Pasting into Photoshop CS5 + Auto Resize

[Guest]

We copy a lot of existing elements from illustrator files into existing Photoshop documents. The dimensions of the Illustrator files are much larger, so we've always pasted into Photoshop and it resizes to the smaller photoshop document.

When I paste into the existing Photoshop document in CS5, I need the image/object to resize to my Photoshop document, instead of pasting in at the actual/original size.

Is there something I can change in preferences? Or a way to do this?

[JJMack]

If the saved illustrator files are a file types that Photoshop can open instead of using Copy/Paste try using menu File>Place>Filename.ext.  Photoshop will place into your Photoshop document the file as a smart object layer. If the file is larger then the Photoshop document canvas size the smart object layer will be transformed to fit within the documents canvas size.  You can also change the transform size during or after the place operation.  If the File placed in is a layered file like a Tif or PSD file double clicking on the smart object smart object icon in the layers palette will open the smart object in Photoshop as a work document so you can make changes.  Layers can change added and deleted. Layers opacity, visability etc can be set. When you then use menu File>Save Photoshop will update the smart object layer in your Photoshop document. So you can then do a close no save of the temporary smart object work document.

[igobythisname]

JJMack wrote:

If the saved illustrator files are a file types that Photoshop can open instead of using Copy/Paste try using menu File>Place>Filename.ext.  Photoshop will place into your Photoshop document the file as a smart object layer. If the file is larger then the Photoshop document canvas size the smart object layer will be transformed to fit within the documents canvas size.  You can also change the transform size during or after the place operation.  If the File placed in is a layered file like a Tif or PSD file double clicking on the smart object smart object icon in the layers palette will open the smart object in Photoshop as a work document so you can make changes.  Layers can change added and deleted. Layers opacity, visability etc can be set. When you then use menu File>Save Photoshop will update the smart object layer in your Photoshop document. So you can then do a close no save of the temporary smart object work document.

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! FILE>PLACE is JUST what I was looking for.. THANK YOU!!!!!

[c.pfaffenbichler]

If the file is larger then the Photoshop document canvas size the smart object layer will be transformed to fit within the documents canvas size.

Are you sure?

I tested it with ai, eps and pdf and even though Preferences > General > Resize Image During Place was set those formats were not sized to fit automatically, unlike psd and tif for example.

[JJMack]

Your 90 day warrantee from Adobe only states that Photoshop will work sustainedly as documented not absolutely as documented. I guess that is so Adobe can tell you that is working as designed its not a bug....  Adobe also changes the way things are supported much PDF function was removed from Photoshop CS5 forcing many to keep CS3 around.

Is the Place Transform interactive or not? If it is it still a single interactive step..

I'm a poor man only have Photoshop not extended no Illustrator.  If Adobe fixes the bugs I reported in CS5 in CS6 I may Upgrade else I'll revert back to CS3 and think about buying into Lightroom for Camera Raw Support.  The Update Adobe been making to Photoshop has introduced bugs that have a high impact on me. The new features I don't have much use for have a low impact the only area that is changing that I desire is in Adobe Camera Raw support. So Lightroom version x Plus CS3 may be the way to go except one of my two machines my laptop is running XP which new versions of Lightroom will not support. I refuse to run vista and my perfectly good Laptop is not supported by Windows 7.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Is the Place Transform interactive or not? If it is it still a single interactive step.

If you mean if the transfrom-handles are active for the placed SO then yes.

Anyway, it’s not a real issue for me.

The OP may want to look into automating the task, but Actions might fall short for this task compared to Scripts.

[JJMack]

Script may be better then actions for may depend on the version of Photoshop he has and how well layer bounds and selection bounds work.  In my Photo collage toolkit scripts I had to consult with Rube Goldburge to be able to scale placed documents to a alph channel cropping mask.  There were bugs in CS2 or there was no selection boundry scripting function. After the automatic place I always scaled the place image to 100% so I could get the actual size no matter what the Place resize Photoshop preference was set to.  I then center aligned the image to a selection made by loading Alpha Channel  use it as a Cropping Mask adding it to the layer as a layer mask. Rube help me with getting the selection boundry so I could then transformed the placed image to just fill the selection boundries. Alpha channels can have any shape and be indepent of images aspect ratio for example.

and with portrait aspect ratio alpha mask

[NightSkyGuy]

I don't see where this was pointed out in the discussion, but whether objects are resized during "Place" depends on the Photoshop preferences selected.   It seems I always want to change those preferences because in some cases I want to resize like when placing a watermark or text, and sometimes I want to keep the actual image size - as when layering a foreground over a background.  The option is found in "Edit -> Preferences - General"

It would be swell if actions could hard code "resize" or not.  By the way, the other option that affects operation is "Place or Drag Raster Images as Smart Objects".  That's another setting where sometimes you want it to be smart, sometimes not.  If you keep the option "smart" you can always rasterize.  But if you rasterize ... you may not get a decent results by trying to later smarten it.

