From the course: Illustrator 2021 Essential Training

Placing images - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator 2021 Essential Training

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Placing images

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- [Instructor] There are three ways you can bring images into Illustrator, and let's take a look at them in order of least preference first. I'm going to pop out here to Photoshop where I have this file, and what I'm going to do is just Command + click on the layer thumbnail there to make a selection of the layer contents. I'm going to copy that and then go back to Illustrator and paste that. Now that's my least favorite way of doing it. However, sometimes if you need an image quickly just for reference, then I guess that's perfectly acceptable, and actually to be honest, I do that myself too. But in an actual production file, the next two ways both create a linked asset, which means it links back to an original file somewhere else, which takes the load off of Illustrator, because when you paste in like this, all of that information adds to the weight of the Illustrator file. So that's why it's my least preferable option there. If I go out to my finder here, I've got a folder and I want to bring in the same PSD. I can actually drag that in. Okay, like so. Okay, and there you can see in the control strip and indeed at the top of the properties panel, that it is actually a linked file, and links can be managed. As I just said, their actual information, all of the numbers and everything that make up that particular file are kept somewhere else. You're not losing anything by doing that but you have plenty to gain. The other way that you can do that if you don't want to be dragging things in and let's face it, who does really? It's too slow by and large, unless you bring something in from the internet, I guess. But the best method I think is to actually go and place a file using the place command in the file menu. You can see here Shift + Command + P or Shift + Control + P even has its own shortcut. So then you can go and choose the file that you need. You can show the import options just in case there's any advantages. No options, so there weren't for this one, and then you can place your file like so, and you know you're using exactly the right one and you know where it came from.

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