Anyone know why my art has become flattened and there is now a big blue 'X' on it?

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
April 29, 2025
2 replies
292 views

No idea how this happened but I closed my file as usual then when I re-opened it all of the artwork is flat and has a big blue 'X' on it, all one piece. Any help here would e greatly appreciated!

Correct answer Ton Frederiks

The big blue X shows that it is an image (look in the Links panel).

Don't open a PDF in Illustrator (unless it was saved with Illustrator capabilities option).

Use the original Illustrator .ai file to edit the content.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

What did you do? Open a multipage PDF?

If that is the case you could try if embedding all the pages helps. But still you won't have a lot of joy editing it.

Did you save the file on a server?

Did Illustrator crash?

And what Ton wrote.

Ton Frederiks

Correct answer

Community Expert

The big blue X shows that it is an image (look in the Links panel).

Don't open a PDF in Illustrator (unless it was saved with Illustrator capabilities option).

Use the original Illustrator .ai file to edit the content.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded