Advanced Search“To modify this file you will need vector editing software such as Adobe Illustrator, Freehand, or CorelDRAW.”
Don’t be put off by that statement. It’s only partly true. Yes, if you want to modify the vector points and curves, and otherwise take full advantage of vector editing capabilities, you’ll need one of the above programs. But if Photoshop is your weapon of choice, you can easily use a vector file in your design projects. What’s more, you can enlarge an imported vector file way beyond its original size, effectively getting an XXL file for the price of a small photo. And in today’s economy, that’s huge.
In Photoshop, choose File>Open and select the “illustration.eps” file. The “Rasterize EPS Format” dialog box will appear. Here you can specify the size, resolution and color mode. Click “Anti-aliased” to make it look nice and smooth, and “Constrain Proportions” to keep the original aspect ratio. After clicking OK, it may take a while to rasterize, depending on the settings you just input. In this example, I used a very high resolution, and as you can see, I ended up with an enormous pencil in Photoshop. But since the image was interpolated from a vector EPS, the lines are crisp and the colors are smooth.
You’ll also notice that Photoshop opens the vector file in a transparent layer. Since the EPS is made of vector objects, there is no solid white background, as with a Photoshop file. This makes it easy to incorporate the rasterized vector into any Photoshop composition, applying filters and effects, just as you would with a photo. The transparency eliminates the need for a mask or clipping path.
For more tips on combining vector files with raster images, see this article.
Keep in mind that this file is now a bitmap, made up of square pixels, so it has the limitations of any other raster image. So make sure that when you open the EPS file in Photoshop, you give it a high enough resolution to work in your project. (There is a way to import scalable vector objects into Photoshop, but we’ll save that for another article.)
Opening Illustrator Files in Photoshop
Sometimes an iStock contributor will include a native Illustrator file in the download folder. The process for opening an AI file is much the same as opening an EPS, but you get a few more options. In addition to the image size and color mode, you’ll see a preview thumbnail of the illustration, as well as cropping options. Most of the time, you’ll use “Bounding Box,” which simply crops to the illustration itself. This method eliminates any extraneous white space, as well as any elements outside the Illustrator Artboard.
That last bit is important, because if the preview doesn’t look right, it’s likely that the illustration is falling outside the Illustrator artboard. In this case, you’ll have to open the Illustrator file and adjust the image or the artboard dimensions.
Exporting vectors to Photoshop
It’s easy to export a vector file (EPS or native AI) to Photoshop. This will give you more flexibility than simply importing it in Photoshop. If the vector file is built with layers, those can be preserved in the export. In Illustrator, open the file then choose File>Export. Select “Photoshop (psd)” as the format. In the next dialog box, enter the resolution, and select “Write Layers” and “Maximum Editability.”
Now when you open the newly-exported file in Photoshop, you’ll see the same named layers that were in the vector file, including any sub-layers. {Insert: 07_comparison.jpg } From here, you can select the layers individually and apply filters and effects, use them as masks or rearrange them to your liking. And again, since it started life as a vector, the individual shapes of the illustration will be clean and smooth.
So even if you’re not an Illustrator whiz, don’t be intimidated. There’s a lot you can do with iStock’s vector files!
Image credits:
pencil by dorianmelton
Performance Enhancement by busypix
aargh … i hate my work by ivar
Above the Clouds by JLFCapture
Wave Hello" by blamb
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