I have done my drawing in Illustrator and now I have 500+ layers that I would like to export to Photoshop while preserving their vector paths.
What Illustrator allows me to do is to select a layer then drag it into photoshop as a smart object (or a path). This however does not preserve scale and position which makes the whole process of migrating hundreds of layers a herculean task.
I have tried exporting as a psd and while it all sounds great, when you actually open the PSD all the layers are rasterized…
I am sure that someone might have been in similar situation so please go ahead and share your experience. Beers on me!
I came across this a few days ago — it may or may not be helpful.
In Photoshop’s preferences click off “Resize Image During Place” — this screenshot is from CS5. I have checked CS3 as well which says “Resize Image During Paste/Place” — same thing, just click it off.
You can either copy and paste individual AI elements, or drag and drop, but it won’t resize them. I tested it using an Illustrator CS5 document (200x200mm) and copied and pasted into a Photoshop document (same size, 200x200mm) and it works. The downside — it does not retain positioning.
Graphic-Studio’s method of creating a border around the AI elements works. I used a 200x200mm frame with no fill and no stroke surrounding my AI elements, then copied and pasted each element (with the frame) into Photoshop it does retain position. It also keeps the border, however it isn’t visible and does not cause any layer effects to render if they’re applied. The only downside here is when you’re resizing an element the control handles are now the size of your document (the invisible frame), and not the size of the element — if you see that as a downside.
I find cspcreative’s solution to be the most efficient one… Still I don’t understand how Adobe managed to make vector layer management so grim and inefficient. Illustrator --> Photoshop should be a SEAMLESS workflow…
And as far as Doru’s thread is concerned… He actually did find a solution which indeed is somewhat a hack according to me. The proper way to handle this problem is that you do your vector work in illustrator, export the AI, which you then import into Fireworks from where you export it as a PSD… quite an expensive solution to a problem that should not exist anyway… I don’t own Fireworks so… operation is a no-go for me.
Let’s hope that CS6 will breath some new life into Photoshop.
I didn’t see that part of the thread sorry, but you are right that is a bit of the long way around and hopeful Adobe will get it right in the next upgrade.