Any chance to import a saved selection from Photoshop into InDesign?

[Chris P. Bacon]

Photoshop has the best selection tools and my text boxes are basically uniform areas in images, I just cut them out and replace them with the closest corresponding color.

So I need that selection because that will be my text box.

But I need to bring the selection over to Illustrator to create the text there because custom shaped text boxes require the envelope distort and other graphical text tools. 

When I am done there, I need to move the text box over to InDesign to get a live text box for interactive e-books and blending in InDesign, without changing its shape and size, and with formatted text.

Is there any way to bring over a selection in between the apps if the images are linked and the same image is open?

[Chris P. Bacon]

I will try to, thanks.

[Chris P. Bacon]

But it doesn't recognize it as a selection.

How will get InDesign to show the selection that I made in Photoshop?

But I need Illustrator to see it because my workflow is Photoshop > Illustrator > InDesign.

[Chris P. Bacon]

Hi Barb,

but the alpha channel and the selection is not the same, right?

I couldn't copy the selection over from one app to the other.

I would need to move it from Photoshop to Illustrator and then from there to InDesign.

That's because I have to apply changes on the same area in all 3 apps, for the same image.

If you mean that it's possible to move the selection over across the apps, how exactly would you do it?

I just try to avoid the need to re-select areas, and if the selection is not exactly the same as in the previous apps, then that could cause issues, so I should be able to reproduce or paste the exact selection that I did on the previous app, on the same image.

[Mike Witherell]

Interestingly, the workflow you describe sounds a lot like the way Affinity software tries to work. But the truth is, you cannot get there from here in anyone's software.

What you don't realize you need is a good deal of pre-planning and understanding of how the big 3 softwares delegate and cooperate with each other.

You also need a fundamental understanding of pixels, resolution, and how physical and non-physical sizes relate to each other in each software.

One aspect of design work I have come to appreciate better over the years is the importance of planning a grid system. Couple that together with another complementary awareness: that aspect ratios are very important in planning picture sizes. Frames should exhibit a set ratio of height to width; not just random sizes.

Maybe this isn't directly helpful to your question today, but in big brush strokes; it kinda is.

[Chris P. Bacon]

Thanks for the advice.

I totally dropped the grid system.

2 reasons:

1. the layout can be customly free hand painted, and you can make anything you "paint" an object

2. when using big images that cover the whole spread, text for example can be incorporated in uniform areas of the picture

my designs will be a blend of these 2.