Help with Photoshop / illustrator please

[technick]

Hopefully someone can help here!

I am putting together a new range of mug and coaster designs to sell on ky own website.

Each design is formed of a rectangular shape (square for the coaster) and have the wordings inside the shapes in white font (this is in Illustrator).

For each of the designs, there are around 10 different colours which make up the fill colour for the rectangle / square - these are not solid RGB colours with HEX codes as such, they are watercolour swatches which have been saved as PDF and I have them installed in Illustrator in the swatch panel.

I then have two Photoshop mock ups, one for mug and coaster. Each of the two have a smart object installed which allows me to drag and drop each watercolour shape (with text) out of illustrator and into PS, which will show then transfwr into the PS mug / coaster mock up template once save the smart object layer, I then save as a PNG and use for my website in the product page. I need to then return to Illustrator, change the colour and repeat in photoshop. The idea is to allow customers to choose their colour and see exactly how it will look before purchasing. Quite a long winded process and wondering if there is a quicker solution!

Questions are:

1. Can I load my swatches as PDF into Photoshop? This would mean that the layers would remain static for each design and I wouldn't have to change the swatch in Illustrator, I could easily do this is Photoshop then save as PNG.

2. In Photoshop, if i double click on the smart object layer it opens the second window pane and then allows me to drag and drop the design in. Can I do this in Illustrator at all? If i can then great, i don't even need to use Photoshop!

3. Is there a quicker solution to any of this which I am missing entirely? Ideally I want to avoid using Photoshop altogether as I find it very user unfriendly compared to Illustrator!

Cheers

[Ravisteam]

Hi buddy just few small questions..?.Do u know the defence between PS and Illustrator ??.Do u know they handle vector and raster images (bitmap )??..So they do different things and you might need both but better to have PS my opinion.

[daviddeer]

Loading swatches is quite easy
In the Swatches palette, click the top-right menu and select "Save Swatches for Exchange". Save your file somewhere you can find it. In Illustrator, go to the Swatches palette, click on the top right menu, select "Open Swatch Library" and then select "Other Library...". Navigate to where you left your swatches file and it'll open up in Illustrator
I would consider learning PS as it deals with bitmap images much better. Illustrator is primarily designed for working with vector objects. Simple things like rubbing out and selecting colours is so much easier to do in PS.
You can do everything you just described in photoshop. If their were an all in one solution adobe would have made it by now.
Perhaps you could switch to corel draw which handles both very well. Many people on here use it to good effect and are very happy with it.