importing / exporting between ai & ps

[mops]

Hi Guys

it's been weeks since i've been on the site - soooo busy - but as usual i need your expertise

Here's the thing:
I'm super new at illustrator (i'm really crap) - i have an poster to design which i've sketched out by hand and it's nice and clear to scan in - so easy so far. Now comes the hard bit (to me anyway)..............i use the pen tool in ai. and re-trace the image, and that's fine, but i would like to take it into photoshop to do some paint work on it (as i'm used to pshop and it's easier for me to use at the moment) - so i do what all the help pages tell me but it 'doesnt' maintain the paths, then when i try to export it back into illustrator and try to open it all that comes up is a blank workspace with gray type placeholders?

any suggestions - i'm so useless at this

i use ps cs2
and illustrator cs

thanks again people for all your expert help, appreciated, mops

[The Repro Kid]

Howdy mops. I think I see what's going on here.

Although you can work with vector shapes from Illustrator in Photoshop and you can work with painted pixels from Photoshop in Illustrator, Painted pixels and vector shapes cannot commingle as one shape, that can be manipulated back and forth between the two programs.

So you cannot import illustrator paths into Photoshop, paint the resulting shape, and then export back to Illustrator as paths again that have been painted.

Any resulting image you have painted in photoshop needs to then be saved as a photoshop pixel file and then placed in illustrator in oder to see the results of your painting.

Unfortunately, there is no way to send an Illustrator drawing over to photoshop for some quick painting and have it come back to illustrator as an Illustrator file. It will be changed to pixels once it is photoshop and can't be changed back.

But there are plenty of ways to work with vector shapes within photoshop, and many useful ways to combine the use of both programs in a back and forth manner.

[mops]

Hi Adobe - how are you? hope youre well

You've hit the nail right on the head - that's exactly what i'm trying to do, i want to toggle between ps and ai (and painter sometimes) - to give you an idea of the sort of effect i'm after, take a look at this artists website:

http://www.art-dept.com/illustration/whitehurst/

i think her work is outstanding and i would like to combine bitmaps and vectors within my designs also - i have a feeling she designed it all in photoshop though, using the path tool in there, but i'm not an expert, what do you think?

[The Repro Kid]

Howdy. It's hard to say just by seeing the finished pieces. You will find that there are many, many ways to arrive at the same final piece. It really doesn't mater if she did her pen tool work in Photoshop or Illustrator. Eventually the pen paths are used as selections to do the final photoshop work. she seems to combine 3D art into the shots as well. The bird cage looks more like a 3D generated model rather than a photo or illustrator drawing. In fact the model looks so similar and clean faced that she could be built in Poser of some other 3D application as well. Or they could be photos of a model that are heavily retouched and stylized. The photo perspective and consistency in the models features lead me to believe the figures are not hand drawn but drawn over photos, or are modified photos themselves, or are 3D posed models.

[mops]

thanks repro - youre a great help

i've overcome my demons today by throwing myself into ai big style - i'm a bit more relaxed about it now and how it works

for what i need to design at the moment, all i need work in is ai, it's doing the job fine. I now understand what you mean about not being able to combine vector and bitmaps in 1 object. i also looked at the 'effects' in ai and tried to apply one to an object, but it's a bitmap effect isnt it? i think i'd best steer away from the effects until i understand what exactly is going on

as usual repro - thanks for all your help, mops ;)