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Placing Illustrator file in InDesign

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
November 17, 2019
3 replies
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I have created all pages for my document in Illustrator but my I need to have it InDesign. May I just place the Illustrator document in InDesign? Each page is laid out exactly as I want it in Illustrator. Saving as or exporting to another format has proved problematic but I am not sure this is necessary. It seems like it works to just place it. But I'm a little over my head in making that call.

How to

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Correct answer Monika Gause

Thank you so much! I am sure you have saved my project and saved me from countless frustrating hours!

You're welcome! Best of luck for your project.

L

lukes246810Author

Known Participant

Aloha again! I am further along with your suggestions and am perplexed at the moment! I am placing my Illustrator files in InDesign hoping to send it off to press later today. I am at a loss as to how to do the suggested checking of whether the PDF can be created and how large it will be with JPEG compression. It seems like the placed Illustrator files are linked since file size is not changing.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

When you place files in InDesign they will always be linked. That's a good thing.

In order to make a PDF, just go to FIle > Export and select the appropriate options (your printing company will have them)

L

lukes246810Author

Known Participant

Thanks again! My lack of experience is leading to overthinking!

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Transparent interactions would be blend modes or masks applied to objects and then overlaying other objects.

L

lukes246810Author

Known Participant

Oh okay. Not sure if this counts....I have some drop shadows and used some gradients as fills. But nothing very complicated.

I am going to wind up with a pretty large file so am not sure if that is reason enough to flatten? Thanks again for helping me out here!

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Large files are to be expected. Or are we talking about gigabytes?

Monika Gause

Community Expert

You can save the file with "PDF compatibility" turned on and then place it in InDesign.

Unless there is a lot of complex transparency interaction going on in which case it might be a good idea to analyze the transparency flattening and investigate if flattening to pixels might be a better idea, because otherwise the prepress might get complicated or you end up with very large files or InDesign crashes when writing a PDF.

So in the end: what's in the file? what will be done in InDesign? what kind of file do you need to send to the printing service?

L

lukes246810Author

Known Participant

Great! I will make sure to save my files with PDF compatibility before placing them. I am creating an illustrated cookbook through a photo book company that has an InDesign plug-in for their book making service. The pages are full of vectors, scanned illustrations and photos. The instructions are illustrated, so it's not a lot of text that you would typically find in a cookbook. I created it in Illustrator because of the artistic freedom I had in manipulating outlined text (which is the majority of the vectors.) I laid out all the pages in Illustrator and so the only thing I will be doing in InDesign is placing the Illustrator pages.

I'm not sure what you mean by transparency interaction.....and what it would take to investigate flattening....or the best way to approach flattening. By my description, does it sound like I need to do this? I am familiar with Illustrator and learn things on a need to know basis so am needing advice! Thank you!

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