Using Photoshop and Illustrator together

The following 5 points are what I learned from watching the video tutorial, “Integrating Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.”

1) Using Smart Objects

You can place files you made in Photoshop as smart objects in Illustrator creations and by doing this, the files placed in Illustrator will be automatically updated when you modify the original files in Photoshop. However, there is an issue regarding this: you cannot do the same from Illustrator to Photoshop. In this case, if you modify the file, the file will not match up with the original or source file, so you will end up having multiple files in a variety of the modification steps.

2) Building binding box and always making creating with 100% scale

To avoid the issue discussed above, it is very important to create a binding box around the artworks and to always work with 100% scale or actual size of the final production in both Photoshop and Illustrator. If you create exact same artworks in both Photoshop and Illustrator and if you work with binding box and 100% scale, you can copy the part you modified in one program and paste the part exactly where it should be in the other program. By doing this you can avoid having multiple files of same artworks.

3) Rotation tool

There is a suggestion about the rotation tool. In Photoshop, you can use rotation tool to freely rotate objects, and it is very easy. However, In Illustrator, you cannot use the rotation tool in the same way, and it is more struggling to use the rotation tool in Illustrator. Therefore, it is nice if Adobe can improve the rotation tool in Illustrator so that it can be used like in Photoshop.

4) Action and texture

You can use action to record what you did on the computer and save the steps so that you can apply the steps you took on other objects easily. By using action, you can create variety of textures that are made by taking the same steps with one click. Moreover, you can download a texture library from http://snipurl.com/2qc1k. You can use the textures freely and there are 30 textures. They are in psd, tif, and jpg format so that you can use them in both Photoshop and Illustrator.

                                                         

5) Tips: learning from others and plug-in   

It is always beneficial to talk about Photoshop and Illustrator or even other programs with others. From the conversation, you can learn a lot of things. Of course, you can learn these programs by yourself or from textbook, but do not forget that your friends can be your teacher. Also, it is important to know that there are so many useful plug-ins available for you. Some of them are not cheap. However, if you think your time is important, it will not be bad idea to spend some money on plug-ins. Xtream Path Plugin is a good one to modify path easily and FILTERiT Plugin is a good one to wrap texts.