Just a quick question - in InDesign there’s a handy little “Copy links to” function - does anybody know a similar function or workflow to get the same thing in Illustrator?
I’ve got these big sponsor banners for a concert that have a dozen logos and vector bits that I’d rather not embed in the file directly. I’ve been looking for a good way to handle this and the best I’ve got is to open the link location and then copy the file over manually, which is going to be really time consuming.
Why don’t you place the banner base artwork in InDesign, then do the same with the logos?
InDesign’s central purpose is that of an aggregator to assemble independent images. Whereas in Illustrator, it’s just an added feature.
Of course, if they’re already built in Illustrator, changing things now would be even more work. In any case, I don’t know of a similar function in Illustrator.
Yeah, that’s probably the best workaround. The trouble is that this is an old job that’s been done a dozen times, so it’s got a lot of baggage from well before I touched it - I’ll spare you the details, but it’s ugly. It’s on my “make this less of a headache for the next time” list, and getting all the links together would be the first step, because right now they’re all over the place.
There might very well not be a smooth way to do it all at once, but I figured I’d ask actual people in case my Google-Fu wasn’t hitting the mark.
I assume you’re already aware of the Windows menu > Links palette in Illustrator. It doesn’t gather up linked objects, place them neatly in a new location and reconnect everything, like InDesign can do, but it at least lists all the placed objects, where they’re at, and enables you to open them all from there.
Embed the links. Then unembed. You should be met with an option.
Yup, that’s how I’m chasing down what’s where manually. It’s not perfect, but it is a heck of a lot better than digging through ten years of archives trying to find where it came from.
@Smurf2
I thought about that after I went home last night, and it definitely worked great when I did it for the raster files just now, so that’s a great help. The vector and pdf files are embedding as separate parts under a clipping mask, though, so that’s probably not a viable option for those ones unless there are options somewhere I’m not familiar with. But thank you nonetheless!