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psd to vector ?
- Thread starter montreal
- Start date
Hi montreal. Welcome to the forums. Your question requires a little clarification because Photoshop files will contain many layers and special attributes which won't translate directly to any vector program. Plus there will be aspects of Photoshop files which will be vector data, fonts, shapes, paths, vector smart objects etc.
Could you clarify more specifically what you are trying to do? For example if you were trying to 'vectorize' a raster image you couldn't beat Live Trace in Illustrator.
Could you clarify more specifically what you are trying to do? For example if you were trying to 'vectorize' a raster image you couldn't beat Live Trace in Illustrator.
Here's a neat trick. In Illustrator, create your shape (canvas at 100%) copy to the clipboard.Go to PS and paste it into a canvas set at the same size any rez, add a stroke to it, at least 3 px. Now add your layer style. Oh yeah,
be sure your canvas is transparent. Now save the object as a .png.
back to Illustrator place the .png you just made. Bring the Ill. shape to the front and place it over the .png. Go to select>all, then object>clipping mask>make. Wallah, you now have the PS layer style with crisp clean vector edges (the reason for the stroke in PS is so the PS image will be a tad bigger than the Ill image, thus allowing the Ill clipping mask to be a bit smaller than the PS image which gives you the clean vector edge.
This works with text as well as any shape. This may take some practice but once mastered, it's worth it.
You can aslo 'copy merged' and paste into Illustrator. I prefer saving as .png because I may want to use the image later for another job that the client may want. You can't copy and paste though. the layer style doesn't copy. All this is useless if you don't know Illustrator.
be sure your canvas is transparent. Now save the object as a .png.
back to Illustrator place the .png you just made. Bring the Ill. shape to the front and place it over the .png. Go to select>all, then object>clipping mask>make. Wallah, you now have the PS layer style with crisp clean vector edges (the reason for the stroke in PS is so the PS image will be a tad bigger than the Ill image, thus allowing the Ill clipping mask to be a bit smaller than the PS image which gives you the clean vector edge.
This works with text as well as any shape. This may take some practice but once mastered, it's worth it.
You can aslo 'copy merged' and paste into Illustrator. I prefer saving as .png because I may want to use the image later for another job that the client may want. You can't copy and paste though. the layer style doesn't copy. All this is useless if you don't know Illustrator.
Too bad Patrick, I find that (for me) Illustrator is the other half of Photoshop. But most of my work is for print and Raster images just don't get it. So I've taught myself to use the two apps as virtual plug-ins for each other. The result of which allows me to create Illustrator images that my competition can't reproduce. All PS layer styles and gradients are available to me for Illustrator as Vector objects which makes pages, ads etc. much crisper when used in In Design or Quark. Thing is it's useless for screen work, .jpg, .png .tiff and most other file formats will rasterize anyway. But as an AI or EPS and eventually a PDF, it's great
