Name of linked images not showing in Links Panel in Adobe Illustrator CS6

Question

AI links menu is only displaying the thumbnail of the linked images, but not the name of the linked images. When double clicking on the link in the links menu, the only info given is: Thumbnail and Transform (scaling). All other info is blank. So there is no info on: Name, Location, Size, Kind, Created, Modified etc. This poses a big problem when collecting the images needed to send to 3rd parties like printers. The weird thing is that some file names are displayed correctly, and others are not. I have tried to save images under different names, color modes, made sure there is only 1 layer, etc in Photoshop and then re-linking in AI, but the file name is still not showing. After many years, this is the first time I am having these problems. Any pointers? I am still using CS6

Answer 1

The image that has no extra information is embedded in the illustrator file itself. Its not as a separate file on disk. Therefore illustrator cant tell you what the filename etc is because it does not have any. Also its devoid of metadata as its metadata is same as the illustrator file itself.

You can have a mixed set of stuff in illustrator, so some images are truly linked and others are not.

You can embed any linked image and you can save out any embedded image. The usual reason why images would be embedded if you didn't explicitly intend to do it is if they were copypasted into the document. Then there would be no true file to begin with.

I would be a bit careful with embedding images as this can easily make your illustrator file so big that this causes problems to you in future. But many users dont care untill they have once lost a 1.7 GB file. Anyway this was a much requested feature back in the day.