The Adobe Illustrator CS Wow- P3: Sharon Steuer is the originator of The Illustrator Wow! Books. When not working on Wow! books, Sharon is a painter, illustrator, columnist for , and the author of Creative Thinking in Photoshop: A New Approach to Digital Art. She lives in Connecticut with her cats, Puma and Bear, and radio star husband, Jeff Jacoby. She is extremely grateful to her co-authors, editors, testers, Wow! team members (past and present), Adobe, and Peachpit for making this book possible | More about controlling the size of your files The major factors that can increase your file size are the inclusion of image objects path pattern brushes and ink pen objects complex patterns a large number of blends and gradients especially gradient mesh objects and gradient-to-gradient blends linked bitmapped images and transparency. Although linked bitmaps can be large the same image embedded as an image object is significantly larger. Ifyour Illustrator file contains linked images and you need to save the entire file in EPS for placement and printing in other programs you have the option Include Linked Files. Most service bureaus highly recommend this option as it will embed placed images in your Illustrator file and make printing from page layout programs and film recorders much more predictable be sure to see the Tip Proofing your prints at left . However since including placed images will further increase the file size wait until you ve completed an image and are ready to place it into another program before you save a copy with placed images embedded. Whether or not you choose to embed linked images you must collect all of the files that have been linked into your Illustrator documents and transport them along with your Illustrator file. Illustrator makes your task easier if you choose File Document Info Linked Images which outputs a text file of all images in your document. Press Save to create a text file that you can keep for future reference or give to your service bureau as a record of the images included in your files. ACTIONS Actions are a set of commands or a series of events that you can record and save as a set in the Actions palette. Once a set is recorded you can play back an action in the same order in which you recorded it to automate a job you do repeatedly such as a production task or special effect . Select the action in the Actions palette and activate it by clicking the Play icon at the bottom of the palette In a jam There s help available
