PS printing question

[berkoWitZ]

Hi,

Probably a dumb question but need some advice. I design a 11x17 poster I need to send to the print shop, it was designed in PS with a 250 dpi and contains vector graphics mostly and some text.

The people at the printer told me the graphics were great but the text it was better to do it in AI...my question is which is better to do, make the text in AI and them import it to PS in .eps format or export the design in PS to AI and make the text over there and save it as .ai?

[=guinness=]

whenever i do anything with graphics and lots of typography i always do the graphic work in PS and take it into AI because PS has horrible type control. Also you can embed the font, create outlines, and edit the outlines directly as a path.

AI just seems better for layout and end printing for type. Also if its mostly vector graphics its always better to stay in AI unless you need to do some specialized blending in PS.

[mlk]

both workflow are okay as long as you keep text with paths

i'd choose illustrator last because typography is always the one thing you need to change at the last minute

[.soulty]

Photoshop:
text in photoshop (cs2 +) should retain it's vector qualities if you export a pdf straight from photoshop and also if you don't flattered the image or rasterize the text. The text quality in photoshop is absolutely fine for print.

Now the downside to photoshop and text is that it's limited, limited in it's open type features, it's glyphs, making custom adjustments (creating outlines/editing vector points) and general work flow; if you have alot of text it slows down your work flow to a snails pace (especially if your working in a 300dpi + document).

Also another major issue with Photoshop text is that you will have difficulty opening the pdf in photoshop once the pdf is saved out in order to make minor or major adjustments, which illustrator is much better for....

Illustrator:
Generally for flyers / business cards and other smaller page jobs I would use Illustrator for my text and photoshop for my more graphical elements. Importing either a native psd into illustrator or a flattened tiff.

Illustrator gives you great vector options, alot more text features, handles large amounts of text alot better than photoshop and has the ability to open the pdf and edit the file within illustrator.

Indesign:
For multi page documents you can't really go past this application, you can create styles for paragraphs/header and many other attributes which can be heaven when you need to change say a font size for paragraphs in a 40+ page document. It's tricky at the start but well worth the time to learn.


edit: i should mention that i have run many business card designs through photoshop for situations where i was printing to a digital Pro Printer (CMYK) and Spot colours weren't required. In these instances i usually will be using a photo image within the card and some funky logo. In all instance when i printed these cards the text would be just as sharp as it would have been through illustrator.

[hybrid101]

better if it's in Illustrator dude:D

[berkoWitZ]

Excellent answers and super helpful :) Thanks people much aprecciated it, I´ll give it a try and see how it ends.