Illustrator best practices for file sizes and compatibility

Question

Hello, I run IT for a small graphics department spread between 3 locations with a mix of Mac and Windows OS environments.  There are issues with how files are being saved and shared between users.  Many times there are fonts missing or linked files needing to be found.  This wastes time.  What are the best practices for saving files so they can be opened by anyone else running Illustrator without having to go on a hunt for missing items?  There are also issues on the Macs where the thumbnails of the AI files in Finder are missing.  (Thumbnails can be viewed in Windows.)  That may be a seperate issue, but it feels like its a file saving issue with a couple users, becasue its not happening to all AI files, but most.  Is there a good compromise between this and file sizes?  We have to be mindful of the sizes of our image archives and backups too.  I'd like to find a good solution that everyone can adopt going forward.  We primarily make signage for print, if that helps.  Thank you.

Bobby Henderson · Answer

Generally speaking if the users in these 3 different locations are going to be sharing AI files they either need to be embedding the images in the document or they need to "package" the file's linked assets in a folder to send along with the AI file. That way the links can be easily restored. Lots of users tend to work on "auto pilot" using Illustrator default behaviors. One of those app behaviors is linking placed images by default rather than embedding them. Embedding the images will increase file sizes (and do so dramatically if there are large images or lots of images). But it's the fastest & easiest approach.

Regarding fonts, both Windows and MacOSX have fonts that are unique to each OS. The users need to be aware of that. Certain Mac system fonts are not at all compatible with Windows. There may be issues with fonts going the other direction. The "flavor" of Arial bundled into Windows 11 is probably not the same as the one included in OSX. Heck, the version of Arial in Win11 isn't the same as the one from WinXP. If the users are going to be sharing files across platforms the easiest approach is using OpenType font families that can be accessed by all. They can all sync the same fonts from the Adobe Fonts service (over 3000 families are available). Some sites such as Google Fonts offer cross platform compatible fonts that can be downloaded freely. Commercially purchased OpenType fonts are typically cross platform compatible, but you have to be careful about licensing issues.

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