Slopes of anchor points corrupted after PDF import

[E. Sauer]

When I open a PDF in Adobe Illustrator that I previously created in Adobe Photoshop, the slopes of the anchor points of a shape are corrupted. The interpolation between the anchor points doesn't seem to work properly at some point. As a result, the shape looks deformed and egded, as if drawn with a shaky hand.

I don't know if it's due to the export from Photoshop or the import in Illustrator. The PDF is displayed correctly in Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Does anyone know this problem? It seems to me like a bug - or maybe it's something in my settings? I've tried a lot to fix it, for example looking for settings for the interpolation method or path smoothing, but haven't found a solution.

Adobe Illustrator (version 27.2)
Adobe Photoshop (version 24.1.1)

Adobe Acrobat Pro (version 22.0)

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Can you save it as a PSD file and open that in Illustrator? If those a re shape layers, it should work.

Or try copy and paste.

[E. Sauer]

Yes, when I open the PSD file in Illustrator, the paths are correct. I'm using this workflow now, and in hindsight I think it's a lot more practical.

However, I would still be interested to know where the problem comes from and whether I could prevent it. Because until today I have always chosen the way via a PDF file and have never had any problems.

[Monika Gause]

PDF is not a native file format for Illustrator and PDF generally was never meant to be edited. So all kind of things might happen when you open it anyway.

[E. Sauer]

That's true, and your suggested workflow works even better than using a PDF. However, I assume that the developers still don't want Illustrator to destroy paths when opening a PDF. After all, Illustrator can open PDFs, then the content of the file should remain correct, shouldn't it?

Many of our print service companies want customers to supply PDFs as an exchange format and open these with Illustrator. Then paths should arrive correctly, no matter in which program the customer created them. (Because, yes, Photoshop is actually a raster graphics program, but it does have the functionality to create shapes and save them to PDFs. So there will always be people who do that.)

Long story short: if both programs support paths and PDFs as file format, I think exchanging such a file between the programs should work without deforming the content.

Where do I report such a bug?

[Monika Gause]

Please report it to: https://illustrator.uservoice.com

Print services should actually know that Illustrator is not a general purpose PDF editor.

[E. Sauer]

That's true again. 🙂 Thanks for the link and your help!