Photoshop and Illustrator interop | Known issues and limitations

Known issues and workarounds

General

Blend modes

Other Photoshop and Illustrator interop issues

Knockout group is not copied to Photoshop.

Knockout group, an Illustrator functionality, is not supported in Photoshop. So if you copy-paste an object with knockout group functionality, the functionality will not be copied with the object. Also, the layer with knocked-out stroke will be copied as a path (or will be rasterized).

Paintbrush Tool path in Illustrator is copied as pixel layer.

Path created with Paintbrush Tool in Illustrator is copy-pasted in Photoshop as a pixel layer, instead of being pasted as a shape layer.

Visual fidelity is sometimes not maintained while copying strokes with line miter.

The property of line miter, used to cap strokes in Illustrator, is not carried forward in Photoshop. So, visual fidelity is not maintained for strokes at path corners while copying strokes from Illustrator to Photoshop.

Layer structure changes when objects are copy-pasted from Illustrator to Photoshop with group/sub-layer effects. 

When copy-pasting objects with group-level effects from Illustrator, you can achieve visual and functional fidelity in Photoshop. However, you will a different layer structure in the Layers panel of Photoshop from when objects are pasted with group-, sub-group, or sub-layer level effects. 

You will see a similar layer structure in Illustrator if you go to Object > Expand Appearances on the group with the effects applied.

Shapes are pasted as paths in Photoshop when effects or styles are applied at the group, sub-group, or sub-layer level.

Shapes are pasted as paths when effects or styles are applied at the group level. Say, you paste a live shape with drop shadow effect applied on a group or a live shape with multi-strokes applied on the group, they will be brought into Photoshop as paths, instead of as live shapes. 

Dash and gap stroke corners are flipped when pasted as layers in Photoshop.

Create a shape in Illustrator and then enable the Dashed Line property.  On defining the Dash and Gap values, setting stroke width, and subsequently pasting the shape in Photoshop, you will observe that the dash and gap stroke corners are flipped - the top right corner becomes the bottom left corner, and so on.

Blend Modes: Blending mode is not mapped correctly from Illustrator to Photoshop. 

When you create objects in Illustrator with overlapping strokes and copy-paste the same to Photoshop using the Layers option while also preserving color appearance, observe the color blend in those overlapping strokes. The blending mode is not mapped correctly and there is a visual difference.

Text with bullets or numbered lists copied from Illustrator are pasted in Photoshop as Shape Path. 

Text objects with bullets or numbered lists in Illustrator are mapped to vector format in Photoshop. Copy-pasting such text objects converts text into outlined text and pasted in Photoshop as editable Shape Path to maintain visual fidelity. The output and layer structure is the same as what you get in Illustrator Type > Create Outlines functionality.