Known Participant

Question

Importing psb/tiff in Illustrator no longer works?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 6, 2023
7 replies
7949 views

I am trying to import a .psb or even a .tif into Illustrator but when the ball is done spinning, nothing updates. I know these files are compatible with Illustrator as I've done this before as well as it lists .psb and .tif in the dropdown as compatible files.

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garetht49106838

Participant

Hello,

I am having the same issue. I link a .psb file and it seems to work for a few minutes but after I update the .psb file I get an error message in Illustrator saying it cannot find the file.

When I start over with a fresh document and try to place the .psb file again, I get the color wheel and then nothing happens.

Is there any update on this issue?

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @garetht49106838,

Our team is still investigating this issue and I will update this thread as I have more info.

Feel free to reach out if you have more questions or need assistance. We'd be happy to help.

Anubhav

D

defaultovpgm6w21r7j

Participating Frequently

I'm running into the exact same problem.

Illustrator 2025 (29.0)
64GB RAM, 1TB hard drive, new Macbook M3 Max (received a month ago), latest OS version (Sequoia 15.0.1), so I doubt it's a power or memory issue, and it's so new I haven't installed any printer drivers, so there are none to interfere with this.
.psb file on my hard drive that is between 1 - 2GB
Trying to relink a smaller .psd to this larger .psb using "relink" in Links panel, but it just shows the loading wheel, and nothing happens.
Tried File > Place to no avail. Yes, the "Link" option for Place is checked.
Saving as a .tif and trying to use that instead of the .psb did not work.
Doesn't matter if my .ai file is CMYK and .psb is CMYK or RGB. Didn't matter if there was transparency or multiple layers or just one. Tried all sorts of combinations.
I did drag and drop the same .psb file into the document rather than place or relink, and the image "frame" appeared, but there was no visible image. So I saved, closed the file, re-opened, and was met with a message: "An error occurred trying to read the linked file. Choose Replace to select another file or Ignore to leave the link unchanged."

Adobe either needs to fix the support for linking .psb files, or give us a message that says, "cannot read .psb files." Incredibly frustrating for the program to act like it opened/linked/placed the file, when it did not do so.

The band-aid solution I have for now is to make a .psd just under 1GB.

P

Phil5C41

Known Participant

Hi @JesLeaMac @defaultovpgm6w21r7j - Did you ever manage to resolve the main issue without the work around? Or anyone else manage to find out why?

I'm producing large outdoor artwork and my images need to be 300dpi at the final size, resulting in images being 4-7Gb, so psb and tiff is the only option, I can only use illustrator to build the artwork too as InDesign is limited in dimensions. Printers have stated they won't accept 1/4 or 10th. I can't risk slicing the images into smaller images and piecing back together.

One thing I tried is dragging the psb directly onto Illustrator, which opens a new doc with that image in, I can then copy/paste this over, but still unsure if it's ok as the link name excludes the .psb extension.

update: slimmed the photoshop file down and sized to 30000pxwide (less high), managed to save as psd at around 700mb and still get an empty box in illustrator!

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @Phil5C41,

Would you mind sharing a screen recording of your entire workflow, including the problem, system report (Windows / macOS), and a link to a sample AI and PSD/PSB file after uploading it to a file-sharing service, so I can try to check it on my end?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Where are your files located? If they are on an external drive, check your Mac's Security & Privacy settings for Full Disk Access for your Adobe Apps.

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JesLeaMacAuthor

Known Participant

Files are on my computer, not an external hard drive

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

Also ensure you have a working printer chosen. A corrupted printer driver could cause this.

J

JesLeaMacAuthor

Known Participant

I have my office printer drive in my printer settings, but I am not at the office, WFH

Kevin Stohlmeyer

Community Expert

Remove the printer and try again.

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

What version of Illustrator are you running?

Have you restarted your mac and reset your prefs?

PREFS RESET MAC (thorough method) Change 27 to your latest version

Quit Illustrator

Finder >> Shift Command G

~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator 27 Settings/en_US/Adobe Illustrator Prefs

rename Adobe Illustrator 27 to Adobe Illustrator 27old

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JesLeaMacAuthor

Known Participant

It is the latest version, 27.3.1

I restarted the Mac, but not the preferences. I can't give that a try, but I'm getting close to the due date so I am most likely going to rebuild in InDesign. Thanks for the advice!

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @JesLeaMac,

Sorry to hear about this experience. Would you mind confirming if you are checking the option to Link the PSB file before placing it in Illustrator and sharing your observations?