Can After Effects import .psb files? Is there any way or workaround (beyond shrinking to .psd)

[henryjdalton]

I'm currently making animations with large-scale images that must be saved as .psb files in Photoshop. For some reason even though this is essentially just a big .psd file, After Effects doesn't seem to support opening them - only .psds.

Is there any way to do this? It seems crazy that an Adobe file format that's essentially just a bigger version of another of their supported file formats won't work.

(PS Just to field any replies that say to just shrink or merge the .psb down and save as .psd - no, I cannot do that with this project, I need to be able to use .psb)

Thanks in advance!

[Mylenium]

No, a PSB is not just a larger PSD. They work completely differently internally. Not that it should matter to you, but that's how it is. Outside that it's a moot discussion. Whatever you fancy doing with your super hunky PSB likely won't work, anyway. The limits for image sizes in AE are even more restrictive, so even some PSDs can't be imported. This isn't merely a case of importing the file, it's how AE's entire render pipeline works. You have to rethink your workflow. It simply won't be doable and you have to slice up your artwork to smaller bits and re-combine them in AE using pre-compositions and what have you. If you can offer specific information I'm sure we can give you advise on how to do it.

Mylenium

[henryjdalton]

Thanks for the reply Mylenium, it's much appreciated! That's a real shame, I hope they can add this feature into AE for their next installment, it really should be able to handle them so long as you have a chunky enough system to do the renders (as I say, slicing it up etc isn't an option unfortunately). Thanks anyway for the advice!

[Cymascopic]

After effects Supports PSB files, just as long as you don't exceed the AE dimension limits or other limits. So if you file has too many layers to be saved as PSD but falls within AE's limits you'll be able to open it in AE.

[yot monk]

Hey

I just wanted to say that I faced the same problem when AE couldn't import a large photoshop file,

I don't know if it can fit your needs, but I found an option to animate inside photoshop with the "timeline" window

it's not perfect, but it's working