embed tiffs

I have a couple of questions I would like to ask regarding the way you would
tackle these problems.
The first problem is that we have a job where we are provided with a number
of scanned drawings in tif format. If we insert these tifs into our drawings
as raster images then we have to include them with our drawings each time we
issue them, much as we would a non-binded xref. If we wish to embed these
tifs into a drawing we can open the tif in any image editor copy it to the
clip-board and then paste-special (which format would be best for
paste-special?) into the drawing. When we do this the drawing pan/zoom,
regen, etc. slows down significantly and the drawing takes forever to go to
the plotter. What would you do?
The next problem is that we want to "white out" certain areas of the image.
I've tried a number of things but can't seem to avoid the black splotch when
I plot the drawing.
Is there an easy way to do this that you know about?