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Question

Copy and paste assets from Illustrator to Indesign

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
February 7, 2023
4 replies
3249 views

Illustrator and Indesign don't understand each other.

This is one of the problems:

I'm designing a brand guideline booklet and I found it wasted a lot of my time.

To understand graphic designers:

We start designing logos, icons, letterhead, business cards and other things in Illustrator, NOT in Indesign or Photoshop, XD.

We make makes assets and they get changed more than a few times, by designers and customers.

We make brand guidelines inside Indesign, not in Illustrator which is so weak to hold many graphic objects and pages and crashes.

We spent a lot of time making assets in Illustrator but if we want to copy and paste our assets (with some other guidelines or photos which necessary) to Indesign, Indesign breaks the links and converts them to simple shapes.

This problem should be fixed as we designers need that.

Adobe softwares should talk to each other to avoid double working which customers don't understand and won't pay. Believe it or not, this is one of the reasons that designers quit their careers. We get frustrated.

I hope the developers and UX designers of Adobe see this and find a good solution.

Thank you

This topic has been closed for replies.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

I've been a designer for over fifty years in a variety of industries and I feel I need to share a few observations.

First, multipurpose tools can do a variety of things adequately, but none can do specialized taskes as fast or as well as specialized tools in the hands of a specialist.

Single purpose tools are easier to maintain. When a spedcialized tool needs to be replaced you replace just that tool, not the entire toolbox.

Nobody is an expert at everything, even in a field where they have expertise. Specialists can produce better work, faster and for less in many cases, than I can even in fields where I am generally considered an expert. I happen to be quite good workinig with InDesign for print, I can get by doing photo corrections in photoshop, but I'm a lousy illustrator and don't attempt more than simple drawings myself. Don't even talk to me about doing ePub.

I've never used it, but I think if you are looking for an all-in-one tool for UX design you might want to try Canva. Good luck.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

If you want to exchange assets between Illustrator and Photoshop do it always via Illustrator at this program has the best export filters of all applications.
Illustrator can open Photoshop PSD files with vectors and text alive and also export AI files to PSD with layers, vectors and text alive.
you can link all kinds of files in Photoshop into Smart Objects. Changes in thoes files are immediately reflected in the PSD file.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

If you want to get linked assets from Photoshop is:

If you have flat images, you can use JPG, TIFF or PSD or PDF/PDP (Photoshop PDF)
If you have images with transparency or layers or layer comps use PSD, PDF/PDP or TIFF.
If you want to use images with text other vectors, use PDF/PDP.

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

The correct way to get linked assets from Illustrato to InDesign is to save as PDF/X-4 or as AI and to import them via File > Place…

Benji-11Author

Inspiring

Thanks, Willi. May I ask you to explain that? We as designers, have to make components, such as atoms and molecules. like making components of an app or a website in Figma. Could you tell me about the workflow you suggested as a solution?

Thanks

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