Import Layered Photshop file into Illustrator

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
March 4, 2024
2 replies
11046 views

Maybe I'm missing something, but I just assumed that if I dragged and dropped a photoshop file into Illustrator that it would bring in all of it's layers as a minimum, and layer effects intact as a bonus. But what I get is a flattened image, no layers, no effects. Here is where it gets crazy. I open the same Illustrator file in Affinity Designer. Then I drag and drop the same Photoshop file into the open Illustrator file and the whole thing comes in, layers and all, and the fx are are still live as well as layer multiply, pass through folders etc. Am I to understand that Affinity Designer which I paid $49.00 for can handle a Photoshop file better than Adobe Illustrator? I've been an Adobe user for like 30 years! I was certain that this was possible but I hope at this point I'm just missing something. But if I am, it is still a failure that whatever I'm missing is not as simple as it is with Affinity Designer. Well, there's 1 extra step in Affinity Designer. It drags in like a linked file. Double click and it expands the whole thing into a separate document. At first, I didn't understand what had happened other than I was looking at all of the layers and stuff. Then I copied all of it and pasted it into the illustrator file and that was it. I had everything I needed.

How-to

TheHetster

Participant

I am having the same problem, and my file is not complex at all!. Yes, I got many leyers, but they have no effects, they are simply square colored flat leyers. I have tried everything and lost days investigating and trying over and over, no matter what, I still got a flat image in AI.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

PLease show the Layers panel in Photohop.

TheHetster

Participant

B

Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

You have to use the File>Open or File>Place command to bring layered Photoshop artwork into Illustrator as layered objects rather than a flattened image. The file import options setting must be checked when opening or placing the artwork. That will bring up the dialog box that allows the image to be imported either as layered objects or one flattened image. When using the Place command the "Link" button has to be unchecked in order for the PSD imagery to import as separate layered objects.

I disagree with the notion Affinity Designer can handle Photoshop PSD files better than Illustrator. Affinity Designer has a number of serious limitations. I find it especially annoying the application still does not support OpenType Variable fonts (or OpenType-SVG fonts either).

K

KuttyjoeAuthor

Inspiring

I tried everything. File/open. File place. Drag and drop. I get the dialog with options to convert layers to objects but it still comes in as flat image. Link button checked/unchecked makes no difference. If checked, you still have the opportunity to embed it, and when you do it asks to convert to layers or flatten layers. The result is flat image no matter what I choose.

I agree that Affinity Designer has lots of limitations compared to Illustrator, but this particular situation it's making Adobe look ridiculous, and I'm feeling ridiculous. This is not the only situation where Affinity Designer is better than Adobe. AD can open webp images, no problem. Adobe can't. AD can copy/paste transparent images from a web browser. Adobe can't. Those are things I can remember quickly because I'm dealing with them daily and pitifully using AD to "help out Adobe". Another thing. Affinity Designer can open pdf documents without utterly destroying all of the text. Illustrator can't. AD also doesn't have a problem with missing linked images. It opens them as if they're not missing. Still I can name a hundred things that Illustrator has better than AD, but for what I pay for Adobe software I truly expect it to be better at dealing with it's own formats. Not being able to import this layered psd file into Illustrator is kind of unforgiveable. One more thing. Illustrator is really bad at opening SVG files. So bad that I use AD as my default application for opening SVG files.

K

KuttyjoeAuthor

Inspiring

I have the current version of Affinity Designer. I've also used CorelDRAW for a really long time. When it comes to repairing customer provided artwork in the form of PDF files I'd much rather use Illustrator for the task. The Vector First Aid plugin pays for itself with the amount of time I save. If I have to hand-trace new vectors over the top of a pixel-based graphic I strongly prefer using Illustrator for that. The keyboard shortcuts for the Pen Tool, zooming in/out and hand panning the view of the artwork and quite a few other things just blow away the rivals. I can accurately hand trace clean paths over sketched artwork must faster in Illustrator than I can any other vector drawing program. The only exception is CorelDRAW for certain technical drawing tasks. Its simple keyboard shortcuts for aligning and distributing objects is extremely convenient.

Affinity Designer is good for a lot of basic vector design tasks. I've recommended it to people who are amateur/hobbyist users that want to do some creative work on a modest budget. I would certainly prefer dealing with a customer provided .afdesign file than handling these terrible SVG and PDF files generated by Canva that I've been getting lately.

In my line of work I have to deal with customer provided artwork with an astonishing wide range of quality. Sometimes the files are clean, professional and ready to go into production. Most of the time the artwork has problems. The list of problems just seems to only grow as people find more D-I-Y Design alternatives.

But here's the thing: we do not repair or re-create customer provided files for free. We'll let them know what's wrong with the art and how much time we'll need to spend to fix the issues (and how much that time will cost). It's not our problem if they get their noses bent out of joint because we can't simply roll with the first JPEG image of a "logo" they found on their computer. Some art files are just un-usable garbage. Unfortunately many customers don't know any difference. They just think a computer file is a computer file and therefore "perfect." But when they see the bill-able design time situation most will usually make some calls or talk to some colleagues and get us proper artwork. There is no point in us wasting time re-creating their company logo in vector format if they already have such a file sitting around somewhere.

I agree with you 100% about the big picture. I also do the vast majority of my work in Illustrator, but I end up using these other applications as helper apps. And sometimes it's just shameful. Why is Illustrator so bad with opening SVG files. Why is Illustrator so bad at opening photoshop files when a cheap program does such a good job? That's really all I'm saying. And you mentioned Astute Graphics. I also use Astute Graphics plugins and sometimes I find myself thinking, Illustrator really should be doing some of this stuff natively. One thing I do many times a day is batch crop a bunch of images. The method that Illustrator implemented for cropping images is so slow that I debate with myself all the time whether or not I should just mask it to save time instead of fiddling with it. But Astute Graphics plugin can grab 20 images and crop them all together with a single click. I think Illustrator should be able to do that. The crop feature in Illustrator is really inadequate.

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