My point was that you can turn on and of the objects by selecting and deselecting them (the objects and not the layers) in the layers palatte.
Yes, in the Ai Layers panel there is a visibility widget for each object.
That behavior is very similar to the layers function, right?
"The layers function" is broad and ambiguous.
In Ps each layer has a visibility widget. But then all you have in the Layers panel is layers.
In Ai, each object, object group, and layer has a visibility widget. But in that panel you have layers, groups, and objects. The visibility widget for aggregators (layers and groups) affects their subordinates.
I'm not adept at illustrator but I would be hard pressed to tell you what the difference is from UI stand point or even what the functional differences would be.
I see it as a three-way problem among PDF, Illustrator, and Photoshop. You want specifically to talk about Illustrator versus Photoshop and that's relevant to how Zebest misunderstood her information. The problem as it affects the validity of the Obama PDF is the three-way problem: Zebest claims the document was created in Photoshop, exported as a PDF, and she's now examining it in Illustrator.
I explain more below. But the similarity of the UI and the congruence of some of its widgets masks the underlying dissimilarity that defeats the Birther claims of the chain of provenance they propose. A Photoshop layer, which is itself a displayable entity, does not become a PDF object, which then becomes an Illustrator layer, which is a container only. That's a Birther fantasy.
If you look at a classic Photoshop image in the Layers dialogue you will see a flat (i.e., non-hierarchical) list of layers, which are displayable objects themselves.
If you look at a classic Illustrator document in its Layers dialog, you will see a deep hierarchy, with Layers at the outermost level.
Some of the controls seem similar and have a superficially similar function. But Adobe's desire to uniformalize the UI for Creative Suite does not mean they've made the underlying entities congruent.
Sorry if you have gone over that and I missed your explanation. I've not read every post.
Well I've given the equivalent of about two days of college-level lectures in recent days, so I'm sure not everyone has read all of them.
So, let me ask you a question, give me an example of how I could use layers that I cannot use objects and that would help me understand better. But one more time, so far, from my perspective I can see how objects can seem like layers. Are you saying that to do so is a mistake no on should ever make because objects and layers have nothing in common whatsoever?
In Photoshop a Layer is a displayable data object. You create a fresh new document and before you can put any content into it you have to create a layer in which to put it. The layer here does not contain data objects, it
is the data object. The content-specific bits live there. A Photoshop image is a list of layers arranged in order.
In Illustrator a Layer is merely a container. It serves only to group objects together so that they can be treated similarly. The objects themselves are the displayable entities. The Layer is just a convenience for moving and controlling them as a group. They are ordered at the document level and contained ordered objects. Similarly you get a default Layer when you open a new Illustrator document. But rather than manipulating the layer as a displayable object itself, you add displayable objects to it -- objects that can be moved among layers.
Objects (either PDF or Illustrator) are atomic, meaning they cannot be further decomposed into meaningful entities in the data model. Photoshop layers are similarly atomic only in that they cannot easily be taken apart in the program and manipulated as decomposed parts. Layers in Illustrator are not atomic; they are aggregates or composites. They exist only to provide a single reference for their constituents.
