[InZooYorkCity]

Hey everyone! I'm new to the industry here and have a few lingering beginner questions. Right now I've designed a folder for my work that measures 18in x 12in when opened and flat. I've created it in photoshop with a canvas measuring 18.5in x 12.5in with the .5 inches for the bleed at 300 dpi. I flattened it and then saved it as an EPS file.

First of all, let me know if that all sounds like I'm on the right track. if not, feedback is welcome.

Second of all, the EPS for the front and back (outside of folder) is 119 mb. That seems huge! I'm having a hard time believing this is what designers end up with when they send it to print. Should I have used a smaller canvas? maybe 2/3 of the size of the folder? Or is this normal?

Thanks for your help!

[rachjm]

Hi there - your first part sounds about right.

Like you I started off designing in Photoshop and was appalled at the file size. I also noticed that when I converted to EPS from Photoshop my final prints contained mysterious JPEG artifacts, (even though my original artwork was entirely vectorised).

My solution was to recreate my file in Illustrator, importing rasters in from Photoshop but creating all vectors in Illustrator. The final result was MUCH smoother. It printed better and it was smaller, too. (I went from 3-5MB per file down to less than 100K!)

If your file is largely comprised of vectors, I would recommend you try this. As to your comments:

[InZooYorkCity]

Alright, that's what I'm trying to learn. What instances would I create something in photoshop and what would I create in Illustrator? I'm comfortable with photoshop so that is my default, but I know I should be doing many things in illustrator.

So far the most basic thing I know is that if I'm creating shapes and lines I should create them in Illustrator because they're vectors.

I guess I'm just trying to figure out when its a good idea to use which program.

[rachjm]

You're on the right track there - you pretty much said it up yourself: photoshop is great for rasters, Illustrator is best for vectors.

When an image is an even combination of both I make my decision based on output - I like Photoshop better so I'll choose that when it's a web project, but when it's an Illustration-type image and the document is for print I always go with Illustrator.

It can be just a matter of playing around a bit until you develop a 'feel' for which application is best suited to your project's needs - and once you've familiarised yourself with Illustrator it'll get a lot easier to make that call.

Remember, you can copy and paste paths from Illustrator to Photoshop and vice versa, so changing your mind doesn't have to be a big deal.