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Lesson Info

Shape to/from Illustrator

Here's the thing, if I want this vector to remain vector, I have limited outputs in here. If I save it as a jpeg, it's all vector. If I save it as a gif, it's all vector. If I save it as anything it's vector. The only way it's gonna save as a vector file is this way. If I go and I save this as a Photoshop file, the vector will remain in there. If I then place it in InDesign, it's gonna rasterize it. If I print it out, it's gonna rasterize it. It'll stay vector in the Photoshop file. But if I want to keep this as vector I have to print right from here. So if I go into the file, and choose print, and I'm gonna go, and I'm going to print this here. It's going to remain vector if I print directly from Photoshop here. So as I go in right there, I've got printing, marks, functions, features, everything else right there. Everything else, there it is. Post script is disabled, everything else. See where my vector is, right there. Normal printing, right there. Where is my vector? I've changed th...

is, there's a description. Anyway, it's gonna print vector. If I print directly from Photoshop here. Save it as a jpeg, raster. Import it any place else, raster. The other way I can keep it as vector, is if I go in and I save it as a Photoshop pdf. So there's Photoshop pdf right there, and I save this, I'm gonna call this vector. And I'm going to save this. It's going to save the layers, so if somebody doesn't have Photoshop, they can open up in Acrobat and they still have the vector. But if somebody has Photoshop, it says, okay, settings, you can go ahead and do this in a dialogue box, there it is. I wanna preserve the editing capabilities If you've ever seen Illustrator, this is the same preview as Illustrator. I'm gonna view the pdf after saving too, click okay. I'm saving the pdf, yes I know. And it's gonna launch Acrobat, hopefully, right there. And I'm going to then take that and just gotta save. Show pdf files, where did I save it? Did I save it in the wrong place? Oh, it's saving right now. Okay, we got a question here? So, like you save with Photoshop pdf and then pull that in Illustrator, does it still rasterize it at that point? Well, I'm gonna show you this. Because it's still vector, a pdf, and if you know Illustrator, Illustrator and Acrobat kind of use the same engines to go ahead and develop. But I wanna show you one thing, very specifically, with this, and so let's go here, see if I can open this Acrobat up there. It's still saving here, wow. Document will be closed after saving. Okay, saving, saving, saving. While that's saving there, wanna show you a couple things, I don't know why it's taking so long to save. Anything that we do with type as well. If I want the type to remain inactive, I can always take any type, and just type something in here on a type later, I can't do it because of course it's saving. There we, okay, so any type that I put in here, I can always, if I wanna make sure it's gonna remain vector based type, because type is vector, but we always save it as rasterized, because we always save it in a raster format. If I take the type, and I right click on the type right here, on the actual type itself, I can rasterize the type, which is going to just pixelate it, which does no good. But I can also convert it to a shape. Once I convert it to a shape there, it is now vector, and it will stay vector as long as I keep it in that format. And why is this not doing what I, there it is. So now there's my pdf, I saved it as a Photoshop pdf. I'm gonna zoom in really big here, and I'm gonna see what's going on here, and I'm gonna see, is that actually vector? And it is, I mean, look at how clean that is right there. We're gonna get really big, and there's no question about that, that those shapes are vector shapes. We're at 1600% right there, and I don't see any pixels getting in there. However, any of my special effects here, like my beveled emboss and my drop shadow, those effects are all rasterized, because I've got gradients and things like that, and if I zoom in here, those are all raster based effects, and they always have been. But my shapes are vector, absolutely vector, no question about it, they're vector. Now if I put this pdf in InDesign and print it, I have that. So a couple different ways. And then the very antiquated way, which we never use anymore, but I'm gonna show you anyway, if you save this as an eps file, remember those? Way back in the 1940s when we used to use eps files right there? The drawback of this is if I save this as an eps file, I'm gonna click save, it's gonna tell me, okay, how do I actually preview this? Right there. Include the vector data right there, but it warns me if I go try to open up this eps file, it will rasterize everything that it opens. So if I save it as an eps file, I can use it forever, but I can't open it back up again and make any edits. So you can if you have to, if somebody's on Corel Draw on a Window's 386 machine, and the only thing that they can take, and you have to bring them to the current century, okay. Don't recommend it for obvious reasons. So I can do that with type, but what does that mean if I have a vector based file, say, coming from Illustrator? Outlines. Absolutely, I can take it because it's just shapes. And if I really wanted to go in here, I could both bring Illustrator vector based files into Photoshop and keep them vector or rasterize them, and I can also take any of my vector, or shape, layers here under the file menu, and I can actually export the paths to Illustrator if I wanted to have this. It's vector, folks. Vector is vector is vector. Not to be confused with Victor. So I can export these paths to Illustrator, and open them right up in Illustrator. