that indesign document i mentioned sending to my supervisor in the previous post, another problem we had: i hadn’t packaged it correctly. it had links to 5 different images, and so when she opened it on her computer, all the links were missing.

again, learning experience. i’m really glad i pick things up quickly, and all it takes is once for me to figure it out and never do it again. so i quickly embedded all the images and resent it to her, no problem.

should i embed all images i use in every indesign document i create from henceforth?, i asked myself. better to research first, i replied.

the first link i found was this one. basic gist: embedding creates huge file sizes, it’s better to link. however if you link your images, you may have issues with linked files disappearing, especially if you use a shared drive. several people recommended (which i’ve already discovered with my last 2 indesign jobs) that it’s better to make a copy of any photos you’re using and put them in a subfolder along with your indesign document. i think personally this is what i’m going to do from now on, in each indesign project folder i create, there will be a subfolder called “artwork.” by the way, one of the people on the comment thread had an awesome tagline: PowerPoint is not a design application. =)

researching further i find a page entitled gather links without packaging. it proposes a way to easily create duplicates of all your linked files in a new folder. commenters after the article point out possible problems with this, and talk about packaging and embedding tricks and concerns.

another article, Copy-and-Paste vs. Place, says that if you copy an image from illustrator into indesign, it will automatically embed the image, not link it. he recommended you don’t do this, simply for organizational purposes, that he prefers to keep each image associated with whatever program he used to create it. if something happened to the indesign document, will you then have lost all subsequent changes made to that image, and you’d have to re-embed it? this is a good point, but i’d like to think more on this. when creating the the t-shirt graphic i was able to quickly create a very complex, textured image by opening a photo in illustrator, livetracing it, then dragging it into photoshop, where i finished tweaking it. i think for this purpose me doing that was fine, because i was only using illustrator for one thing, its livetracing.

so if you copy an image into indesign, it embeds it. if you place the image into indesign, it creates a link. i’m getting the impression that for working in the document, linking is the preferred solution; embedding is when you need to send the file to somebody else (making mental note in my head). (true?) what’s the difference between embedding images and packaging, though?

this link, which appears to be a submission specs page for a printing company that works with (an) education institution(s), specifically asks its clients to NOT embed images:

Some programs allow you to embed images into your page layout program. DO NOT EMBED YOUR IMAGES. If you embed images, we cannot check them for color accuracy, trapping resolution and quality. We need the original images so we can ensure your files print correctly.

it also says:

When working in InDesign, we recommend that you save your Illustrator® support files in their native .ai format, and your Photoshop files in their native.psd format. This will give you maximum flexibility in your design process and add to the functionality built into InDesign.

it also requests that any files created using indesign be packaged before sending to them.

here’s a web page from adobe.com: Recommended workflow for creating InDesign documents

all right, i’m gonna stop this cuz i gotta get to work, but for right now i’m gonna work off the assumption that i generally shouldn’t embed images, instead i should use a well-organized file structure, and then when i need to send the file to, say, my supervisor, i should… package it, i believe. but why is embedding even an option, then? it must have a use. i’ll research more later.