Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications

Should You Flatten a Layered File?

Native Photoshop files offer the benefits of layers and transparency—what’s not to love? Since current versions of Illustrator and InDesign support unflattened native Photoshop files, there’s no need to flatten for compatibility. Admittedly, if a Photoshop file has grown to hundreds of megabytes, it might be more efficient to use a flattened file for placement into a page layout. In some cases, you may wish to flatten a file to prevent unwanted editing by others. But you’d be wise to keep a copy of the original, layered, working Photoshop file in case you need to do additional edits. To flatten a layered file, choose Flatten Image from the Layers panel menu. You can also merge several layers by selecting the ...