Export Illustrator Files to Photoshop

Tips

June 23rd, 2008 by Rype

Export Thumbnail

I love working in Illustrator, but ever once and a while, I need to export a file to Photoshop. Illustrator gives you the ability to export to Photoshop while preserving important information. You can export Layers, Color Profiles, Resolution Specification, and Text Preservation. This is great for exporting website wireframes or sprucing up illustrations.

Exporting

Go File > Export and choose Photoshop (psd) for the Format option, to bring up the Photoshop Export Option dialog. Here you can change the Resolution, Color Profile, Layer Options, Text Edibility, and so on. One thing to note is that your Document Color Mode has to match the Color Model in the export options for the ability to Write Layers.

Exporting

  1. Cool, I never dug deep enough to find this!


  2. This is a great tool but I wish there was a way to export the objects as vector smart objects instead of pixels.


  3. That would be great! Maybe in Illustrator CS4?


  4. thanks i like this tip and this will be realy utility


  5. just select an object then copy. In P.S. paste and choose smart object.


  6. Thanks D.A.T! That does work great for pasting a single object, but it gets a little more difficult when you need to paste numerous layers and objects into Photoshop. It would be nice to copy a whole Illustration while keeping the each path or layer a Smart Object, but I bet the next version will be able to do this.


  7. I have always had problems using this feature in Illustrator, it always give me a “not enough memory error”. Do you know the file size limitation of exporting to Tiff or PSD? Thanks!


  8. I have never run into that problem, and not sure of any limitations, maybe it is a limitation of your system. I will try to export a very complex file and see if I run into the same problem.


  9. I am running a Mac Pro Quad 3 with 4 gigs AI 13.0.2. My current work flow is to save it as a AI or EPS or PDF and force open the file with PS to convert it to raster. Sigh. It might be a Adobe file size export limitation. Hope you have better luck! Thanks for all the tips!


  10. I had some problems with a huge illustration while trying to convert, I think you are right about the export limitation. I seems if you have a bunch of object that are not grouped on a layer, Illustrator will Flatten that layer when converting. But if you have numerous grouped paths it won’t. So if in Illustrator I had 4 layers with 10 grouped object in each layer, that would convert into 40 Photoshop Layers. If you ungroup ever object on the 4 layers in Illustrator you would only get 4 layers in Photoshop. I don’t know if this will help you out any, but maybe.


  11. Thanks! I will try that out.


  12. Very useful little tip for going back and forth, and some great info in the comments too. Thanks again! :)


  13. I can’t believe adobe has not solved this


  14. this is what i was looking for n__n
    thanks!


  15. Taken from the Adobe Site:

    Write Layers
    Exports groups, compound shapes, nested layers, and slices as separate, editable Photoshop layers. Nested layers that are more than five levels deep are merged into a single Photoshop layer. Select Maximum Editability to export transparent objects (that is, objects with an opacity mask, a constant opacity less than 100%, or a blending mode other than Normal) as live, editable Photoshop layers.


  16. That’s way cool tip… though I really can’t make it work!

    I have 87 layers in Illustrator and I’d need them all to be available in photoshop,,, but this freaking thing gives me just the 4 first layers and merges the rest…?
    I wonder what’s goinf on cause this totally doesn’t work for me :b


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