[Mike Gondek]

I believe we can give you a better answer if you clarify your post.

What program are you swapping your placed psd frames in (PSD, AI, AE, PREM, etc), and are the pixel dimensions of the 2 files the same.

[Mike Gondek]

If this is a perfect oval, then redraw it in illustrator.

1)Hold mouse down and dragging an oval from center
2)Add the alt key,
3)then the big SECRET (hold down the spacebar while drawing).
4)Once you find you have redrawn a matching oval release the mouse button.

ALT is draw from center
Spacebar is to reposition while drawing

[Mike Gondek]

This is actaully difficult to do, and only way I know how is in illustrator. The problem is this pattern need to be symetrical,but the size of the dots changes over a symetrical sizes difference. So you cannot just offset, then use the rubber stamp tool. You may be able to get something better than this using that method though.

You will need to be expereinced in illustrator to try this.
You can substitue all my numbers below by a percentage after you do this once, to get the concpet of how this works.
1) In Illustrator create a 10″ x 10″ square to the size of your pattern repeat
2)Draw a .5″ circle and snap the circle center to corner point of the square.
3)Step and repeat 10 copies of the circle every 1″ horiozontally
4) then steps adn repeate all the cirlces 1″ vertically 10x to fill teh square
5)Select only teh cirlces adn stepo adn repeat all .5″ ho & .5″ vertically
6)Choose any circle that will beyour smallest size in your top row and tranform it in place so the center does nto move
7)delete all the cicles between
8) make a blend between your largest circle and the smallerst one (enter appropriatte specified steps, and specified distance of 1″)

The rest you can figure out if you are an illustrator user(eg: hwo to make a pattern in illustrator, whcih i explained in posts in the past), if you are not, than this may not be possible for you adn too ong of a post for me to type out. Hope this helps. If you are an illustrator guru, the transform each commadn can be another method for doing this along with creating a keyboard command for lets say scale 90%. Then you can quickly select each cicle you originally drew and just spam the keyboard command to knock this job out.

[Mike Gondek]

You can also use the eyedropper tool to copy or apply effects. Just make sure you doubleclick the tool first and configure it properly.

For example you will want appearance checked, and character attributes either checked or not checekd if you do not want to pick up the typefont specs.

[Mike Gondek]

There is that decade old document adobe has on their knowledgebase that will tell you the basics such as load up your machine with ram, and quit all othere applications.

I am not going to repeat that but try and give teh not so common tricks people forget about

work in rgb, and convert your file to cmyk only at teh very end.
edit>>purge
edit >> preferences >> cache levels 8 for faster screen redraws, 1 for faster processinf(eg: filters)
edit >> preferences >> memory usage: try 90% so you leae 10% for OS
edit >> preferences >> displays & cursors>> enable pixel doubling.

Use compression wisely: Eps with jpeg compression at max quality will make smaller files and faster saves with almost no loss in quality. PDF is another good format for the same reasons. PSD is great for when you need layers and get the non-lossy RLE compression for free.

[Mike Gondek]

There is no 100% way that I know of to get the EXACT PMS number due to enough factors to make this post into a book (PC/Mac/software version/PMS boook Version/color management settings).

Lots of people enter the CMYK values in Photoshop, and then click on color libraries, to get the pms value. I find this to be innacurate. Referencing a PMS book is more accurate.

[Mike Gondek]

AI layer comps in AE
Just as with Photohsop .psd file to place layered .ai. Just make sure you have Save as PDF compatible turned in when saving. I generally do NOT support using that setting, because it makes your files largerer and slower, but in this case you need it on. Also thsi wont work with .eps becasue there is no layer information.

Getting AI vector shapes into AE as masks
In AI make sure you have edit >> preference >> file handling and clipboard (AICB ON, PDF OFF). Copy your AI vector paths into the clipboard. In AE draw a solid, with the solid selected do a paste, and voila!

[Mike Gondek]

See this thread

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_thread.cgi?forumid=58&postid=856603&univpostid=856602

Try Andreas it is free.

[Mike Gondek]

If your smart object is composed of vector elements than you should get a good image. If you smart object contins bitmapped elemnts, than you can get a bad looking edge due to the aliasing coming form a lo res source.

[Mike Gondek]

In Photoshop use script >> export layers to files and choose a format which supports transparnecy usch as : PSD, PDF, and maybe even TIF.

You can open the files, adn it will do the import and placing for you.

Hope this helps, as the drag and drop method does not recognize tranparency and the images are embedded rather than linked, so your ai will run and save slow.