Embeding Images

[kylebellamy]

I recieve files from customers that have graphics embeded in them and I was just wondering how you would do that. For instance, an envelope design that has a "First Class" graphic that is in the layout but has no accompanying graphic file but still prints fine. Links Manager says there are no links yet the image is there.

Thanks

 

[BionicJohn]

Hi, kylebellamy,

Always get the original images. Ask your customers not to embed images but to link them. Life is then so much easier.

Alos ask your customers to use PM's utility "Save for Service Provider" (S4SP) It's not perfect, but it will bundle up all the necessary file - including images and fonts.

Iechyd da! John
00:42 04/07/2003 BST

 

[Eggles]

Is the file with an embedded graphic an MS Word file or a PM file? If it's from Word, you will definitely have to ask your cutomer for a copy of the graphic. There is no way to satisfactorily extract an image from a Word file and retain its resolution. You can then delete the graphics from the Word file, then you are left with just the text to get into PM. Make sure you don't just copy and paste and you will also bring in heavens knows what styles with it that have the potential to corrupt your PM file. There are several 'safe' ways of getting the text into PM:

1. Save the text as rich text format (.RTF) or plain text (.TXT) instead of as a .DOC, then use File>Place to get it into PM. Make sure you immediately delete the link to the Word doc in the Links Manager (otherwise problems next time you open the PM file as it will look for that RTF file - bad news if you have made changes to the text in PM).

2. Copy and paste the text into a brand new PM doc, highlight all the text and on the Styles palette, click on the [No Style] option. Then recopy the text and paste it into your existing PM doc and apply PMs styles.

 

[kylebellamy]

I think that the reason the company I work for stays in business is because it gets all of the customers the rest of the industry won't work with. My favorite is the one that had scrawls the art on a peice of paper and we have to shoot and clean it up for press.

Thanks for both of you help. They will assist me in the future.

I guess by extension then, my next question would be: What is the process one would take to do such an embedding. Say for instance, I'm sending art to our mother company to be printed and they, being large examples of hind quarters, always give a lot of static about this and that. So to make life simple for me, I want to embed the eps and such into the page. What steps would I follow to achieve this? (I'm trying to understand the process so I can correct it with our customers)

Thanks

 

[Eggles]

Are you asking how images are embedded into PM?

When you use File>Place to insert an image, once you browse to where the image is stored and select it and click 'Open', a checkbox comes up that says:

'The graphic in the linked file would occupy xxx KBytes in the publication. Include complete copy in the publication anyway?'

If you click Yes, it embeds the image. If you click No, the image is linked.

It is preferable to link rather than embed for a number of reasons, but the one that springs to mind first is that by linking, not embedding, you keep the PM file small enough to be able to open, save, and move around the document much faster. Including the images within the PM file starts to make it very large and unwieldy.

 

[kylebellamy]

Holy Blinders Batman!

Ok, I've seen that dialog a thousand times and never made the connection. Thanks for clearing that up for me. I didn't realize what it was asking. I jsut figured it was a display issue not a embedding one. I use Quark a lot and so to my brain it translated that I could see the image clearly instead of the mock up that you get when placing in Quark.

Thanks again for clearing up a huge mystery for me.

 

[Eggles]

You're welcome!

Another tip - unless you specify otherwise in Preferences, the image you see on screen is a low resolution preview. This just makes moving around the document faster. You can specify a high resolution preview in File>Preferences>General>Graphics Display.

 

[kylebellamy]

Great! Thanks!

Another problem solved... lol

 

[BionicJohn]

Hi, kylebellamy

The shortcut to re-draw page in high resolution is Ctrl+Shift+F12

With modern PCs, I have hi-rez permanently enabled - there doesn;t seem to any reduction in speed. I can remember running PM4/Win3.0 on about 2Mb and it could take for ever to redraw an image!

Iechyd da! John
19:15 09/07/2003 BST