Adobe Illustrator plugin Phantasm CS offers in-line embedded image editing, color checking and separations, duotones and vector halftones, filters and live effects color adjustment. Looks like a pretty great plugin for Illustrator users who do a lot of bitmap image placing.
Personally I do any layout work in InDesign, and not much of my work requires having bitmap images in the Illustrator file outside of placing a template for tracing. However, the halftone and separation features look like they might be really handy.Â
Fairly recently I worked up this cartoon goldfish for an illustration project of a cartoon style aquarium. This was part of a recent round of cartoon illustration work for a client doing some re-branding of their aquarium water treatment/cleaner/additive 
