How to Save Illustrator to InDesign

Illustrator and InDesign are both part of Adobe Creative Suite and work together to help you create high-quality vector art and page design, respectively. A finished piece of vector art created in Illustrator can be exported into a format that InDesign can place as-is in the document; however, if the Illustrator graphic requires editing after it's imported, the Illustrator document can be imported as a native Illustrator format. Adobe Illustrator files support better transparency settings in InDesign, and InDesign can work with a layered file to give you more flexibility.

Instructions

1. Launch InDesign and open a new or existing InDesign document. Click "Edit" from the main menu and click "Preferences." Click the "Clipboard Handling" pane. Uncheck "Prefer PDF When Pasting" if you want to drag your Illustrator art as an editable vector object, or leave the box checked if you want to copy a non-editable, finished piece of art over to InDesign. Click "OK."

2. Locate the Illustrator graphic's file icon on your computer.

3. Click and drag the icon onto the InDesign document. Alternatively, open the Illustrator file and press "Ctrl + A" to select the entire Illlustrator document. Press "Ctrl + C" to copy the image to the clipboard, then "Ctrl + V" to paste it into the InDesign document. The objects behave the same as items created in InDesign.

4. Save your document.

References

• Adobe InDesign CS5 Bible; Galen Gruman
• Adobe: Paste or Drag Graphics