[Guest]

I have the same problem, I think, but it is occasional rather than consistent. I keep Illustrator and Photoshop going simultaneously. I work up something in Illustrator, basing it on a photoshop image as a template, then copy it, and paste it into that very Photoshop file. From time to time-no idea why- the Illustrator graphic will export into Photoshop at a different size. It won't fit, and I have to enlarge it (usually) to fit right. All this in spite of the fact that I built the Illustrator material using the Photoshop file as a template. What is happening here? I can work around it, but why should I have to? Can anybody tell me why it might be happening and suggest some way to get rid of it? It's probably a preferences issue, but which one?

[conroy]

If the Illustrator document and Photoshop document have different resolution (ppi) then scaling will occur when Photoshop makes the imported object measure the same number of inches as it did in Illustrator.

[JJMack]

From what I have observed making composit when I paste or drag drop an image document that has a different resolution then the composit I'm working on is that photoshop just scales the image being pasted in to have the same print DPI resolution. Photoshop does not change the number of pixels the pasted in image has thefore the print size of the image being pasted changes from the size it would print in the original.   For example if I were working on a 16" x 20 "  300DPI composit the number of pixels in the canvas is 4800 x 6000 and I past in an image 4" x 6" 240DPI the number of pixels in the image  960 x 1440.  when these pixels are pasted into the  16" x 20" 300DPI document the size on the image in the composit is 3.2  by 4.8" at 300DPI

Place is a different story Photoshop will resize larger images to fit with a document with Photoshop Default Place resize preference.

[conroy]

JJ, the question regards pasting from Illustrator to Photoshop, not pasting from Photoshop to Photoshop. When pasting from I to Ps, the pasted object's size in inches is honoured.

Here is a 4" x 4" 72 ppi Photoshop document into which I've pasted a 1" x 1" 300 ppi raster image created by Illustrator. The pasted layer is 1" x 1" but is far smaller in pixel count than it was in Illustrator. The same honouring of size in inches will happen when pasting vectors from I to Ps.

[Guest]

Okay, then we know that Photoshop honors size over pixel count. Fine. But that just begs the question: If Photoshop honors size, and I have created an Illustrator patch for a 300 dpi Photoshop document, and the patch was created (drawn) in Illustrator over an imported copy of the very Photoshop document it's being pasted into (as a template), then the size of the patch should precisely match the area into which it will be pasted in Phoroshop, right? Photoshop honors size-usually, but in my experience not always. Why not always?

    I just got your second note-How do I set the raster ppi? In 27 years of using Illustrator I've never seen a setting  for raster ppi, but that's why I showed up here-where is the setting? I've gone through Preferences-nothing there. Where?

[conroy]

You can set it when creating new document. You can change it with Effect > Document Raster Effects Settings.

[Guest]

I see what you're talking about. So there is a rasterize setting in Illustrator. But because I've never used Illustrator for "effects", and was unaware of it, it's always been set on 300ppi.

So the mismatch must be in the Photoshop file settings. That has happened at times, I know, usually because of"Resample image"-I've checked and found 240ppi, or 400ppi.

     I still don't know exactly why it happened this time. The numbers all match, but I'll know where to look in the future. That's one problem with being an old hand at this-I'm not all that aware of some of the changes that have been made in Illustrator since, oh-1990. Thanks for the help, and for going to some lengths to show me where to find the settings.

[conroy]

Here's an example of Photoshop butchering the rendering of Illustrator artwork that has not been rasterized by Illustrator. The Illustrator vector artwork is pure black and white aligned to pixels. Look at the gray pixels created by by Photoshop rendering the vectors. The Photoshop rendering will be perfect if you rasterize with Illustrator at same ppi as the Photoshop document and import/paste the raster into Photoshop.

