Hi all, Now that Photoshop has improved typography tools, is it still necessary to move a photoshop project into Illustrator to do type? Is there any advantage in quality of final output to doing typography in Illustrator versus Photoshop? Thanks for your input! 🙂 -V
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InDesign would be the best choice but, if you don’t have InD, I would recommend that you continue to set Type in Illustrator (rather than in Photoshop) and save as a PDF.
Type in vector based programs like INDD and Illustrator will always give superior results for crispness. Bitmap programs (image editors) like PS are not recommended for doing type that will go to print, although as the type size increases the effects are less noticeable. Try sending 5pt type to a commercial printers, created in INDD/Illustrator and also in PS and spot the difference.
Although if you’re going to be applying effects in PS anyway, or using onscreen, it makes no difference becuase at some point the type will become anti aliased. Really depends what you need to do with the type and how it will end up.
INDD (or Quark) are the best options for typesetting by far. They have more sophisticated tools than Illustrator (and certainly PS), becuase that is what they are designed for.
Photoshop is fully capable of sharp 5 point (or less) type as long as the user is aware of how to keep the type vector outside of photoshop.
The real difference that I would point out is that Photoshop has to snap to a pixel based grid rather than points or picas, resulting in less accurate type positioning.
Hi Jason You are the first person to mention this, so I am curious what the method is to keep type in Photoshop as vectors? Export to PDF? Save as EPS?
It’s interesting because I just watched some of the training videos at Lynda.com on this subject, and even the teacher in that video relegated Photoshop to dealing with type only if it was meant to be integrated into the photo, ie not needing to be sharp…
Don’t use EPSes because they are liable to cause problems during output.
Your best bet, by far, is to use InDesign because of the greater range of Type-setting controls which it offers including a Glyphs palette which will allow you access to the full set of characters in the OTF Pro fonts.
Thanks for the greetings. You should be seeing more of me now that I have a day job…(instead of metal concerts & freelance graphics)
Yes EPS and PDF are the two formats capable of retaining vector elements outside of photoshop. Keep in mind, the *fills* arent vector, the edges are. (you could also do a limited workaround with any format that supports clipping paths)
Outside of Photoshop, PDF is the only layered format that supports vectors, and the layered PDF format is the only one that Photoshop can re-open w/o rasterising the vector elements. If you save to EPS, then need to reopen that EPS, vectors need to be rasterised.
I have just started a new job where the preferred work flow (for them) is to keep a native working file (PSD – CS2), then save to EPS, then distill. Any comments?
I havent worked that much with CS2, but I remember having issues with PS 7 and CS1 vector PDFs with different RIP systems. Not placing the blame on Photoshop here, but it was an unsolved issue (at the time).
PS lacks a lot of the typography features that most page layout programs have (step and repeat comes to mind), nor should the program be bogged down by those features.
Not to mention the type engine overall is a little clunky – you dont want to be doing 1000 word essays in Photoshop – screen rendering of large amounts of text can really bog down slower systems.
The flip side is most page layout programs dont have the ‘pizzaz’ features that photoshop is known for.
I have just started a new job where the preferred work flow (for them) is to keep a native working file (PSD – CS2), then save to EPS, then distill. Any comments?
Well since an EPS is a subset of Postscript its not the best way to do things. that is according to Dov Isaacs. The best way to make PDFs from the latest Adobe apps is to save as or export.
If you must Distill write to Postscript first not EPS.
Like I said, this is the workflow I am inheriting, not inventing. (Second day on the job)
I can only rock the boat so much right now. For QX files, the workflow is to export as EPS – as opposed to printing to ps, or even better using Indesign.
