why is Illustrator flattening my export to photoshop?

I found that one thing stopping layered psd exports was strokes with gradients across the stroke applied. Once I took this off then it exported the layered psd no problem.

I was having this problem right now as well (Ai/Ps CC 2019). Nothing above worked, the solution for me was to 1) convert all my groups and paths to compound shapes (yes, even single isolated paths); 2) to change all gradients to flat colours. Doing this, I could export my Illustrator artboards to fully editable paths in .psd. Compound shapes would be converted to grouped shapes in Ps. I noticed that strokes weren't kept, but re-adding them on Ps is a minor inconvenience at this point. Manually converting and renaming 80 paths and groups is x)

0down vote

I've wrestled with this problem a lot lately and sometimes I have no trouble, sometimes I do. At the moment I'm working on 18 Illustrator frames for an animation, so I need to export all of the layers to Photoshop for shading. All the frames are built the same way, in fact duplicates of each other in most cases. There's transparency, lots of groups, and clipping masks in each. The simplest frames exported just fine into Photoshop with the layers intact and with everything grouped, transparency and clipping masks ok. The more complex frames started to give me trouble, so I went through the options you all listed above. Copying and pasting the troublesome layers from Illustrator to Photoshop isn't an option since the elements have to stay in the same spot for animation. Bottom line: It was the clipping masks, not the grouping or transparency. At least this time!

Hi everyone, i tried to export PSD from illustrator with different ways and these different methods are surly work for you.

(Method 3rd work for me with this attached preview file.)

METHOD 1:

All objects are in different groups and in contain in single layer. ** ITS NOT WORK FOR ME but you may try with your file.

-------------------------

METHOD 2:

and also i bring all the objects in layers with "Release to layer(Sequences)" and put all layer in single top layer. **STILL ITS NOT WORK FOR ME but you may try for your file.

-------------------------

Workable Solution for me

METHOD 3:

Select the object from the layer panel and go to Object > Resterize.. and follow the below instruction (user this method for all those objects which are not converted layers) and then Export > Select type PSD and save. Now open this PSD file to Photoshop and Boom! you just converted your AI file to PSD with layers.

I wish this will help for you! Cheers Designers!

Feel free to email: waleedmaalik@gmail.com

I am having the same problem right now with CC 2015.5 I checked and none of my layers have any transparency, gradients etc. I removed layers that could cause problems just shapes and flat colors. Still flattens the file. I tried the crop marks trick worked on another file but not this one.

The screen shot is from my top layer in the file.

I had the same issue recently. The workaround was to kill the layer effects on a type layer. Saved the file and opened in illustrator. All layers appeared.

Hi paper1246,

I'm having the same problem. Exporting from CMYK to CMYK, keeping layers, no grouped elements... but Some elements in my file become flattened.

Unlike you, not all the elements become flattened, only some of them (well, several of them). I was trying to understand which was the criteria of the program for flattening some elements and some other not, I realised that flattened elements were those who have been cutted with a clipping mask. The other ones, that were drawn and not cutted, are kept in their layer.

Unfortunately I have still not a solution for that but perhaps your flattened objets are also cutted with clipping mask, in this case we can start to identify the problem.

Finally, the solution proposed by sparkyrose above, didn't work for me... Thank you anyway.

Regards

The solution is not have more than three nested layer groups. Ungroup everything, and then put everything into no more than one top level group.

Also delete any hidden layers, and unlock locked.

Had this problem numerous times and this always works.

One misunderstood feature is the export feature especially in this circumstance AI will attempt to write the layers butcannot always for various reasons and I do not believe transparency on its own is a reason to flatten.

You won't like this but in many cases you are better off opening or pasting or placing as smart object, if that does not serve your needs the old way around this is make a psd file with the amount of layers you require and paste  layer by layer, but if you do that and plan to revise in AI paste as smart objects if need be on a layer by layer basis or even object by object.

Did you choose cmyk as the color model, the option for write layers is greyed out on rgb files?