I agree. Unfortiunately I cannot control what other people do. In this situation, the vendor realized the mistake and is replacing the product. They said they should have reached out to us. Because there are so many people that sometimes touches these projects, I always look for ways to safeguard against mistakes. It helps if something is obviously wrong or missing rather than subtle thus the looking for a solution that disables the placeholder images. It also is unfortiunate when software changes behavior, it is those times that mistakes pass unoticed until people realizes the changes! 🙂 I have implimented expressly stating in my communcations that these files are not print ready, that should help. Thanks for the discussion on this! ... View more

No I have too. I see nothing nor do I see much discussion on this. You can see what I am getting at first-hand though. Create an AI file. Place a linked image. Save as a PDF with AI editing enabled. Close all files. Delete the placed image. Open the PDF. You'll get a messge that the file is missing. If you ignore the message, the file with open with a proxy file. That has not always been the behavior. It used to open with absolutely nothing for the image except an empty object. Now, it uses a low-quality image. I as the designer can emmediately tell that the image is low quality. But, it can get easily overlooked by someone else. ... View more

It's not the warning I would like to turn off. That is a great feature. It's the Low-Resolution proxy image that is problematic. It's a new feature. I have been using Illustrator for probably 10 years and this is new. In the past, if the linked image was missing, there would a completely empty box. No image it all. A selectable but otherwise invisible box. ... View more

To paint a more clear picture of how this is happening. I work with sales reps to sell branded products and custom printed items such as table throws. I set up art to use as proofs for their customers. The images are linked so that I can keep the file size down for purpose of emailing and getting approval on the art. Sometimes art gets approved from a customer and the sales rep sends the files to the vendor. This has never been a problem in the past because it was always obvious that there was something missing. Now, it's not obvious that there is something missing because now a low quality place-holder image is being used. Yes, it would be nice if the vendor just sent back and email asking for the missing files. But in reality, these things sometimes just get printed with what they have unfortiunately. And yes, I know to adjust our communication for this new reality. I just don't know how many products have gotten printed with low quality images. The missing images were a great safeguard against these accidental mistakes.   If there is a setting to prevent these low quality images from being created, I'd like to know what it is to help this to not happen. ... View more

The PDF is not used as is in the problematic situations. I have raster images that are placed onto product images as proofs. The vendor will open the proof file to grab the images. The images are these low quality placeholder images. I myself never hear anything back, they just print what they have. ... View more

Yes, and I know how to handle that. The issue comes when I'm working with others that send files to a vendor. It happens that the vendor apparently ignores the message and just uses the placeholder image. ... View more

Hey, yes, you might be onto something here!  I renamed a .ai file to .txt and was able to open and find instances of the linked files paths. It might be an easier write a Python program to search and replace the needed paths. I'm not familiar with Total Commander or Power Grip. I'll look into those as they might do these things out of the box as you are suggesting. ... View more

Has a solutin been found for this yet?  I am in the same situation. I have thousands of files that all have linked images in them. I am switching over to a new server and every link is going to be broken. I need to be able to automate going through each file an resaving each file after updating the path information. ... View more

The message I was getting is: "Linked artwork that interacts with transparency cannot be flattened. Embed the artwork (using the Links panel) before flattening." I should have put that in the original post. ... View more

Reword the issue now that more troubleshooting has been done:   Issue: When saving a document as a PDF, downsampling (under compression) in the save dialog does not work if images are part of a transparency mask.   How to recreate issue: 1. Open or create new document. Place a linked image. Make a rectangle. Create a trasnsparency mask using the placed image and the created rectangle. Save as a PDF. Under compression, apply downsampling. 2. For comparison, now release the mask and resave with same settings. The file sizes will be drastically different. The issue is more evident if the image is scaled up large in the document. ... View more

I get what you are saying. I would reword it to say that Illustrator creates new images upon saving and embeds those newly created images in the PDF. The original linked images are not embedded.   Ultimately, I found where they problem is. How do I get this in the eyes of the developers so that they are aware of the issue?   ... View more

To touch on this some. PDF compression settings work only if the images are linked. Embed the images in the PDF, and all of those settings are useless; they do nothing. ... View more

"It's as if Illustrator is not treating the file as being linked."   ^ From the original post. After more experimenting, yes, Illustrator is correctly treating the file as linked, BUT! The downsampling options in the compression section of the save dialog are not working. ... View more

That's not true. A compressed version of the file is embedded, but the linked file is not embedded. Think about the times you have tried to open an edited PDF and you got the "missing linked file" dialog. I have made some ground in tracking down the issue though! I am used to being able to control the compression for images when saving as PDF. It appears that when am image is being used in a transparency mask, Illustrator is not downsampling the image when asked to. I still have control over the Image Quality, but the downsampling options are doing nothing like they normally should. ... View more

Thanks for the response!  If I uncheck "PDF compatibility" it fixes the issue [for AI files], the problem still persists though when saving as a PDF. ... View more

Thank you so much!  I guess I overlooked it in the above code block! ... View more

Thanks for the reply! I do see that I was using an argument that was not valid ("window") When I use "dialog" as the first argument, it works. When I use "palette" as the first argument, nothing appears. ... View more

I found this post looking for the answer to this same issue. There was no solution here, so I experimented more with what I have. I'm not sure if this is a solution to this issue everytime, but I found what was causing it in my situation. I placed two images that are 900x900(px). I was unable to select them except for by clicking exactly on the border. Also, unable to move them except by clicking on the border. The images were 900x900(px), 900"x900" at 1ppi. I opened the images in photoshop and resized them to 900x900(px), 3"x3" at 300ppi. When I switched back to Illustrator the links updated and I was then able to manipulate them normally. ... View more

This says it's for CS5. The tool guide published 10 years ago is still the go-to source for this information? ... View more

I was trying to run them through ESTK. I went back after reading your reply, and tried to just run these two specific scripts within Illustrator; they both work fine when selected within Illustrator. They do not work when I press the Play button in ESTK. I have it connected to Illustrator fine by selecting Adobe Illustrator 2020 in the top left dropdown. I have tested that it is properly connected but writing something very simple and running it: app.documents.add(DocumentColorSpace.CMYK); I have the latest version of Illustrator CC 24.0.2 EDIT: I get this error within ESTK: an Illustrator error occurred: 1346458189 ('PARM')   ... View more

Is this unique to this document, or is this a feature that you have not been able to get work at all? ... View more

Thanks for the reply. That is the key combination that is assigned. After digging around some, I see that it's Windows that is nullifying the key combination. CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+M, Highlight Font (Secondary), does what I desire. I don't know what Secondary mean, and I cannot easily press these 4 buttons with my left hand. I've reassigned Highlight Font to CTRL_ALT_SHIFT+A. Again, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. ... View more