Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 5/12/2009

Question
Hello,

I have been trying to make an image with Photoshop which uses color halftones. Since Photoshop CS3 doesn't allow Color Halftones, I have instead tried importing the different layers of my .psd file into Illustrator CS3 to apply Color Halftones there. The problem is, the transparency from the original PS layers are not retained!

I want to be able to create these color halftones in Illustrator, save them, and then be able to load them back in PS with transparent backgrounds. So far, I have found nothing but frustration! I have even loaded the whole .psd file into Illustrator, layers and all, and tried applying the color halftones to each object... but whenever I try to LiveTrace it, the background of the objects lose transparency!

Can you give me any suggestions or tips? I know there must be an efficient way to do this, but my online search results have yielded no helpful information.

Answer
Hi Adam,

Have you tried the halftone filter in the filter gallery? You are accessing the same Photoshop filter when you run this in Illustrator. Live Trace does not support transparency when it creates vector objects, and Im not sure why you feel you need to change these to vector to bring them back into Photoshop. If you use file>place, you can just place the entire AI file and it does not have to be all vector.

Either way, I would use the halftone pattern filter under the filter gallery in Photoshop and remove the need for Illustrator.

Thanks

Kevin