Adobe Illustrator affecting drop shadow in exported image

[awsime]

I'm seeing a strange effect on an image in Adobe Illustrator 2017 after importing/placing it as a .png image that I exported from Photoshop 2017. The image was exported at 3700*3700 pixels from Ps and placed, scaled down proportionally, in Ai at 1200*1200 in an artboard but the effect is seen even without scaling down.

Here is a screenshot of the exported png from Ps.

 

And the image below is in Ai. There is banding on the drop shadow! How is that possible for a raster file in .png to get affected like that ?

How can I resolve this ? What can I do in either Ps or Ai to prevent this from happening ? Thanks!

[d0nut247]

I'd guess that the Ai file is CMYK? change to RGB see if it then looks ok when placed.

that would show up banding like this. 

how is the shadow being generated in the first place? if it susing the drop shadow effect in PS maybe test out making your own blurred object, see if the issue remains so you can eliminate whether its due to the source shadow quality or the placing of the file that causes it.

Is there a reason you can't just add the shadow as an effect in illustrator? then the raster effect settings will match the document / output. you may just be getting Moire patterns making the banding due to the png being scaled.

Have you tried making the png at the exact correct size in mm, rather than 'too big'?

[awsime]

Hi d0nut247! I'm so sorry for the late reply, I forgot all about it.

Thanks for your response to my question. However, it has been months since I had that issue and I already finished that project either way. 

But yeah, as far as I recall, it was in RGB since I was only posting it for the web. The drop shadow is actually from PS that is part of a mockup. I didn't add the shadow effect in Illustrator because it was a PSD mockup image export but yeah, I guess I could have exported just the card itself and then added shadow in AI. I have not tried scaling it though. 

Thanks again though! I will try out your steps if I ever have to work with a similar file again.