Can you copy and paste between drawings?

[Motoed-Hidden]

I saw in the ink and slide demo how you can use cloud clipboard, but can you use that without the ink and slide hardware?

I have pieces in a drawing that I'd like to copy to a new drawing... or merge a few layers and transfer those layers to a new drawing. Now quite sure how to do that though.

Ed

[sjoerd1999]

‌I got the same question.

I want to know how to transfer layers between drawings in Adobe Illustrator Draw for ipad.

If this is not possible yet, would it be something you want to add in the next update? It would be extremely usefull for me, as well as for a bunch of other people.

[Frank Stokes-Guinan]

You can copy content in the following two ways:

1. In the organizer view, tap the edit icon in the top right of the project that contains the content you want to copy. (The icon looks like a pencil on top of a sheet of paper.) Select the drawing that contains the content you want. Then tap the duplicate icon in the top right of the project. (The icon has a plus button on top of two squares.) This will duplicate the drawing, which you can then edit at will without modifying the original.
2. Open the drawing with the content you want to copy. Tap the share icon in the top right. Choose the "Share" option in the bottom of the list. Choose "Copy" in the resulting popover. Exit the drawing and open the drawing you want to copy the content into. Open the layers panel and choose the Photo Layer. (If you already have a photo on that layer, you will need to delete it.) Tap "Paste Image" in the resulting popover. The limitation of this approach is that the content is pasted as a flat image, not vectors.

Hope that helps,

Frank

Draw Engineering

[Motoed-Work]

Thanks Frank.

That's a bummer. I had a drawing of a cup and a character and was thinking... I'd really like to put the cup on the character drawing.

I know I could do this in Illustrator but it'd be much nicer if you could combine vector elements within Draw and continue working mobile.

[Ko.Maruyama]

You can definitely copy/paste (using clipboard) to place images into separate compositions.  The only things that you'll need to remember are:

• Elements pasted from clipboard to Draw are raster (image layers), so you can't draw directly on them, but you can draw on layers above and below them in order to incorporate them into a composition.
• Before you copy/paste (send to clipboard, paste from clipboard), make sure that you have the background layer turned off or deleted.  If you remove the background, Draw will preserve the transparency when you import!

See Draw video quick tips for more on this.

[Motoed-Work]

I get that... that wasn't what my original request was. It's helpful for importing reference artwork... but what I think would be incredibly useful is to have an element in one "drawing" and copy a layer and import it into another "drawing".   Maybe you have a crowd of people you have drawn and want to reuse existing artwork.  You can't do that in Adobe Draw.

If you look at the Adobe Ink and Slide demo video (no longer available?) it shows how you can share artwork, but it was domain to that pen. I can't imagine more people wouldn't be requesting this feature. It seems so basic.

[Sue Garibaldi]

Hi MotoEd.

Sounds like you're using the iOS version of Draw, right? Are you using Draw 4.5? And also at least iOS 11?

If you are, I think the drag-and-drop layers function might work for what you're wanting to do. You can use that to move layer content between drawings.

Have you tried that? Let me know.

Sue.

[Motoed-Work]

Got it. I didn't see this was an option. I must have done a few updates and didn't notice this was a feature. In my settings I could only see the latest app updates and this was included in a previous revisions and I must have missed it.

Thank you.

[Sue Garibaldi]

MotoEd.

Oh good. I hope it works for you.

Let me know if you have any trouble.

Sue.

[eggissipo]

Hey Motoed did you get this working?

Sue would you be able to outline how the layer drag and drop between documents works pls - I'm probably being slow but I don't get how this is supposed to work....

Joe

[Michael J. Hoffman · Accepted solution]

Hi eggissipo,

To drag and drop layers, you need to use two hands.

1. In the source document, tap and hold the layer you want to drag, and pull it out to the center. The thumbnail should be visible being dragged under your finger.

2. Without letting go, use your other hand to tap the “Close” button and tap to open the target document. Make sure you are holding down the finger with the layer to be dragged!

3. Once the target document is open, with the dragged thumbnail over the canvas, let go and the layer will be pasted, and will be in Transform mode. You can resize, commit the transform, and voila! Layer copied to the new document.

Mike

[eggissipo]

Brilliant thanks - that's just what i was after

joe

[Sue Garibaldi]

Hi Joe.

Mike's posted some good instructions but it can take a bit to get the hang of drag-and-drop so let us know if you have any trouble.

Sue.

[christianb15090236]

It's not working for me. I have the iOS version 4.5 and running iOS 11.26. I can drag the desire layer from the source file, and I keep it under my finger while transitioning to the projects folder, and finally drag the layer over the intended project, but when I let go over the project the layer hasn't been moved. I don't know if I'm missing a step or what.

[eggissipo]

I don’t have it in front if me but i think you have to keep holding over the destination document until it actually opens up, then let go of the layer to drop it into the new doc...

[Michael J. Hoffman]

Hi Christian,

eggissipo is tight; you have to actually fully open the target document in order to drop the layer.

Mike

[Sue Garibaldi]

Christian.

One quick thing (to add to what Mike and Eggissipo have said)... Make sure that when you're first dragging the layer that it's actually "under" your finger. I know this sounds rather obvious but sometimes the initial drag of the thumbnail isn't successful.

Let me know if you're still having trouble though.

Sue.

[MidnightBeer]

THANK YOU! This worked wonderfully and is a seriously fantastic find for the work I'm doing. Thank you for sharing.