Photoshop CS6: Gaps in Smart Objects imported from Illustrator

Hi,

As Chris stated, this is an artifact of trying to blend abutting vectors when converting them to pixels, antialiasing the edges, and blending them together. The math is as precise as it can be from the rasterization/blending algorithm. To avoid seams, the authoring tool (Illustrator) would have to merge the abutting shapes into one.

All applications have these artifacts because it is a math/rounding problem.

Acrobat (rendering your ai file):



Apple Preview (rendering your ai file):



Pixelmator (made from it's own vectors like your PS steps above):



Sketch (made from it's own vectors like your PS steps above):



It's possible to avoid/correct this problem when planning and designing your artwork in Illustrator by uniting/merging your abutting vectors (In your Photoshop example, select all 4 green shapes and hit Cmd + E to merge them so the seems go away) or overlapping the shapes instead of abutting them in the icon example.

If you were making this same design out of cut paper, you'd use one piece of paper instead of cutting it up into 4 smaller pieces if you didn't want to see seams.

It's partially a case of the old Henny Youngman bit "Doctor it hurts when I do this..." The doctor says, "Well, don't do that!"

The interpolation settings in Photoshop wouldn't have any effect.
yes, this looks like an antialiasing artifact when rendering the shapes. Unfortunately it isn't always possible to avoid since you have multiple shapes abutting (and the math side would be: 50% of 50% is not 0%).

Please try this in Photoshop CC, we made some additional improvements to the vector antialiasing, plus several bug fixes.

Hi Chris, thanks for your reply.

Having googled the subject more thoroughly, it seems to be a known error: apparently it only affects Photoshop CS6 - the gaps do not appear in previous versions of CS when importing Illustrator files as Smart Objects. The only way to avoid it is to export images from Illustrator as bitmap images but that obviously defeats the point of importing Smart Objects in the first place :)

Is there any way this error can be resolved in a patch for Photoshop CS6?

(I've only just forked out a lot of money for CS6 Production Premium and unfortunately do not have a budget for CC as well)

Can you post the AI file your placing so I can take a look at it? (dropbox or other
sharing method)

Hi Jeffrey, thanks a lot for following up on this - that's much appreciated.

I've uploaded the relevant files here (including previews as well as test PNG exports for comparison):
http://snk.to/f-chjl65lj

My goal is essentially to create Illustrator vector images which I am planning on selling as scalable SmartObjects in Photoshop format (as more people use Photoshop than Illustrator).

However, the gaps between the elements in Photoshop CS6 make imported SmartObjects useless and I can't really tell potential customers that they should only buy my stock images if they've got CS2/3/4/5 (or CC?).

Thanks again for taking an interest in this topic.

Hi Morten,

Thanks. The files definitely help. I can see the hairline gaps in illustrator as well. If I stroke the green shapes with as little as .001pt stroke of the same green color the gaps disappear in Illustrator and subsequently they disappear in Photoshop as well. I'm not an Illustrator expert, but I sent an inquiry out to someone who is to see if they have any other suggestions to get rid of the hairline gaps in AI so they don't show up in PS.

Hi Jeffrey, thanks a lot for taking a look at the files.

The green squares are just some random objects that I made for testing purposes. Unfortunately, the stock graphics I am creating and will be selling are far more complex and a stroke with a uniform colour will look out of place along the edges of multi-coloured gradient meshes (as an example).

What's equally worrying is that the hairline gaps also appear if you open an Illustrator CS6 file in Photoshop CS6 as a bitmap image, so it's not just imported Smart Objects that are affected.

In summary, interoperability between Illustrator CS6 and Photoshop CS6 is severely affected by this error.

As mentioned earlier, bitmap images exported from Illustrator CS6 look flawless.

So Photoshop CS6 needs to render imported .AI files the same way in order to restore interoperability.

In your experience, how likely is it that your colleagues at Adobe would fix an error like this in a future patch?

Hi Chris and Jeffrey, it's not just Illustrator CS6 files that are affected.

Try creating the same 4 boxes in Photoshop CS6, make sure they snap together, and rotate them 45 degrees.

I'm getting the exact same hairline gap as when I import .AI files in Photoshop CS6, so it looks like vector elements simply can't be rendered with enough accuracy in version 13.0.1 of Photoshop.

In your experience, how likely is it that your colleagues at Adobe would fix an error like this in a future patch?

Bump...

Judging by the lack of replies, I'm guessing this is not the right place for error reports?

If so, I'd be grateful if someone could tell me where to post this so that a relevant member of staff can have a look at the problem.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Morten,

I passed the details onto the Illustrator team. In the meantime, I would use the workaround solution of a hairline stroke.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Blank lines between adherent shapes after exporting paths from Illustrator to Photoshop smart object..

Hello,
I've encountered a serious problem while copying a group of illustrator paths into photoshop as a smart object.

As you can see at the screen here http://imgur.com/i1op4bW my logo design looks far worse as smart object than a simple prntscrn from illustrator. Looking close enough will reveal that smart object has blank lines of empty space where edges of my shapes stick together. You can see the black background from beneath the object.

This has to be due to anti aliasing nature of displaying smart objects but I have no idea how to overcome this. The vector shape in illustrator is pixel-perfect, meaning every meeting anchor point has the exactly same X/Y properties.

Is there any way to improve how it looks in photoshop?

Jeffrey, it's not actually an Illustrator problem, so the Illustrator team can't resolve this error.

As I mentioned in my post 3 months ago, it's Photoshop which is causing the problem, so you need to forward this error report to the Photoshop team.
____________________________________________________

HOW TO REPLICATE THE ERROR IN PHOTOSHOP 13.0.1:

1) New image: 1000x1000 pixels

2) Change the background colour to magenta: 255, 0, 255

3) Create 4 green boxes, e.g. 356x356 pixels, make sure they snap together, and rotate them 45 degrees.

4) Hairline gaps appear between the boxes, regardless of which format you save in.

Conclusion: Vector elements can't be rendered with enough precision in version 13.0.1 of Photoshop.

Also, your proposed workaround, i.e. adding a stroke outline, is unfortunately not a viable solution when the vector elements contain colour gradients.

Bump. I would like to see if there is any acknowledgement of this problem in photoshop.