Help, How do I place Illustrator Cloud File (.aic)? What's your workflow?

[Volition74au]

Hi Guys, 

So I created a bunch of Illustrator files using the aic format saving on the creative cloud. I now want to set them in indesign for my printer.

I cannot seem to workout a way to place them in Illustrator. 

Is it doable? What's your workflow?

Thanks in Advance

[Manan Joshi · Accepted solution]

Cloud documents like aic or psdc are not supported by InDesign. So you need to work the traditional way of exchanging/linking the ai or psd files into your INDD documents

-Manan

[wpneily]

Not cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why didn't you tell us we woudn't be able to place these files when illustrator asked us to save them to the cloud for the first time? Placing adobe files in Indesign is is part of a daily workflow for print designers. Workflow matters!!! This software is used by professionals. If you need somene to shape up your UX department give me a call!!

[Manan Joshi]

I am also a user like you, you could give suggestions/feedback, report bugs at the following link. These forums are not the place where the engineering team visit quite often, the best chance to catch the eye of Project Mangers is the link given below

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/

Once you post your request, paste its link back here so that anyone wanting this feature can upvote it, the greater the no. of upvotes the larger would be its chance to be picked up early

-Manan

[Stephanie28896839i1p4]

BUT once they have become AIC documents how do I get them back to plain AI files? When I open an eps in illustrator, it goes straight to the Cloud spot.  ugh.

[rob day]

Hi @Stephanie28896839i1p4 , You will have to do a Save As and click Save not Save Cloud Document:

If you are not working on a mobile device the .AIC and .PSDC formats are pretty much useless.

InDesign placed assets have to be on a local volume or server, so if you want your placed assets to be both local and in the cloud you have to use a cloud sync’ing service like Dropbox, OneDrive, or the Creative Cloud Files folder, but Adobe is about to drop their file syncing feature in February.

More on syncing here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/do-indesign-links-work-with-adobe-cloud-multiple...

[huttumi]

Hi

Just opening .aic docs with "desktop-illustrator" and save in .ai format. It's cool as long as you stay in .aic format, your changes updates to cloud and to your ipad and vice versa.

[rob day]

Placed assets have to be saved to a local network, so if you want placed files to be both local and stored on your cloud server, save them into your local user>Creative Cloud Files folder where they will automatically sync to the Synced files directory in your Adobe cloud account. From there you can share the assets with other users.

The reason for the Illustrator .AIC and Photoshop .PSDC formats is to let you open and edit files on the mobile versions of the apps.

[Russell25291735ohmd]

so microsoft - like in the instance of ms project, have disconnected desktop apps from cloud based - less features, additional tiered pricing.  adobe obviously saw the dollar signs here too.  i have opted to save all of my designs to my pwn storage and maintain the origonal file extension - there is no reason to utlize the adobe cloud and encourage their use of a new file extension type here.

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi @Russell25291735ohmd ,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing the feedback. Cloud documents are Adobe's cloud-native document file type that can be accessed online or offline directly from within the application. You can access cloud documents on any device (desktop or iPad) if the application is installed.

Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions or feedback.

Regards

Rishabh

[Oliver23189347ypll]

They're completely uselss. Stop pushing them until you've fixed these critical regressions in your feature.

For example, a logo I saved from Illustrator (on the cloud) cannot be embedded/linked into a Photoshop document I'm working on (also in the cloud). 

[James37898256cy32]

This is honestly so insane, I feel like I'm missing something... Just to confirm, Illustrator explicitly advises to save to ACC, but files stored in ACC can't be used in other Adobe products? I tried using a library, but 1) the graphic saved to the library doesn't seem to be vectorized so I get a blurry mess, and 2) subsequent changes don't get updated it seems (at least I haven't found a way of doing it).

Am I missing something or is this just the way it is? I'd also like to know what the traditional workflow here is.

[Barb Binder]

Hi James:

The traditional InDesign workflow is to begin by creating a project folder for your InDesign project. (I add subfolders for Links (linked graphics), PDFs and Word docs.) Everything that pertains to the project goes in that folder. For new users who don't know to do this, the File > Package command will collect everything that pertains to the project into one new project folder, along with a subfolder for Links and one for Document Fonts. 

Photoshop and Illustrator support cloud documents, and have for quite a while. It's still a work-in-progress in InDesign. Expect it to improve, but the timeline is uncertain. 

~Barb

[JimBob35059977w8ac]

To be clear, when I edit either the local or cloud instance of the Illustrator file, now I have two versions?