: Printing complex illustrations I make illustrations in Illustrator using 6 to 8+ colours, masks, compound path and halftone colours and typography. On the current job (Poster Illustration without

Posted in: #AdobeIllustrator #AdobePhotoshop #FileFormat #PrintDesign

I make illustrations in Illustrator using 6 to 8+ colours, masks, compound path and halftone colours and typography. On the current job (Poster Illustration without text only illustration) i needed to use textures so i copied and pasted the vectors from Illustrator directly into a new Photoshop document and applied the textures images using blending effects and masks. I left the vectors as Smart Objects.

I worked in Illustrator using CMYK and in Photoshop RGB colour settings. I converted the colour mode from RGB to CMYK in Photoshop after finishing the work rasterising all the layers, Smart Objects included.

I'm not dealing with the printer i'm only handling the files to the client. The client is going to print in CMYK colour. No Spot colours used.

I Know i can save the artwork on TIFF format, but i don't know yet if the client will accept it.

Here comes the questions:

1) If the client wants the PDF file and not the TIFF can i save the work from Photoshop in PDF using the option (PDF/X-1a)?

2) Is there any problem to save the PDF from Photoshop?

3) Do i need to know anything specific when saving as PDF format from Photoshop?

I usually save the artworks as Pdf from Illustrator i never do it from Photoshop.
I would appreciate your help as the client is going to contact me soon and ask me to handle the file. I ask you please to keep your answers as simple as possible as i am a beginner regarding printing with a basic knowledge about CMYK and RGB principles.

Thanks

Riccardo