No one can dispute the power of the Illustrator and Photoshop programs. Individually these are great programs, but when you combine elements of both, anything is possible. Artists many time use features from both Photoshop and Illustrator to create beautiful artwork for publishing. There are three basic ways to move a file from Photoshop to Illustrator.
You can “place” a Photoshop image into an Illustrator document, or place Illustrator artwork into a Photoshop file a using the File > Place command in either program. This is the “time-honored” method of moving a file into the other program. The only caveat is that the image (or artwork) must be in a file format that the other program can read.
While Photoshop is very versatile in its ability to read multiple file formats, Illustrator is more limited in the formats it understands. However, once a file is in a readable format such as TIFF, GIF, JPEG etc, you can use the above mentioned File > Place command and select the image. Illustrator will “place” the desired image inside of the Illustrator file, and you will have some ability to modify the file within Illustrator.
The second way to introduce a Photoshop file into Illustrator (or vice versa) is the tried-and-true Clipboard. Simply copy the file elements you want from one program using the Copy command, and paste it into the other program using the Paste command. There are limitations to using the Copy-Paste method. It doesn’t work so well for large files, and you can easily swamp the receiving program by pasting a large file into it.
The last method to consider in moving a file between these two programs is the Drag and Drop method. In order to do this, both programs must be open at the same time. Choose the artwork you want to transfer from Photoshop for example and simple drag it out of the Photoshop window onto the Illustrator window. To move artwork the other direction, simple choose the artwork form an open Illustrator window and drag and drop it into an open Photoshop window.
One last tip is that you can place paths from Photoshop to Illustrator files by using the Path Selection tool in Photoshop. With this feature, simply pick the paths you want to move and paste them into Illustrator.