Adding a border to an imbedded image

[Tamarack]

I need a border around a tif I placed in Illustrator and I'm having problems. My understanding is that the image needs to be embedded in order to do that. (If that's not right, let me know, please!)

So, I embedded the image and it still won't let me apply a stroke to the outside.

Can anyone help?

 

[itchybug]

Tamarack:

It has to be embedded, otherwise you cannot edit it (you're merely looking at a full size "thumbnail" of the actual image).

What you do is:

1. Select the image;

2. Open the Appearance Palette (Shift-F6);

3. At the top right of the palette, find the little menu arrow, click it and select "Add New Stroke" from the list (You can also do this through the "New" icon at the bottom). Nothing will happen, don't worry;

4. Go to Effect>Path, then click "Outline Object", and Voila! your stroke appears;

5. If need be, you can Object>Expand Appearance to make the stroke permanent.

Bert

4.

 

[Tamarack]

Thank you so much! That worked perfectly. I have been knocking my head against this all morning. What a relief.

I have another related question that you may know the answer to...

Sometimes, after I embed an image and open and close Illustrator, the image changes into a group (even though I haven't grouped anything with it) and on the links pallete the preview image is upside down. When this happens, I've been able to put a stroke around the edge as if it's a normal Illustrator object. The problem is, I don't know why it works or what has happened to the image. Any idea what I've accidently been doing?

 

[itchybug]

Sounds like there's a clipping mask involved. The best way to troubleshoot any odd items, is to expand all the line items in the Appearance Palette one by one, and fishing for anything irregular. If that doesn't yield anything obvious, expand all the Layers in the layer palette and look for strange objects that you don't think should be there.