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna open an Illustrator file, and there's my Illustrator file, and I have my shiitake mushroom, I like that. (audience laughs) It's all vector based, okay? And I wanna take this, and I wanna bring it in to Photoshop, so I can use it for something. I don't know if that's how you spell it, but it's close enough. It's all outlines, it's all vectorized. I'm gonna copy from Illustrator, go back into Photoshop, I'm just gonna do a new Photoshop document, and what's great is that because it's a certain size, Photoshop will, when I create a new document, I don't have to know what size the file is, I can just go create a new document, and it's gonna give me that file size. Resolution really doesn't matter unless you're gonna use the bevel and emboss and things like that that are gonna be raster based. So I'm just gonna save 300, 'cause I'm gonna use it for print. I can always reduce it down for the web. I click okay, and I hit paste, and it comes in. How would you like to do this? As a smart object? Well if I put this in as a smart object, it's still vector based, but in order to edit it I would have to just go back to Illustrator, not a problem. If I do it as pixels, we're not talkin' pixels here folks. I can just rasterize this if I want to. If I do it as a path, that's not gonna do any good. I wanna do it as a shape layer so I can have the fill, so I click okay, and there it is. And obviously I'm gonna make this nice and big, so I get my canvas size. There's my shiitake mushroom, I can change the color of that, there it is. Use my direct selection tools, change anything. There it is, it's all just vector. Wanna throw a bevel and emboss on it, yeah we got time. (audience laughing) Mm hmm, there we go, that's gonna look nice and delicious. That's not enough, I need a really beveled mushroom. Oh yeah, yeah there we go, fantastic. Fully editable, all vector. Now, I'm gonna go in and paste this file again, and I'm gonna paste it as a smart object instead. Not much different, the only thing is that I don't have the editing capabilities directly in Photoshop to do anything with, but there it is, I paste it as a smart object right there, and turn of my shape later, rig there. Now with a smart object, if I print directly from Photoshop or save as a Photoshop pdf, this will remain vector. If I place it into InDesign like this, or do anything else, it's all gonna be rasterized. Same thing. The difference with the smart object is now if I go in and I double click on my smart object icon, it will launch Illustrator, and then I can edit that in Illustrator, and if I save and close the file, and I come back in to Photoshop, it will actually change it there. So I don't have the editing capabilities in Photoshop, but because it's a smart object, I can edit it in its other application. Mm-hmm, yeah, pretty cool. Pretty neat. Yeah. Do you wanna take a couple questions? Let's have some questions. Let's do it. First of all, W Negall wants to know can the pen tool be used on a layer mask? So we did masks on Wednesday, and you can use it on a layer mask, but there's different types of layer masks, and I wanna show you that. What I'm gonna do is open up a quick image here. Let's see what we've got, let's do save for the web, and I'm gonna open up my beach at Normandy. If I go in and I do a layer mask here I can go in and I can use a raster based layer mask which allows me to go in and then I can hide or show on my layer mask right here. So I paint on my mask. If I click my mask button again, I have now introduced a vector mask on top of this. So can I use the pen tool on my actual pixel based mask? No, it's just gonna give me a path that I then have to turn into a selection. However, if I then introduce a vector mask on top of my layer mask, or my pixel based mask, and then I use my tool right here to draw, then I actually can go in and I can take my path, I'm in shape, sorry I was in shape mode here. Let me go to path mode and click on that, and if I were to go in, do this, and draw here, then that's going to go in, and that's going to give me my mask there. Of course, I can invert this mask to make what's black is white, there, I can invert that mask right there, and I can't invert that I'd have to fill it with a different color, but now I have a vector based mask on top of a raster based mask on top of my image. When would you use this? Well, when you wanna do dorky things like put hearts over certain things and have it show through, and you wanna be able to very quickly and easily edit that particular mask. And the reality of it is here, the reason why this mask is doing this, is because when I've got this mask I actually have this set to subtract, so if I have it set to combine or do something else here, I can go in and I can do other items with this mask right there. L10, and three other people want to know can you start with a basic selection with a basic tool and fine tune it with the pen tool? Pen tool is a pen tool is the pen tool. I can't use any raster based selection and do anything with it. Pen tool is a means to an end. So I'm gonna do the pen tool, I'd go to use that as a path, and I'd turn it into a selection. Okay, and then, really, really quickly, T Hudda and two others, how did you create the mushroom shape via pen tool without closing the selection or object? So I didn't create that with the pen tool here. That was created in Illustrator, and so actually what I had done in Illustrator, is I had built this all in Illustrator, so these are all complete shapes here. This is a complete path right there, and all I did was I just went in, and I just moved this, and I basically moved that up and down. I didn't actually use the pen tool at all on this. This is all just using the pathfinder in Illustrator to subtract shapes and all that. So no pen tool was used in the creation of the mushroom. (audience laughs)