Combining illustrator files into one document

[pmccb1002]

Hi all,

Hoping you can help me settle a family debate here. My mother and I are self taught with the Adobe suite, so this may be something you'd learn in a formal program, but we haven't had that. She uses a lot of stock vectors. In the interest of ease, she's gotten into the habit of trying to categorize like items into a single document. So say she downloads one file that contains a bunch of different types of fruit in it, something like this bit.ly/32mEdwF, for example. And then she downloads another file that also contains fruit, like this bit.ly/3FViY2B, for example. My mother will then create a pineapple document, an apple document, a strawberry document, etc. and she will copy/paste all of those types of fruit onto their relevant document type in illustrator. And she will do this with items from dozens of source files. This is her method for storing and organizing stock art.

Anyway, something tells me she shouldn't be doing this. That this isn't the best way to store files from multiple creators and designed to different specs. But I don't know how to articulate what the problem is. 

So, can you help? Is this an Illustrator no-no? And if so, why? Or is it a great way to categorize things and I should leave her alone about it?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

[Monika Gause]

As for the organisation of things: whatever works best for you or your mother. If she can work with her system: great. Are you collaborating? Then it should work for you as well.

She should also store the copyright information and be able to associate it with each artwork.

[pmccb1002]

Thanks and good point about copyright. But just to confirm, saving vectors from multiple sources together isn't going to mess with the files color settings or anything else like that?

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Accepted solution]

"mess with the files color settings or anything else like that?"

Potentially. Say, if one file was assigned the Adobe RGB profile and objects from this were copied and pasted into another document that was assigned sRGB, the colours may change (get duller)...

Depending on your Colour Settings, you may be warned about Profile mismatches, and you can be presented with the opportunity to accept the change of color space, or convert to a different one.

[pmccb1002]

This is really helpful, thank you.