Work with placed images

This guide covers the images in a document after you place them: the Links panel, relinking and embedding, missing links when a document opens, editing an image in its own app, cropping, rasterizing, and turning an image into tiles or halftone dots. To bring an image into a document, see Open and save files.

See every image in the Links panel

Choose Window → Links. Each row shows a thumbnail, the file name and a status badge.
Click a row to select its image on the canvas. Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on macOS) adds or removes a row, and Shift-click selects every row from the last row you clicked without Shift to this one. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) as well to add that range to the selection.
Double-click a row to select its image and scroll the view to it.

Badge	Status	What it means
Red circle with ?	Missing	VectorCraft cannot find the file. The image shows the preview saved with the document.
Amber triangle with !	Modified	The file changed after VectorCraft last read it.
Image icon	Embedded	The pixels are stored in the document, and there is no file.
No badge	Linked	VectorCraft found the file, and it has not changed.

VectorCraft checks the linked files every 2 seconds. If you move or edit a file in another app while the document is open, its row shows the new status. Hold the pointer over a row to see the file’s path.

The Link Info section under the list shows the first selected image’s name, format, color space, folder, PPI, effective PPI at its placed size, pixel dimensions, scale, rotation, file size, dates and status. Click the chevron at the bottom left of the panel, or choose Show Link Info in the panel menu, to hide or show it.

The dusk-bay-postcard document with three framed pictures, a harbor, a lantern street and a hill view, above the title Greetings from Dusk Bay. The Links panel, docked at the left, has the lantern-street.png row selected with a red missing badge, its Link Info ends with Status Missing, and the Relink… tooltip shows over its button in the panel’s bottom bar

The panel menu, opened from the menu button at the top right of the panel, also holds these options:

Select Linked, Select Embedded, Select Missing and Select Modified select every image with that status in the document. Hold Shift while you choose one to add to the selection.
Show All, Show Missing, Show Modified and Show Embedded filter the list.
Sort by Name, Sort by Kind and Sort by Status sort it. With no sort chosen, the list follows the stacking order, top first.
No Thumbnails, Small Thumbnails, Medium Thumbnails and Large Thumbnails set the thumbnail size. Medium is the default.

Relink, update and embed images

Select one or more rows in the Links panel, then choose a command from the panel menu. Relink…, Go To Link, Update Link, Edit Original and Break Link are also buttons at the bottom of the panel.

Command	What it does
Relink…	Links the selected images to a file you pick. An embedded image becomes linked. With the default Placement Options, each image keeps its bounds.
Relink to Folder…	Links each selected image to the file with the same name in a folder you pick. With nothing selected, it relinks every missing image. The status bar lists the names it did not find.
Find in Folder…	Searches a folder and its subfolders for the selected linked files, or for the missing ones when none is selected. See Fix missing links when a document opens.
Go To Link	Selects the image and scrolls the view to it. It needs one selected row.
Update Link	Reads a modified file again. With the default Placement Options, each image keeps its bounds.
Edit Original	Opens the linked file in its own app. See Edit an image in its own app.
Embed Image(s)	Stores the pixels of the selected linked images in the document and drops the link. The Break Link button does the same. A missing image stays linked until you relink it.
Unembed…	Writes one embedded image to a file you name and links the image to that file. PNG, JPEG, GIF and WebP images keep their format, and other images are written as PNG.
Placement Options…	Sets how a new or updated file takes the image’s place.
Show in Folder	Shows the linked file in the system’s file manager.

Each relink, update, embed and unembed is one undo step.

Placement Options… has these settings. They apply the next time the image is relinked or updated.

Setting	Choices
Preserve	Transforms keeps the image’s scale, rotation and position. Bounds stretches the new file into the old bounds, and it is the default. File Dimensions places it at 100% without rotation. Bounds (Fit Proportionally) and Bounds (Fill Proportionally) scale it to fit inside or to cover the old bounds.
Alignment	Where the new art sits inside the old bounds. It does not apply to Bounds.
Clip to Bounding Box	Clips a larger file to the old bounds.

