When you import an image into a Fireworks document, Fireworks doesn't maintain any link between the source file and the bitmap element in the document. If the source file changes, you'll need to find it, re-import it and then delete the previous image in the document. The Linked Images extension makes this process a little easier.

Other Adobe products in the Creative Suite support the "smart objects" feature, which lets you import objects from one app into another. When the source object changes, the imported one updates as well. Images imported via the Linked Images > Insert command aren't quite that smart, but they will remember where their source file was. You can then select the imported bitmap and run the Refresh command to re-import the latest version of the source file.

Why not use an external symbol file instead? External symbols work great if the contents of the symbols are created in Fireworks. You can just open the symbol file, edit it, save it, then go to another file where you've used the symbol and update it. But what if the source is, say, a JPEG created by someone else using Photoshop? You'd have to open the external symbol file, edit the symbol, delete its contents, find the Photoshop JPEG, re-import it into the symbol, save the symbol file, and then go to the file that uses the external symbol and refresh it.

With a linked image, on the other hand, you'd just have to select the image and run the Refresh command to import the latest version of the source file.

Inserting a linked image

To insert a linked image, select Linked Images > Insert. An image file browser will open, letting you choose one or more images to import. When you click OK, the selected images will be imported onto the current layer, in the middle of the document. (There's unfortunately no way to place the image by clicking the mouse, as there is with the File > Import command.)

The absolute path to the source file is stored on the inserted bitmap, and will follow it around if you copy it to a new document. If the current document has been saved (i.e., it's not untitled), then the relative path from the document to the source file is also calculated and stored. When you later refresh the image, the relative path will always be checked first.

In addition to flat bitmaps, you can also insert Fireworks files that contain graphical elements: vectors, text blocks, auto shapes, etc. When you insert a Fireworks file, the elements from the first state of the current page are inserted and then flattened into a bitmap; the source file is left unflattened.

Note that the background color of the source file isn't included in the linked image, and the size of the image will be the bounding box of the source elements, not the size of the source document as set in Fireworks. Also, the source file must contain only one page and one state.

Refreshing a linked image

Since the Fireworks API doesn't provide a method for checking a file's modification date, there's no way for the command to automatically detect that a source file has changed and therefore requires a refresh. So you'll need to manually refresh images when you know their sources have changed.

When you're ready to do a refresh, select one or more of your linked images and then run Linked Images > Refresh. The source file for each selected image is imported and aligned with the image's top-left corner. Any effects that you had applied to the image are maintained on the refreshed copy. If you select a group, its immediate child elements will be refreshed.

The Refresh command first looks for the source file relative to the saved location of the document. If it can't find the file there, it looks at the original absolute path from which the image was imported. If the image's source file still cannot be found, an error message will display the list of missing files.

In addition to refreshing just the selected images, you can also refresh every image on the current state, page or document, using the Refresh All on State, Refresh All on Page, and Refresh All in Document commands. Note that if you've used linked images extensively across a large document, refreshing everything will take some time, as every source file will be re-imported, whether or not it has changed.

Maintaining the size of the refreshed image

When an image is refreshed, a copy of the source file is inserted at its current size, which may be different than the current size of the image in the document. If you would prefer to refresh the image without changing its size, then use the "Maintain Size" variants of the Refresh commands, like Refresh All on Page - Maintain Size. The source file will be resized to fit within the current image without affecting its aspect ratio, which means that it may end up being smaller than the current image.

Exporting elements into a linked file

The Create Linked Image from Selection command takes the selected elements, copies them to another file of your choosing, and then flattens them into a bitmap in the original document. This can be useful to let someone else work on a portion of a document, or when you have some complicated graphics that are unlikely to change. Fireworks usually works faster with a single bitmap than many small elements, so exporting the original elements to an external file can speed things up.

Changing the source of the linked file

If you want to point an image at a different external file, select the image and run Source Image - Change. In the file browser, choose a file to replace the selected image.

To check the absolute and relative paths to a linked image's source file, run Source Image - Show Path.

Editing the source file

To edit a source file, simply select the linked image and run Source Image - Open in Fireworks. If the source file can be found, it will be opened in Fireworks for editing. Due to bugs in the Fireworks API, it is not possible to open source files in other apps besides Fireworks.

Inserting a linked file as a symbol

If you want to turn the external file into a symbol, running Insert As Symbol will do this in one step. The symbol will take its name from the filename of the external source.

Note that the refresh commands won't work on symbol instances, as the Fireworks API doesn't support accessing the contents of a symbol. To refresh a symbol, you'll need to open it for editing, select the image inside it, and then run Refresh. When you close the symbol, all of its instances will be updated with the new image.

Release history

0.1.1

Minor update to better handle linked images that contain multiple states, which are not supported.

0.1.0

Initial release.