Textures in Illy CS5... a bit confused...

Question

hello
im somewhat new to illustrator, but have been learning TONS the last few months.  anyway, what are my options for textures?
when using the PS filters in Illy it pixelates the image and im not sure how to get around that.  do i have to take the image into PS, apply the effect/texture, and then bring it back into Illy?
and why are there only 6 different texture effects available?  Craquelure, Grain, Mosaic Tiles, Patchwork, Stained Glass, and the Texturizer...  none of which are getting me what im looking for sometimes.  I feel limited bigtime by this.  are there aftermarket effects that can be DL'd and used in Illy?  should I be looking into different swatch textures?
so what are the best ways to create textures in Illy?  do i have to go between it and PS to get the best results?
btw im a screen printer and working in CS5.  any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

The Photoshop effects will produce a rasterized result, although the underlying vector data remains and is editable and the effect can be edited. You can also increase or reduce the resolution of hte rasterized result using Effect > Document Raster Effect Settings. Photoshop is a raster editing program so all its effects will rasterize.
Illustrator ships with only a few textures but you can select other textures in the Texturizer. If you have Photoshop there are many textures available there, as well as others that can be downloaded. Flaming Pear sells a nifty, but cheezy, Photoshop plug-in called Blade Pro which ships with many textures. More textures can be downloaded from Flaming Pear’s website, any of which can be used with Illustrator. To edit the texture later you will need to keep the texture image where Illustrator can find it.