Illustrator and Wrong Use of Masks

If you are working in #Illustrator and creating something for #printing, you really should not use masks for large images. Instead, you should crop your images FIRST BEFORE placing them in #Illustrator The mask may seem easy and look pretty BUT it still has ALL of the digital information of the large image. If you have to use a mask, crop your images just a little bigger than the mask before placing them. It will mean the difference between a 60-90 meg file versus a 10-20 meg file.