Return-Path: Received: from atl4mhob14.myregisteredsite.com ([209.17.115.52] verified) by media-motion.tv (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.2.10) with ESMTP id 5394986 for AE-List@media-motion.tv; Sun, 02 Mar 2014 04:11:35 +0100 Received: from mailpod.hostingplatform.com ([10.30.71.211]) by atl4mhob14.myregisteredsite.com (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id s223Bvxn027652 for ; Sat, 1 Mar 2014 22:11:57 -0500 Received: (qmail 32062 invoked by uid 0); 2 Mar 2014 03:11:57 -0000 X-TCPREMOTEIP: 60.225.102.245 X-Authenticated-UID: chris@chriszwar.com Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.0.4?) (chris@chriszwar.com@60.225.102.245) by 0 with ESMTPA; 2 Mar 2014 03:11:57 -0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 6.6 \(1510\)) Subject: Re: [AE] AI > PSD > AE workflow recommendations? From: Chris Zwar In-Reply-To: Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2014 14:11:54 +1100 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: References: To: "After Effects Mail List" X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1510) A few years ago I ran into trouble with a big project, and discovered = the cause was using PSDs in After Effects. Todd gave some great insight = into the problem and basically said that in order to maximise = compatibility, After Effects uses the Photoshop library in a way that = can cause memory issues (this is all on this list, about 4 years ago). =20= Because of that, I have gotten into the habit of always converting PSDs = into individual layers and saving them out as Tiff files. I've been = doing that for years and it has saved me loads of grief. Even the = project I'm working on now has a bunch of Photoshop assets created by = artists at very large sizes (some over 11K). On machines with less than = 16gb ram After Effects sometimes slows to a crawl and has all sorts of = problems with them. Save them out as individual Tiffs and everything = works much, much faster. It's a different scenario to you, and I'm not suggesting that we have = the same problems, but basically I try to avoid using PSDs where = possible. For me it's pre-rendered TIFFs all the way... -Chris On 02/03/2014, at 10:31 AM, scott.aelist wrote: > I'm frustrated with the amount of redundant file prep i'm having to do = on a current job and I'm wondering if there's a faster way. I'm tasked = with animating some little vignettes for a travel show.=20 > A friend is illustrating the shot in photoshop and then i have to = animate from the PSD. Ideally I would just import the PSD into AE and = go, but I can't. A lot of the assets are vector objects so I end up = opening EVERY SINGLE smart vector object in AI and then I have to save = all these layers out as AI files. I thought maybe I could import the PSD = into AE and convert it to shape layers or an AI file there, but no dice. = I should also mention that I have to scale up all these vector assets = 200% because sometimes I need layers larger than they appear in the PSD, = and if I use continually rasterize it often screws up any effects or = puppeting I have on my layer. This takes an enormous amount of time and = my client doesn't understand why I can't turn these things out in a day = or two, and I have to make these dubious-sounding excuses of how I have = to 'prepare' all these assets for animation. Is there a faster way? And = am I the only one who scales up all their AI assets before bringing into = AE?