Copying from Illustrator to InDesign

[Roy McCoy]

I know this has been discussed before and I even have messages about it in my archive, but I figure there are probably others than myself who have forgotten or who never knew, so that in addition to my laziness is the reason I'm bringing it up again.

I had an annual diploma job that would have entailed 13 separate Illustrator files (previously prepared by a designer and brushed up by me), imported to InDesign for convenience in output (single PDF to print shop). I wanted to get the whole thing into InDesign last night, also without any linked Illustrator template or anything, and I succeeded. I had to recompose all the text, though, as there didn't seem to be any good way to bring it in - I either lost the formatting or got it in chunks of single or multiple letters. First question is if there's a better way to get the text and if so what is it.

Second question, which I guess is mostly out of curiosity, is how copied graphic objects are brought in - PDF? EPS? PICT? ...?

Third and last question: However these last are brought in, they don't seem to be editable. That doesn't matter on this job, since I fixed everything up in Illustrator that I wanted to fix up and don't have any further changes I want to make or probably ever will. But I'd like to know how to get editable objects if possible.

Thanks and sorry if I should have tried to find this elsewhere,

Roy

[Roy McCoy]

P.S.

> I had to recompose all the text, though, as there didn't seem to be any good way to bring it in - I either lost the formatting or got it in chunks of single or multiple letters. First question is if there's a better way to get the text and if so what is it.

Here's one I've now figured out: save text as PDF, open in Acrobat and export from Acrobat to Word. That worked pretty good on a test file I just tried. Small caps became all caps, but otherwise the formatting seemed well preserved. It's a kind of slow way to do it, though, and you'd think there'd be a way to do it more directly. I don't think I said before, but unlike with the graphic objects, I want the text editable in InDesign. Thanks.

[William Adams]

On Jul 19, 2011, at 10:04 AM, Roy McCoy wrote:

> First question is if there's a better way to get the text and if so what is it.

Using .rtf out of Acrobat or a tool like Marcel Weiher's TextLightning.app is the best approach I've found.

> Second question, which I guess is mostly out of curiosity, is how copied graphic objects are brought in - PDF? EPS? PICT? ...?

This is determined by your Preferences in the two apps and graphics complexity.

> Third and last question: However these last are brought in, they don't seem to be editable. That doesn't matter on this job, since I fixed everything up in Illustrator that I wanted to fix up and don't have any further changes I want to make or probably ever will. But I'd like to know how to get editable objects if possible.

If the objects pass a certain complexity threshold you'll get an embedded .eps which is not editable --- you have to simplify things or copy/paste in sections so as to stay below that threshold to keep elements editable.

William

(who really wishes Adobe would just put all of FreeHand's features into InDesign and give InDesign the ability to parse .eps files and open FH files)

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[David Bergsland]

You need to set the prefs in AI to copy paths.
That should do it, if there is not type or effects or filters. Complex stuff will always come in as a PDF. I find I usually need to expand appearances in AI to get the actual paths. Then copy paste works well.

I often do brush strokes in AI. Then expand appearances, delete the path to which the brushstroke is attached, and then copy/paste in the paths. I find the Swatches panel is so much better in InDesign that I can control the colorization of the brushstroke much better in InDesign.

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[David Bergsland]

That's not going to happen AFAIK

On Jul 19, 2011, at 9:47 AM, Roy McCoy wrote:

> I want the text editable in InDesign.

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[Heather White]

If I'm understanding correctly, you were simply looking to use InDesign for easy pdf creation? Could you have saved the Illustrator files as .ai files and then place them as images into InDesign and make your pdf?

Or make your pdf files directly from Illustrator and then combine them into one file by using acrobat?

My illustrator skills are pretty minimal, but something I've found helpful is learning recently that you can copy and paste (or drag and drop) directly from Illustrator to InDesign. This is helpful, as there are some small things you cannot do in InDesign, but once I was ready to add text and design the entire piece, I pulled the object into my comfort zone (InDesign). By copying into InDesign, rather than placing, it was still an editable object and I could play with the color, etc.

-heather

Roy

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[Robert Severn]

Illustrator saves pdfs at least as well as ID, and there is no reason to place them into ID unless the file is part of a larger ID doc.

(Of course pdfs can be debited in Acrobat, so this is another option). Remember that pdfs are "Saved As" from IL not "Exported".

