Jelly Bean :: Restoring ADB Backup On Unlocked Smartphone?

What would prevent me from restoring an adb backup on an unlocked smartphone? First off, are .ab (adb backup files) and .img (from the like of clockworkmod) the same type of file? Same format?

Ok, I have spent 3 days+ educating myself before I messed with my Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE (SPRINT CDMA) phone. My intention started out only as troubleshooting an issue I have where my sister's (on AT&T) Samsung Galaxy S4 will only send me MMS messages instead of plain ole SMS messages and it is causing duplicate thread issues...... so that is besides the point..... I RESET my phone to factory defaults and manually backed up everything else first as well as used "Super Backup" in the Play store as a double backup measure.

I followed all instructions to the letter on backing up using ADB, except that I could never locate the so-called "fastboot" file that apparently "MOTOROLA" makes vs the one that is included with the Android SDK. Using ADB and FASTBOOT from the Android SDK, I successfully make a backup (while the bootloader was still LOCKED) of my phone and I figured after I reset to factory defaults I could simply use the ADB RESTORE command and it would put my apps, wallpaper, email settings, account settings, shortcuts and placement of them etc.. all back where they were. INSTEAD I get a restore process that only seemed to restore the background live wallpaper and NOTHING ELSE was restored.

SO, then I figured, well this is a good time to try to ROOT the phone and see if I can get CWM to work, because I never have successfully done it before today. Got the phone to work finally after a variety of hybrid-put together instructions and used shabbypenguin's files and instructions that are available for my phone Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE today, though they are dated a lil bit... it worked.

SO now, I go to use ADB RESTORE, thinking now that I have SUPERUSER rights, I can successfully restore the ADB backup and get all my stuff back the way it was prior to the factory reset. NOPE. Same result as before... just restored wallpaper... no apps, no settings, no accounts etc.. just like stock or I should say now the CWM stock img. Why can't I utilize that ADB backup file? Can I extract stuff from it and manually apply it now that I have SUPERUSER rights?

Does the phone need to be BOOTLOADER LOCKED AGAIN in order for the ADB RESTORE to WORK?