The Placement Options dialog over the dusk-bay-postcard document, with Preserve set to Bounds (Fit Proportionally), the center alignment point chosen and Clip to Bounding Box off. The selected lantern-street.png image shows its Linked File section in the Properties panel

When one image is selected, the Properties panel and the Control bar show a Linked File or Embedded Image section. It has Embed and Edit Original for a linked image, or Unembed… for an embedded one, and Replace…, which swaps in another file that keeps its own aspect ratio inside the old bounds. On the Control bar, click the file name for Replace…, Go To Link, Edit Original, Update Link and Placement Options….

The dusk-bay-postcard document with the lantern-street.png image selected. The Properties panel shows the Linked File section with the file name, RGB, PPI 154.3, and the Embed, Edit Original, Replace… and Links buttons

Fix missing links when a document opens

VectorCraft looks for each linked file at the path saved in the document, then at the same relative path from the document’s folder, then by name in the document’s folder. When a file is still missing, the Linked File Not Found dialog opens and asks about one file at a time.

Read the file name and the path where VectorCraft looked.
Choose what to do with it:
- Replace… relinks the image to a file you pick.
- Ignore leaves the image linked. It keeps showing the preview saved with the document.
- Find in Folder… opens Find Linked Files and searches a folder you pick, with its subfolders, for every missing file.
- Cancel closes the dialog and leaves this file and the other missing files linked as they are. Their images keep showing the saved preview.
When more files are missing, the dialog shows Apply to All. With it on, Replace… looks for the other missing files by name in the folder of the file you picked, and Ignore ignores all of them. VectorCraft asks again about any file it does not find.

The Linked File Not Found dialog over the dusk-bay-postcard document, naming lantern-street.png and the path where VectorCraft looked for it, with Find in Folder…, Ignore, Cancel and Replace…. The lantern-street.png row in the Links panel has a red missing badge

In Find Linked Files, each missing file lists the files found with its name, best match first. A match marked Same file has the size and contents saved with the link, and Same size has the size only. Choose a match for each file, or Don’t Relink, and press Relink. VectorCraft chooses a match for you only when it finds a single file with that name, or a single match marked Same file. Press Stop to end a long search. When you open Find Linked Files from Linked File Not Found, VectorCraft asks again in Linked File Not Found about each file you leave at Don’t Relink and each file that fails to relink. For a saved document, turn on Copy into the document’s folder to copy each image’s file next to the document before relinking. VectorCraft never replaces a file that is already there.

The Find Linked Files dialog for lantern-street.png. It lists two files with that name, the one in the archive folder marked Same file and chosen, then the one in the drafts folder, then Don’t Relink. Below the list, the dialog reports 5 folders and 5 files searched, and Copy into the document’s folder is off

After the missing files, VectorCraft offers to update the linked files that changed since the document was saved. Update Links in Edit → Preferences… → File Handling on Windows and Linux, and in VectorCraft → Settings → File Handling… on macOS, sets what happens to a changed file:

Update Links	What happens
Ask When Modified	VectorCraft asks before it shows the new version. This is the default.
Automatically	VectorCraft reads the changed file and updates the image.
Manually	The status bar reports the change, and the image keeps the old version until you choose Update Link.

The same setting applies to files that another app changes while the document is open.

The File Handling page of Preferences over the dusk-bay-postcard document, with Update Links set to Ask When Modified under Files

Edit an image in its own app

Select a linked image.
Choose Edit → Edit Original, or click Edit Original in the Links panel, the Properties panel or the Control bar.
Edit and save the file in the app that opens.
Return to VectorCraft. The Links panel marks the image as modified. VectorCraft then updates the image, asks you first, or waits for Update Link, as Update Links in Preferences is set.

The dusk-bay-postcard document with the hill-view.png image selected and an amber modified badge on its row in the Links panel. The Update Modified Links dialog says that 1 linked image changed on disk and asks whether to show the new version, with Cancel and OK

Edit Original opens the file in the app your system uses for its file type. It opens only image and document files in formats VectorCraft reads. A placed VectorCraft document opens in a new tab in VectorCraft instead, and saving it there updates the placed copy. An embedded image has no file to open, and a missing file must be relinked first.

