Image flattened when exporting to Photoshop

All these "work around" responses! Adobe takes loads of our money, their developers are paid 6 figures +. Figure it out! Make it work the way your user base needs it to work without jumping through all of your "well, try this hoops!" For the love of god. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesen't. I have followed all of these guidlines. Exporting from Illustrator to psd while retaining the layers groups only works literally about 30-40% of the time DO BETTER ADOBE!

Go through your Illustrator layers/sub-layers and click "Release to Layers Sequence" under the Layers hamburger menu. Then, when you Export As .PSD, the file will open in Photoshop with all the layers 

Remove all transparencies in Illustrator. (Also any other blend mode other than normal)

Export as PSD

Apply there agai all transparencies.

I realize this is a really old post, but I have been running into this problem and finally found a resolution that works.

Export your adobe illustrator file as SVG.

Then check out SVG LAYERS for Photoshop | Open SVG files as Editable Vector Layers .

It is $19.00 one time fee.  The cost is worth it if you need to export files that include transparency, as much as I do.

Follow the installation instructions, and restart photoshop.  

Go to Window>Extensions>SVG Layers.

Then when you need to open your file, click the svg layers icon to import.

It will open in a new window, in tact.

Once it is done, select all the images and drag over to the window you need your images in.

Saves a bunch of time!

HI everyone, i dig up this thread to bring my contribution. In my case the problem come from my "menu" and "footer" of my website maquette/design who are symbols. When i delete them from may workspace and export in psd it works like charms.

I use symbols for elements who are repated several times in my design, in this way i can updated just the symbols and all the elements are updating automatically.

I hope this helps someone.

Good luck !

Remove things like drop shadows, transparencies, gradient(possibly) and other visual affects you've used from the effects tab or thing that have applied anything in the appearances panel/ or on the item in your layers panel. Anything you might want to keep as is in the AI file flatten as image, or reapply effects again once it's taken over to photoshop. That is what fixed it for me.

I know this issue is long since resolved, but because I encountered it myself today, and found my way to this forum seeking help, I thought I'd add the solution that worked for me -

I have hundreds of layers in my AI (CS5.5) file - Typically, Export as PSD with Write Layers enabled (+ Maximum Editability / Preserve Text) renders a large file that Photoshop interprets properly, with all text in tact and fully editable - Today however, that wasn't the case: my exported PSD opened as one large flat and transparent graphic - not good when sending out to our developers for slicing / CSS - Definitely did not want to spend the additional time copying, pasting and styling all my text layers over again -

Followed some of the recommended steps above - After individually deleting each of the complicated / potentially problematic layers (eg., clipping masks of grouped objects, transparent objects, etc.), it turns out the solution that worked was to:

First convert any Spot Colors in the swatches palette to Process. Then Export to PSD.

OR

Even easier, simply disable "Embed ICC Profle" from the PS Export Options dialog. 

Not sure why, but this worked instantly: all my AI layers are now inside one layer group in PS - including the suspected transparency objects and my clipping masks - Didn't notice any color shifts either - good luck

Man, you guys are something else. Don't export the Illustator document to an open file in Photoshop. Just open Photoshop and hit open and select the name of the file in Illustrator you want to export to Illustrator. That's it. All layers should show up in Photoshop. Then do what ever you want with them.

Illustrator tries to maintain the layers etc. It does not guarantee it will.

So it depends on what you have in your file. It would be nice to see the a screen shot of the file in PS with the layers panel

you might not want to show the whole image because of your copyright but you can place the layers panel on top of the image
so it obstructs part of it. Just show enough of it so we can tell what is going on.

You may have no choice in some cases except to copy and paste from PS to AI.