freeze and close.

That was another problem I didn't bother you with and CS2 seems to be working perfectly so far.

Thanks again!

[PrintDriver]

You have to use Place the Illy file into InDesign, not Copy/Paste from Illy into InDesign.

[doublechocolatemuffin]

You have to use Place the Illy file into InDesign, not Copy/Paste from Illy into InDesign. Why is that? Copying and pasting seems to work fine. Is there a reason Place is better?

[Craig B]

In general it's always better to place art because then you can edit it outside of InDesign if you need to quickly tweak it in the program you created it in (in this case Illustrator).

[PrintDriver]

When you copy/paste into InDesign, your image is not a link. It is embedded.
Not a good thing.
If it doesn't appear in the links palette all kinds of things can go wrong in print.

[urstwile]

It's not necessarily a bad thing to paste things into InDesign. I do it on occasion.

You have to weigh the long-term consequences though. For example, I would never paste an Illy logo into InDesign. Why? Because if that logo changes (and they often do), then I'd have to redo it in every InDesign file I used that pasted logo in, whereas placing it as a linked file, I could change the logo file once, and it would change in all the documents it appeared once I update the link.

Nor is it a good idea to paste raster images into InDesign (or Illustrator, for that matter).

But for shapes that I find easier to draw in Illustrator because of the additional controls there, it's not necessarily wrong to do it that way. I will sometimes do this with type I want to follow a certain type of path, say a curved path where I want to use some of the envelope features available in Illustrator.

[budafist]

You have to weigh the long-term consequences though. For example, I would never paste an Illy logo into InDesign. Why? Because if that logo changes (and they often do).

They certainly do!

Example: you might not notice that the logo that was supplied to you, that you have pasted into every page is in fact a CMYK logo when it should be 2 spot colours. If you link to it, you just correct the original file and it's corrected easily everywhere in the system (when you open the file). But if it's a copy paste, it will take a long while to replace each logo.

[urstwile]

Very good example. :)