How to Embed Images in Illustrator

Hello!

Managing images and file sizes in Illustrator can sometimes be a headache for designers. Heavy files with high resolution images demand more from software and computer resources and, eventually, slow down your workflow. Linking images to your artboards can help you with this issue, but these can bring other problems when it comes the time to share and export your work. That's when embedded images ensure nothing gets lost.

I'll start by showing how to relink an image that lost connection with its original location and then guide you through some quick and easy ways to make sure nothing gets lost.

When creating a design in Adobe Illustrator, there are a couple of ways to embed your image. To embed means "to fix or incorporate" the image into the document. Embedding is the best way to ensure our documents contain all the files for our designs.

Relinking Images in Illustrator

If you open a saved or shared file and images have been linked instead of embedded, it is possible a dialogue box could appear warning us of a broken link. This warning happens when an image has been renamed or moved from its original location. We can relink the file if we know its new name and location, or we can click the Ignore button.

If we choose Ignore, the document will open, and a low-resolution image of the linked file will be visible. To relink the file inside the document, follow these four steps. 

1. Click the menu item Window and choose Links to open the panel.

2. In the Links panel, we see the red icon indicating a broken link.

3. Relink the file by clicking on the link icon at the bottom of the panel.

4. When the files window opens, navigate to the file's location, select the file, and click on the Place button.

Now your image is relinked.

Embed Images: Option 1

The first way to embed images in our document is by using the Links panel. The top right corner of the Links panel has a hamburger menu icon. Click this icon to open up the menu. Next, select the Embed Image(s) option. When the files window opens, we can choose the image we want to place in our document. To add our image, click anywhere on the document to drop it in place. 

Embed Images: Option 2

The second way to embed an image in Illustrator is by using the Place option in the File menu item. This option opens our files window, and we can select the image we want to use. Before clicking the Place button, uncheck the Link option at the bottom of the panel. Now, we can embed the image in the document.

Embed Images: Bonus

The final way we can embed an image is by using a shortcut. We start by going to the File menu item and choosing the Place option. From the open file window, we can click, hold, and drag our image onto the document. By default, Adobe Illustrator will make the image linked. To embed the image, hold down the Shift key while dragging the file onto the document.

Embed Images: Wrap Up

Even though linked images in Illustrator are a great way to keep our document sizes small, embedding images is the best way to keep all the files together in our designs. Keeping all the files together makes the document portable and easy to share with others.

What’s Next?

I hope this post helped you learn more details about this somehow underrated feature.
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See you in class! - Dan