Illustrator files inside InDesign documents

[seligman]

I finally upgraded from Freehand to Illustrator CS3.

I have a couple questions:

First, when specifying a document size within Illustrator, should I make the dimensions exactly the size I want the image to be within my InDesign file? Or should I include some padding?

Second, I'm using Illustrator to make maps. I usually do this by tracing a very large .BMP image created from Google Earth aerial photos (I have a program that creates these .BMP files, automatically).

Often times the final .BMP image size is 150-175 MB. Even though I have "linked" the .BMP image with my Illustrator file, the Illustrator file is skyrocketing to 250 MB. This leads me to believe the .BMP image is being embedded, even though it says "Linked File". What am I doing wrong?

[micke]

Hi Selig >> Wow! Isn't it fun working with 250 meg docs?

"First, when specifying a document size within Illustrator, should I make the dimensions exactly the size I want the image to be within my InDesign file? Or should I include some padding?"

Personally, I usually give myself some padding for a lot of reasons. If I know the final layout its easier to know how much, but if you keep your files organized you can always change it if you need to. But it doesn't really matter since the background in AI is transparent, so it doesn't add much file size to add a bit of artboard size.

"Second, I'm using Illustrator to make maps. I usually do this by tracing a very large .BMP image created from Google Earth aerial photos (I have a program that creates these .BMP files, automatically)".

My first thought was "I usually use greyscale PICT files as templates when I can because they're so small," but what can be smaller than a BMT? Well, it seems that there is a big issue about whether a linked file is embedded or not. If your file is jumping up to 250 megs, then your file IS embedded. Are you placing them, copy-pasting or dragging rhem? There's been some discussion about this subject lately. Check around. It's solveable.

Why are the Google Earth aerial photos so large? Are you cropping them before you place them?

I used to do cartography (mostly topographic maps) using a Leroy pen freehand. That was FUN! :p

micke

[seligman]

Thanks for the feedback.

Almost all of my maps are 3.5" wide and 4-10" tall. (the final product is a book which fits nicely into your back pocket) How much padding would you allow for something this size?

The .BMP files come from a program called Google Maps Images Downloader. The program downloads all of the image tiles (hundreds, if not thousands of them) and stitches them back together again.

What I've been doing is creating a new template layer, then using File--->Place, ensuring that "Linked File" is selected. Evidently, this method isn't working.

[seligman]

By the way, let me ask another question.

Placing the .ai files inside an InDesign document seems easy enough. Is there anything I need to be looking out for before going to press? Any "invisible" problems I should know about?