If you tend to separate your Adobe® Creative Suite like a kid separates his food on a plate—never interacting with one another, this tip will have you thinking overlapping applications is a good thing.

For this tip, I’m using vector artwork created in Illustrator and will be placing it into Photoshop to mask an image, leaving me with a funky edge. This tip works well anytime you want to insert different photos in the same layout without recreating effects over and over.

1. Create frame in Illustrator. For mine, I applied one of the preset brushes to a rectangle then outlined the stroke using Object > Expand Appearance. I filed mine with black, but it’ll work with any color.  The transparent pixels are what masks the image.





2. Copy the frame to your clipboard and open an image in Photoshop. Press cmd/ctrl+V to paste the image as a smart object. This will allow you to resize the mask without loss of quality. Make sure your mask fits the area you want to reveal then press return to accept the placed image.





3. This is what your file should look like. Next you’ll have to double click on the background layer to make it an editable layer you can position above the mask. Click, hold and drag Layer 0 above the Vector Smart Object Layer to move it.





4. To clip the image using the mask below, you’ll need to right click to the right of the layer name (not the image thumbnail) and select Create Clipping Mask. You can also position the mouse between the two layers and opt/alt click when two circles appear.





5. Take it one step further by adding layer styles to the smart object. Since the image is being clipped by that shape, it will appear as if those effects are applied to the photo. (I added a white layer at the bottom to preview what it would look like when flattened.)