Inspiring

Question

Illustrator's Gradient Masks fail when opened in Photoshop

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
June 7, 2021
2 replies
2745 views

I have some patterns in an Illustrator file that are filled with a colour gradient,

they are then masked with a white to black gradient box to allow them to fade into the background.

As a supplier to a Government office I have no control over what print company they use. Some have very unreliable Rips/raster processors so I have to flatten fx when supplying print files.

when I open this print file into Photoshop in order to save it as a flattened raster image - all the items that have gradent masks applied to them start to appear in full (no mask).

If I try and rasterise the items directly in Illustrator - the raster appearance lower in quality - even with high resolution settings and art optimised; Therefore I have to use Photoshop - but how do I get photoshop to acknowledge the gradient masks and not strip them out?

This topic has been closed for replies.

KShinabery212

Community Expert

Ok... try this.

Gradients, blurs and opacities sometimes act strange when bringing something from Illustrator into Photoshop.

But I have a solution that always seems to work.

So in Illustrator, I create a new folder and place it on top. I then put all my layers into that folder. I then select all. Hit copy, then in Photoshop and hit paste.

Honestly this works every time. And it even happened during my live stream yesterday on Behance.

I know it sounds like the strangest solution and the silliest thing ever... but it works. I do not know 'how' or 'why' it works, but it does.

I mean who would think to put everything into one folder and then do copy/paste? One would think it should transfer seamlessly anyways.... but for some odd reason, it does not. But this solution always works for me. And like I said I showed it in my live stream yesterday and people were amazed.

Let's connect on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kshinabery/

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

Can we see the values of your gradient masks and stops? The photoshop preview may actually be more accurate as it is a bitmapped program. Illustrator can be off slightly on gradients.

Your gradient is a comon one and believe you need something like this with 4 stops and not going to the edge.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

p.s. out of curiosity I just made the Black in my gradient 100% of all C,M,Y,K instead of just K.

But the same result occured - the mask stops working/displays whole pattern when pasted into Photoshop.

That is what I would suggest, 100% of all process colors instead of black.

Works for me.

Rasterizing in Illustrator looks good to me as well.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Do you flatten first in Illustrator or just open the file in Photoshop?

A

auxiliaryjoelAuthor

Inspiring

No I don't flatten it in Illustrator, I open the AI directly in photoshop.

This works well in all other situations until I've hit this issue.

When I flatten the gradient masks inside Illustrator, even at extremely high resolution levels, there is a noticable lack of raster quality when compared to opening the file into Photoshop. Which is why flattening it inside Illustrator is not an option.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

I cannot reproduce your problem.

Can you share the problem part of your Illustrator file?

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