Adobe Illustrator files

Andy Burns

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Mar 31, 2023, 5:54:37 AM3/31/23

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I've always found these awkward to deal with.

I have a logo from a customer which they've sent me in both .jpg and .ai
format, it has lots of thin spidery lines, so the jpg doesn't scale well
without getting "scratchy".

I tried opening the .ai file with Inkscape, and tried converting to .svg
using a handful of online converters, they all render the logo as a
bitmapped message saying

"an Adobe Illustrator file using the Save As command"

Is there anything that will work to convert it?

nospam

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Mar 31, 2023, 6:51:02 AM3/31/23

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In article <k8nour...@mid.individual.net>, Andy Burns

<use...@andyburns.uk> wrote:

> I've always found these awkward to deal with.
>
> I have a logo from a customer which they've sent me in both .jpg and .ai
> format, it has lots of thin spidery lines, so the jpg doesn't scale well
> without getting "scratchy".

bitmap versus vector.

> I tried opening the .ai file with Inkscape, and tried converting to .svg
> using a handful of online converters, they all render the logo as a
> bitmapped message saying
>
> "an Adobe Illustrator file using the Save As command"
>
> Is there anything that will work to convert it?

adobe products have a free trial version.

Paul

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Mar 31, 2023, 7:39:50 AM3/31/23

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Do you have an EPS (Embedded PostScript) file ?

Try that in Inkscape. And see if you're using the latest Inkscape or not.

https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.2.2/

Paul

Andy Burns

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Mar 31, 2023, 8:22:34 AM3/31/23

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Paul wrote:

> Do you have an EPS (Embedded PostScript) file ?

no, just ai (unknown version) and jpg

> Try that in Inkscape. And see if you're using the latest Inkscape or not.
>
> https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.2.2/

yes that was latest, going to try scribus

Andy Burns

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Mar 31, 2023, 8:36:45 AM3/31/23

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Andy Burns wrote:

> going to try scribus

even with ghostscript installed, just comes in as a tall but zero width
graphic.

Andy Burns

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Mar 31, 2023, 8:39:22 AM3/31/23

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nospam wrote:

> Andy Burns wrote:
>
>> the jpg doesn't scale well without getting "scratchy".
>
> bitmap versus vector.

of course, hence wanting to read the vector into inkscape

>> Is there anything that will work to convert it?
>
> adobe products have a free trial version.

Looks like I'll have to do that, would prefer not to though.

Big Al

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Mar 31, 2023, 9:32:49 AM3/31/23

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I downloaded an ai image and it opened fine in Linux Inkscape.
https://example-files.online-convert.com/vector image/ai/example.ai
Note: this is a direct download if anyone is concerned.
--
Al

VanguardLH

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Mar 31, 2023, 9:57:01 AM3/31/23

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Adobe Illustrator has a 7-day free trial. You could save an image
backup before installing the software, use it to load the .ai file, save
it as some other filetype, and then restore to the image backup to
completely eradicate the software to get your drive(s) back to the exact
state they were in before rather than relying on an uninstaller which
often leaves behind file and registry remnants.

Some folks like the Corel products. CorelDraw lets you convert from .ai
to .svg; see:

https://www.coreldraw.com/en/tips/file-conversion/ai-to-svg/

According to:

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/saving-artwork.html

you can save in five file formatts: AI, PDF, EPS, FXG, and SVG. The SVG
(Scalable Vector Graphics) format would be vector graphics which should
scale okay. What is not mentioned is if the output SVG file is one
object, or grouped objects that you could later ungroup. Inkscape
should be able to open the .svg file; however, instead of one big
object, you'll have to ungroup it to edit individual components.
LibreOffice is free, but its Draw component can open SVG files, but it
cannot ungroup.

The problem is often the conversion from .ai to .svg flattens the
graphics, and you cannot later ungroup to edit the objects or text. If
Inkscape support .ai files, you sure you want to convert to SVG?

Andy Burns

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Mar 31, 2023, 10:09:26 AM3/31/23

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VanguardLH wrote:

> If Inkscape support .ai files, you sure you want to convert to SVG?

It seems there are two major variants of .ai files (and probably many
minor variations) certainly inkscape hates the file I've been given, and
all the online convertors hate it too, and scribus.

The online convertors don't like the example.ai URL given by Big Al
either (even after replacing the space in the URL with %20).

Philip Herlihy

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Mar 31, 2023, 10:55:19 AM3/31/23

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In article <k8nour...@mid.individual.net>, Andy Burns wrote...

Affinity Designer (superb value) can open, but not save, Illustrator (*.ai)
files.

https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/index.html?
page=pages/GetStarted/importAdobe.html?title=Importing%20Adobe%20documents

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/

--

Phil, London

Paul

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Mar 31, 2023, 12:27:14 PM3/31/23

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On 3/31/2023 9:32 AM, Big Al wrote:
> <https://example-files.online-convert.com/vector image/ai/example.ai>

At first, I was having trouble convincing myself that was an AI document.

It looks mostly like a PDF, at the head and tail.

For the benefit of Andy, one thing I see in the document, is a declaration
of a "thumbnail". It's possible an SVG conversion tool is latching onto
the graphic in there and pretending it is the thing needing a (bitmap)
SVG conversion.

One thing I see, is some SVG artwork seems to be a document with
a bounding box. When they're saved out, the bounding box causes
the graphic to be rather small. I've seen SVG items in the past,
that tended to render at absurd scale, and that could be because
they lacked bounding boxes or other document decorations. Such graphics
looked like better candidates for pasting into word processors.

Paul

Andy Burns

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Mar 31, 2023, 2:42:35 PM3/31/23

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Paul wrote:

> On 3/31/2023 9:32 AM, Big Al wrote:
>> <https://example-files.online-convert.com/vector image/ai/example.ai>
>
> At first, I was having trouble convincing myself that was an AI document.
>
> It looks mostly like a PDF, at the head and tail.

I think the modern "flavour" of AI files are based around PDFs, possibly
with the same sort of EPS preview thumbnails?

> For the benefit of Andy, one thing I see in the document, is a declaration
> of a "thumbnail". It's possible an SVG conversion tool is latching onto
> the graphic in there and pretending it is the thing needing a (bitmap)
> SVG conversion.

Yes, that's the sort of thing I remember from several decades ago with
Framemaker/Pagemaker etc.

> One thing I see, is some SVG artwork seems to be a document with
> a bounding box. When they're saved out, the bounding box causes
> the graphic to be rather small. I've seen SVG items in the past,
> that tended to render at absurd scale, and that could be because
> they lacked bounding boxes or other document decorations. Such graphics
> looked like better candidates for pasting into word processors.

I looked at the Adobe site, they do offer an Illustrator trial, but they
want credit card details up-front, so I'll look at the Affinity trial
since they're fairly local to me ...

Nil

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Apr 1, 2023, 2:41:04 PM4/1/23

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On 31 Mar 2023, Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> wrote in
alt.comp.os.windows-11:

I just tried this site to convert one ai to svg. It looks like a pay
service, but maybe they gave me a trial attempt. Anyway, it worked on
my sample.

https://convertio.co/

I have an ancient version of Illustrator, ver. 9. If you put it up
somewhere on the web I can get at it, I'll take a crack at converting
it. I think the SVG format has changed over the years, so there may be
come compatibility issues, but it might be worth a try.