In a previous tip, we answered an Adobe Illustrator 9 question. As you may recall, an Adobe Photoshop tip subscriber mentioned that Photoshop 5.5 could not open an Illustrator 9 file. Since Illustrator 9 was released after Photoshop 5.5, Photoshop 5.5 doesn't know how to read some of the new Illustrator 9 features. Therefore, Photoshop returns an error when it tries to open an Illustrator 9 file.

All of the workaround solutions for this problem involve saving the file in a format that Photoshop 5.5 can correctly interpret. These formats range from an Acrobat PDF to a previous Illustrator version.

It's wise to note, however, that exporting or saving an Adobe Illustrator 9 file in a past Illustrator format will remove any Illustrator 9 features from the file. For example, saving an Adobe Illustrator 9 image with transparency in an Illustrator 5.5 format removes the transparency attributes from the image.