Comments on: Why PSDs are Better Than Layered TIFFs

By: Donald

Donald — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:39:47 +0000

Thank you Claudia!

By: Claudia McCue

Claudia McCue — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:47:22 +0000

Donald,

Export to PDF/X-1a, then view in Acrobat. View Separations in Acrobat. If it looks okey-dokey, your content is healthy. If your printer is reasonably up to date, there should be no problem. Have a conversation with the printer if you’re concerned that they’ll munge your job, and insist on contract proofs.

By: Donald

Donald — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:20:51 +0000

Great conversation! I have a related question. I want part of an image that is cmyk to blend into a spot color version of the same image. The following looks like it works, but I want to make sure there won’t be production problems w/ the printer. My cmyk image has a layer mask applied and the image goes to transparent. I then bring it into InDesign and postition it on top of a grayscale version of the same image (the grayscale image has my spot color applied in InDesign). It appears to blend seamlessly.

By: Claudia McCue

Claudia McCue — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:34:41 +0000

Somazza,

Your printer shouldn’t object to duotone PSDs (should image fine), but clearly he’s superstitious

Primitive beliefs aside, check the options when you save an EPS: make sure that the preview is set to “TIFF 8 bits,” and I bet you’ll like what you see in InDesign, even without turning on High Resolution Preview.

By: somazza

somazza — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:11:54 +0000

This is related to a problem I am having. I am making dutone photos in Photoshop and then saving them, and then placing them in InDesign. But I am having problems. If I save as an EPS, then when it is placed in InDesign, it is spotty and doesn’t look like a photo. When I save it as a PSD then it looks fine when placed in InDesign.

So, thinking that the PSD was the way to go, I sent it to the printer to see if it was ok to use PSD in the InDesign file and if it would print ok. He told me to save it as an EPS in future. This makes no sense to me.

What am I missing?

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:30:11 +0000

Brian - to answer your question, packaging design, for one, but there are several other applications where you’d use placed images in Illustrator. John, check your transparency settings when you save. You must be opting to flatten transparency.

By: Brian Cupp

Brian Cupp — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 23:06:04 +0000

I have always wanted to know. Besides jobs that are for billboards. Why do people place Photos into Illustrator? Illustrator is for Illustrations not Page Layout.

Brian Cupp

By: John

John — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 14:27:31 +0000

Something I have noticed is that when I place a linked PSD file in Illustrator CS2, save the file as a .ai and close it, when I reopen the same .ai file the PSD is still linked however the placed PSD is broken into strips and is no longer a single image.

Any insights or work arounds?

By: Rhonda

Rhonda — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:22:05 +0000

Perhaps I wasn’t clear in my first posting. Of course, I would expect a screen capture of a Photoshop project to have the checkerboard. But my screen capture is not of a Photoshop project. It is of an MS WORD window–a screen that doesn’t have a checkerboard background. I captured it, pasted it into Photoshop to work with it some, saved it as a .psd and have placed it in my InDesign document. However, when I print the page from the InDesign document, the checkerboard pattern from photoshop is in the background–even though I can’t see the checkerboard when viewing the capture in Photoshop or in InDesign. Since the problem only appears when printing from InDesign–doesn’t happen any other time or from any other app–I thought perhaps this was the place to ask this question. I’ll take your suggestion and check out some photoshop info, but if anyone here can shed some light on this, I would appreciate it. I’m having a difficult time finding anything referencing this problem, and I don’t have the option of using another program.

By: Annette

Annette — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:32:31 +0000

I am relatively new to Photoshop so this question may seem stupid. But here goes… what is or how do you save a layered “native” photoshop file vs. layered TIFF? Thanks!