Crop an image

Select the image.
Choose Object → Crop Image, or click Crop Image in the Properties panel’s Quick Actions, on the Control bar or on the Contextual Task Bar. A crop box appears over the part of the image that sits on its artboard, or over the whole image when it lies inside the artboard.
Drag a handle to move an edge or corner, or drag inside the box to move it. The box stays inside the image, and the part outside it is dimmed. A readout next to the pointer shows the box’s width and height.
To type the size, enter X and Y (the box’s center), W and H on the Control bar.
Press Enter or click Apply to crop the image. Press Esc or click Cancel to leave it as it was. Both return to the Selection tool.

The dusk-bay-postcard document with Crop Image active on the harbor image. The crop box’s right edge is dragged left to just past the sailboat, between the boat and the sun’s reflection, the part of the image outside the box is dimmed, and a readout beside the dragged right edge shows W 698.54 px and H 620.00 px. The Control bar shows the box’s X, Y, W and H fields with Apply and Cancel

Rasterize vector art

Object → Rasterize… turns the selected objects into one embedded image, in one undo step.

Select the objects.
Choose Object → Rasterize….
Set the options, and click OK.

The dialog starts from the document’s raster effects settings, which you set in Effect → Document Raster Effects Settings….

Option	What it sets
Add Around	Room around the art, from 0 to 1000 pt
Anti Alias	`none` for hard edges, `art` to smooth the art, or `type` to snap text to pixels
Background	`transparent`, `white`, `black` or a color as `#rrggbb`
Clipping Mask	Puts the image in a clip group with the art’s outline
Color Model	RGB (CMYK in a CMYK document), Grayscale or Bitmap
Ppi	The resolution, from 1 to 2400 ppi; a new document starts at 72

The Rasterize dialog over the dusk-bay-postcard document, with the title Greetings from Dusk Bay selected. Add Around is 0, Anti Alias is type, Background is transparent, Clipping Mask is off, Color Model is RGB and Ppi is 300

Turn an image into tiles or dots

Object → Create Object Mosaic… turns an image into a grid of colored rectangles.

Select an image.
Choose Object → Create Object Mosaic….
Set the grid and click OK.

Option	What it sets	Default
Columns and Rows	The number of tiles across and down, from 1 to 1000	10 by 10
Spacing X and Spacing Y	The gap between tiles in points	0
Gray	Fills the tiles with grays instead of colors	Off
Delete Raster	Removes the image after the tiles are made	Off

Each tile takes the average color of its part of the image. The tiles come in a group named Object Mosaic.

The Create Object Mosaic dialog over the hill-view image, with Columns 40, Rows 30, Spacing X 1 and Spacing Y 1, and Gray and Delete Raster off

The dusk-bay-postcard document at 180% after Create Object Mosaic with the settings above. Square tiles redraw the sun, hills and houses of the hill view in blocks over the hill-view.png image, which stays selected under them. The Layers panel shows the Object Mosaic group above hill-view.png in the Photos layer, and the Links panel still lists hill-view.png

Object → Vector Halftone… redraws the selected objects (vectors, type or images) as vector dots sized by their tone. The canvas previews the result while the dialog is open.

Option	What it sets	Default
Shape	Circle, Ellipse, Square, Diamond or Line	Circle
Frequency	The screen ruling, from 1 to 150 lines per inch	20 lpi
Angle	The screen angle, from −90° to 90°	45°
Screens	Mono draws one screen in one color. CMYK draws four screens that multiply, with cyan at −30°, magenta at +30° and yellow at −45° from the angle.	Mono
Color	The dot color for a Mono screen	`#000000`
Invert	Puts the dots in the light tones	Off
Clip to Art	Clips the dots to the art’s outline	On
Keep Original	Keeps the original art as well as the dots	Off
Preview	Turns the live preview on the canvas on or off	On

The result is one group with one path for each screen, made in one undo step.

The Vector Halftone dialog beside the hill-view-halftone document, with Shape Circle, Frequency 10 lpi, Angle 45°, Screens CMYK, Clip to Art and Preview on, and Invert and Keep Original off. The canvas previews the hill view on an off-white card as cyan, magenta, yellow and black dots that show the sun, hills and houses, and the Properties panel shows the previewed dots as a Group

To trace an image into editable paths instead, select it and click Image Trace on the Control bar or in the Properties panel. Trace an image covers the presets and options.