Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
Tiffs can work and be colorized, custom ink provided files like that a lot, you can also put separated PSD's placed in illustrator as well, downside of that method is CMYK will alway show when you hit print, you can click off those channels but it always bugs me.The way I've done this is to make a Photoshop DCS 2.0, which saves as an .EPS which gets placed into illustrator.I attached an image here that has both vector and raster elements in the same file, with sections set to overprint and some that will not overprint and will knock out of the raster separation. There is a transparent vector part which would become a gradient for the shading on the left post The vector grass has a base.Basically tried to include everything in this separation to show examples of different use case.This is a great method as you get the best of both worlds, easier to separate complex images in photoshop, but still get crispy vector text or small elements that wouldn't be as clean if coming from photoshop.Have to download the .zip as it has both the .pdf and .eps in there as you can't attach a .pdf
The RGB on top of the channels in the preview doesn't bug me, it drives our artist crazy, but I do the higher end stuff anyway.As for the Corel Draw mention, how does what they do really differ from how Adobe handles it? You know, 6 of one, a half dozen of another... just curious, you don't have to duck...
he was just playing devils advocate.