Bob

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[Roy McCoy]

William A.:

>> First question is if there's a better way to get the text and if so what is it.
>
> Using .rtf out of Acrobat

I'd found the Word export but not the RTF one under Save As > More Options, thanks. I'm not actually aware of any reason to prefer either Word or RTF for this. Sometimes I opt for Word just to avoid the Convert File dialog if I open the file in Word. I know I can avoid this dialog through a preferences setting and I've it turned off sometimes, but then there's always some reason to turn it back on again.

> or a tool like Marcel Weiher's TextLightning.app is the best approach I've found.

Will look into it if Word/RTF export from Acrobat ever proves to be inadequate and I really need it.

>> Second question, which I guess is mostly out of curiosity, is how copied graphic objects are brought in - PDF? EPS? PICT? ...?
>
> This is determined by your Preferences in the two apps and graphics complexity.
>
>> Third and last question: However these last are brought in, they don't seem to be editable. That doesn't matter on this job, since I fixed everything up in Illustrator that I wanted to fix up and don't have any further changes I want to make or probably ever will. But I'd like to know how to get editable objects if possible.
>
> If the objects pass a certain complexity threshold you'll get an embedded .eps which is not editable --- you have to simplify things or copy/paste in sections so as to stay below that threshold to keep elements editable.

Okay, but what I pasted the other day was pretty simple. I must not have had the preferences set right for that, then.

David B.:

> You need to set the prefs in AI to copy paths. That should do it, if there is not type or effects or filters.

Got that, changed it.

> Complex stuff will always come in as a PDF.

I suppose that's what I got with without copy paths selected.

> I find I usually need to expand appearances in AI to get the actual paths. Then copy paste works well.

Can you please explain what expand appearances is? I've never heard of that.

> I often do brush strokes in AI. Then expand appearances, delete the path to which the brushstroke is attached, and then copy/paste in the paths. I find the Swatches panel is so much better in InDesign that I can control the colorization of the brushstroke much better in InDesign.

It looked like drop shadows were slightly different in Illustrator than in InDesign. I was trying to recreate one with blur set to 1.76 in AI, but couldn't find a blur setting in ID. There was something set at 1.76, but it was size, not blur.

> That's [editable copied text] not going to happen AFAIK.

Maybe not from AI, but the Acrobat route isn't so bad.

Heather W.:

> If I'm understanding correctly, you were simply looking to use InDesign for easy pdf creation?

Probably. The file was from a previous year or years.

> Could you have saved the Illustrator files as .ai files and then place them as images into InDesign and make your pdf?

That's how it was previously done. Maybe the main problem was that there was text in each of the thirteen AI files that needed to be modified and updated for this year. By getting the whole thing into ID with three master pages based on a base first one I managed to get it down to a single place where the text needed to be updated. This saved me a couple of minutes - too bad it took me a couple of hours to save those couple of minutes, lol.

> Or make your pdf files directly from Illustrator and then combine them into one file by using acrobat?

That might have been a possibility and I'll try to avoid using InDesign superfluously for PDF assembly, but on the other hand I'm more comfortable with ID than with AI or Acrobat.

> My illustrator skills are pretty minimal, but something I've found helpful is learning recently that you can copy and paste (or drag and drop) directly from Illustrator to InDesign. This is helpful, as there are some small things you cannot do in InDesign, but once I was ready to add text and design the entire piece, I pulled the object into my comfort zone (InDesign). By copying into InDesign, rather than placing, it was still an editable object and I could play with the color, etc.

Well, that's what I wanted to do too. It will go better if the same kind of thing comes up again, now that I know more about the preferences setting and taking text via Acrobat.

Thanks,

Roy

[David Bergsland]

Many of the things you do in AI are not seen on the screen. A brushstroke, for example, never shows all the paths. So, there are two commands under the Object menu Expand… and Expand Appearances… that convert what you see into the actual paths being used to produce that effect.

I find I have to expand brushstrokes, filters, blends, and many other things to get to the actual paths used, so I can copy/paste them. Of course, once I expand them, they are usually not editable in AI any more. But I do not care about that.

On Jul 20, 2011, at 11:52 AM, Roy McCoy wrote:

>> I find I usually need to expand appearances in AI to get the actual paths. Then copy paste works well.
>
> Can you please explain what expand appearances is? I've never heard of that.

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[Roy McCoy]

Thanks. Can you unexpand them afterwards and get them back then?

Roy

[David Bergsland]

Only by undoing. If it is a concern, you may want to expand a copy of the file.

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