Using the drag-and-drop feature to copy artwork


    The drag-and-drop feature lets you copy and move artwork between Illustrator and other applications.

    In Mac OS, the application must support Macintosh Drag Manager.

To drag and drop artwork into a Photoshop document:

  1. Select the artwork you want to copy.
  2. Open the Photoshop document into which you want to copy the selection.
  3. Do one of the following:
    • To copy the artwork into Photoshop as bitmap images, drag the selection toward the Photoshop window, and when a black outline appears, release the mouse button. To position the selection in the center of the Photoshop image, hold down Shift before dragging the selection. By default, selected objects are copied as bitmap images to the active layer.
    • To copy vector artwork into Photoshop as paths, hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS), and drag the selection to the Photoshop document. When you release the mouse button, the selection becomes a Photoshop path.

To drag and drop artwork from Photoshop into Illustrator:

  1. Open the Photoshop document from which you want to copy.
  2. Select the artwork you want to copy.
  3. Select the Move tool Move tool and drag the selection from Photoshop into the Illustrator file.

To drag and drop selections of artwork between Illustrator and the desktop (Mac OS only):

  1. Select the artwork you want to copy.
  2. Drag the selection onto the desktop. Selections are copied to the desktop as a picture clipping, which can be dragged and dropped into the desired document. Picture clippings are converted to PICT format when dragged to the desktop.