High quality graphic looks bad in AE 6.5

[Kevin Camp]

it looks like your logo was created using vector masks in photoshop… ae6.5 may be having issues with rasterizing the vector masks. try creating a copy of your psd and rasterize all the vector masks, then bring that copy into ae and see how it looks…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Andy Owen]

Kevin, you just made my night my friend.

It’s one of those things that I was almost ashamed to post because I was sure it was just one setting or something that I was missing in AE, but instead it was the vector masks. Simple enough. Thank you so much. I don’t know if I ever would’ve pegged that down as the problem…I’m so used to vector being a “superior image,” at least in quality compared to a bitmap image, that to degrade the quality (at least in my mind) wouldn’t have been an option.

This might seem dramatic, but it’s been plaguing me for a full day now, so again THANK YOU!!

[Brian Berneker]

Glad to hear you got around it, but in retrospect, as a vector purist, it would be nice to know if there is a way around rasterizing it. Perhaps saving the file to an EPS and opening it in Illustrator to make a proper AI file of it?

If you wanted to zoom in a lot to a detailed part of the logo, you would definitely prefer it over rasterizing at 2400dpi or something ridiculous like that…

Then again, it could be one of those issues cleared up since version 6.5…

[Andy Owen]

I think you’re right when you say it’s something they’ve probably cleared up since then. I’ve just undergone a job change and my previous employer had the Production Suite CS3 with AE and I’m thinking that’s where my confusion/frustration was coming from…it felt like I could do anything with that version.

Time for me to upgrade I think, especially now that CS4 is out. Thanks again for the idea! That was the last thing holding me back from getting this particular project done.

[Kevin Camp]

i’m glad i could help. thanks for the screen grab, i doubt i would have had that suggestion on the first go ’round with out it.. it was the layer names that tipped me off to a potential issue (seeing the bad anti-aliasing helped too).

so, note to future posters: more information upfront is always helpful in troubleshooting.

i think brian is correct, if you really needed to maintain the vector lines, getting those vectors into illustrator and importing the ai file into ae should work. it’s just a lousy workflow to get them into illustrator… you can only export the masks from a single layer from ps to ai, and it won’t maintain any fill data…

the simplest way might be to export a pdf from ps, then see how well that imports into ae6.5. i know later versions of ae can import pdf. i can’t test on ae6.5, but i’m pretty sure you’d lose the import as comp option.

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Andy Owen]

Well the nice thing is that I wasn’t TECHNICALLY working with masks, because I actually drew them with the pen tool as shapes originally. I work a little less traditionally (note I didn’t say better as I’ve run into weird issues due to it) and don’t use masks a whole lot DUE to their incompatability between software. It takes a bit longer, but USUALLY I get better results…except in this instance of course.

Thanks again guys.

[Jafar Fallahi]

To follow up on this topic…

I’ve imported AI files into After Effects CS3 (they are very basic line drawings of maps with a calligraphic brush stroke), and I’m using a camera to zoom into the files quite a bit. My naive expectation is that since it is vector art the quality should remain perfect regardless of how far I zoom in with my camera. What happens is that the stokes become pixilated as if they were not vector art.

Do I have to import scaled-up versions of the maps into AE and somehow switch to them as I zoom in, or is there a more elegant way to do it?

Thanks,
Jafar