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naiara-d
New Participant
March 18, 2021
Question

Can't paste from Illustrator to Phototoshop

  • March 18, 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 3699 views

Suddenly when I try to copy anything from Illustrator to Photoshop (doesn't matter if I choose smart object, pixel or whatever) I get 3 minutes of spinning beach ball and a crash saying something like "can't complete paste command because the transfered area is empty or contains invalid data". 

I tried restarting my computer, it worked for a couple of times and then again, spinning beach ball. Very very annoying. 

I'm on a Mac OS Big Sur running on a Macbook Pro M1 chip. Don't know if it has anything to with that. 

Help! 

 

 

6 replies

Participating Frequently
February 7, 2025

My coworker found that unembedding the illustrator file in the links palette before copying will solve this glitch!!!

Please let me know if this works for you.

Community Expert
April 27, 2021

Its quite possible Illustrator hasn't been fully optimized yet for the M1 and Photoshop for the M1, though it has been optimized, there are some minor features that are missing.  I'm not entirely sure if that is one of them,  but its possible

New Participant
April 27, 2021

Hi,

Same problem here, but on Windows 10. 

EPS file doesn't work, even changing preferences (vector, pixel, ...). 

 

Thanks in advance !

Thomas.

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 27, 2021

Just this file or everything?

If you create a new file and then a simple object in it - does that work?

New Participant
April 28, 2021

Everything I paste doesn't work. In this file or one other. 

I reset all preferences in photoshop, restart it and it works now. Don't know why...

Participating Frequently
April 22, 2021

I don't get any message. My photoshop just freezes and I have to restart my entire computer in order to open it again without it freezing. This isn't an issue with the computer i'm using either. I had an 8gb Mini M1 and had the problem on that computer. Then upgraded to an 16gb mini M1 and the exact same issue happens.

The workaround I found is opening Photoshop with Rosetta, which makes me think it's just a compatability issue between the non-m1 native Illustrator and the m1 native Photoshop.

Participating Frequently
April 22, 2021

I agree that it seems like something to do with Pshop being native and Illustrator having to use Rosetta. Today, after Photoshop locked up, ohhhh, about 10 times as I tried various ways to bring in an Illustrator image (my old method did NOT work this time), it started locking up just opening the Pshop app (not trying to paste from Illustrator). I found a thread somewhere "out there" where people said to uninstall and reinstall photoshop. THAT seems to have worked...for now...

Participating Frequently
April 13, 2021

I had the same problem yesterday with a brand new Mac Mini M1 chip. I was trying to drag/drop an .ai file into Photoshop—which made it hang up (spinning beach ball). I got the error message: "Could not complete th Paste command because the clipboard data is empty or invalid." I tried the same file in an .eps format and it worked fine.

New Participant
April 13, 2021

Thanks artistJB. Copying content from the .ai file to a new one saved as .eps did let me copy the object from illustrator to photoshop with no errors.

New Participant
April 13, 2021

Having the same problem here (Mac Mini M1) execpt from the fact that I don't receive any error message, it just hangs up until I forcely quit it.

naiara-d
naiara-dAuthor
New Participant
April 13, 2021
Yep, that happens sometimes too.
They came up with a new version compatible with M1 but before I had to go
back to an old photoshop version so I could get work done 😐
Community Expert
April 27, 2021

I know there's certain features not available yet.  That may be it