[Guest]

Thanks for showing me the examples. It looks as if i would be well advised to rasterize in Illustrator. I work in line a lot in Illustrator and export to PS, into drawn and scanned illustrations, so this definitely gets my attention. I've never noticed a problem, but I'll try using the Illustrator Rasterize function and see what happens. Thanks for making that point.

[JJMack]

conroy wrote:

JJ, the question regards pasting from Illustrator to Photoshop, not pasting from Photoshop to Photoshop. When pasting from I to Ps, the pasted object's size in inches is honoured.

Here is a 4" x 4" 72 ppi Photoshop document into which I've pasted a 1" x 1" 300 ppi raster image created by Illustrator. The pasted layer is 1" x 1" but is far smaller in pixel count than it was in Illustrator. The same honouring of size in inches will happen when pasting vectors from I to Ps.

You have me at a disavantage I do not have illustrator and I do not use a Mac.  On PCs Windows Clipboard is a system thing.  Its size can vary and it seems to be able to handle two types of Data "Text" and "Image" so I'm sure there is some discriptor data DPI may well be there as well as pixel size. Perhaps also what Program copied the data to the clipboard. So Photoshop may well do some resizing if when it does the past operation it see it was put there by illustrator at a 300 DPI setting and the image bounds is 300 px by 300 px.  Photoshop could easily resize it to 72 px by 72 px at 72 DPI.  Its also hard to see what you have pasted for all I see is  the bounding transform box of the move tool for in the layers palette Layer 1 look transparent or is an out line. For the layer seems to be centered on the canvas and is 1/16 the size of the canvas so its thumbnail should show something and be visible over the white background with normal blend mode 100% Opacity and Fill. So the clipboard must have transparent pixels for thumbnail is mostly transparent from what I see. It may be the 300dpi rastersize text

[conroy]

JJMack wrote:

You have me at a disavantage I do not have illustrator and I do not use a Mac.  On PCs Windows Clipboard is a system thing.  Its size can vary and it seems to be able to handle two types of Data "Text" and "Image" ...

About 20 years ago, when I was using Windows 3.1, the Windows clipboard handled more types of data than a generic "text" and "image". Here's an overview of Windows clipboard formats today: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms649013(v=vs.85).aspx

JJMack wrote:

... Its also hard to see what you have pasted for all I see is  the bounding transform box of the move tool for in the layers palette Layer 1 look transparent or is an out line. For the layer seems to be centered on the canvas and is 1/16 the size of the canvas so its thumbnail should show something and be visible over the white background with normal blend mode 100% Opacity and Fill.

The Illustrator 1 inch square raster was transparent apart from a black border and text.

[JJMack]

The important thing to know is that Clipboards at OS system thing that support different formats of data. Clipboards are convenient for passing information between  applications and system through system feature called the clipboard. Screen  capture and application data can be copied to the clipboard by a user using system or application hot-keys and application UI and then Pasted into application by the user. How an application handles the paste can vary.  Like most I don't need to know the actual data format for I no longer program for a living I'm retired from that mountain the avalanche overtook me. I could no stay ahead of it.

[Guest]

Dear all: I just tried fiddling with the Photoshop prefs "Resize image during Place" entry. I brought up a PS graphics file, checked my Illustrator settings to make sure 300dpi (high) was selected, opened the same image in AI as a template, traced a graphic on it into AI, copied the traced AI object, switched back to PS and the original, and pasted it in. That was with "resize image" checked on. Then I unchecked "resize image" in PS and went through the same process again, with the same "high" setting in AI. Result: Both delivered the same result. Nothing got resized, the export would have served my purpose, and both files were rated at 300 dpi. 

     So I still don't know exactly what goes wrong here, but now I'm better equipped to fix it if it happens again. Thanks.

[Guest]

I solved the mystery. The original file that I was trying to paste an Illustrator graphic into was set at 240dpi. No wonder the results looked hammered. On the other hand, I will start rasterizing in AI now. Thanks for the tip.

[conroy]

Birck, you don't have to worry about the bad rasterizing by Photoshop that I showed above. I see today that it happens in CS6 but not CS5. That explains why you've never noticed a problem.

[Guest]

Dear Conroy:

     Well, so there are some advantages to sticking with the tried-and-true, eh? I will probably start rasterizng in AI anyway.  I never knew it was there, let alone tht it could be useful.

[conroy]

Yes, you'd be safer to rasterize, anyway. I wouldn't trust CS5 to get it right all the time, anyway.