Moving Data Between Apps

As you use the individual applications in the suite, you'll realize increasingly that you have to move information between themand other applications outside the suite as well. There are several ways to do this, each method having its own pros and cons.

Copy and Paste

One of the quickest ways to move data between applicationsbe it text, images, or artworkis via the copy and paste command. But like most things in life, the quicker way isn't always the best way. In most cases, information is lost when copying and pasting between applications, including text formatting, color information, image resolution, metadata, and more. However, many times a simple copy and paste will save time and provide you with what you need. For example, you might want to draw a shape in Illustrator, taking advantage of the precise drawing tools in that application, and then copy and paste just the path into Photoshop or InDesign.

One example of when copy and paste does work well is between Illustrator and Photoshop, specifically with regard to smart objects. When you copy art from dialog box that offers to paste the Illustrator art as a smart object, which retains the scalability of the file (see Figure 4.41). We talk more about smart objects in Chapter 5.

Figure 4.41. Photoshop CS2 offers to paste art from Illustrator CS2 as a smart object.

Exporting/Importing

The applications in the suite can both import and export different file formats. Depending on where your files and documents have to go, you can choose from various formatseach with its own particular strength or use. Some of the more common formats used for print workflows are PDF, TIFF, and EPS. Popular web formats are GIF, JPEG, SWF, and SVG. Illustrator also has the capability to save files in Photoshop (PSD) format and contains a Save for Microsoft Office command.

Most applications in the suite can also place or open these formatsalong with a long list of other formats, such as Microsoft Word or Excel documents, FreeHand files, and QuarkXPress filesgiving you the capability to work with just about any file that might come your way.

Exporting and importing files might seem like an extra step, but the formats are richer and support more file information (including important metadata, in many caseswe cover this topic later in the chapter). It's also a necessary step when working with other applications that aren't in the suite (yes, there is a whole other world out there).

Native File Support

One of the strengths of using the Creative Suite in your workflow is that all the suite applications can support the native file formats of each other. This means that you can easily place a native Illustrator file into Photoshop, InDesign, or GoLive, and even open it in Adobe Acrobat. Other non-Adobe applications might require that you export a specific file format, such as EPS, from Illustrator.

Of course, this is an extremely valuable benefit. As we discussed back in Chapter 3, "The Game Plan: Developing a Workflow," this enables you to keep just one version of your file (instead of native files as well as EPS, TIFF, and JPEG versions, and so on) and also enables you to take advantage of the rich format that these file formats support. For example, you can access all the layers in a Photoshop file when you open it inside Illustrator. You can view and hide layers from both InDesign and Illustrator files when you're in Acrobat. You can access Photoshop layer comps when you place native Photoshop (.psd) files into InDesign and Illustrator. And GoLive's Smart Object technology enables you to place native Photoshop and Illustrator files right into your web page layoutsyou don't even have to save GIF or JPEG files because GoLive does that all for you.

When possible, it's best to use native file formats because those file formats retain the most information. An added benefit to this method is that you retain the individual files, making it easy to quickly update different elements in your design. Using the Edit Original command found in each of the applications (see Figure 4.42), you can easily make changes to a graphicand have that graphic automatically updated throughout all the documents that it is placed in. We discuss how to do that from each of the applications in Part II, "The Applications."

Figure 4.42. Initiating the Edit Original command via the Links palette in InDesign CS2.