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Feature Request: Open/convert Adobe Illustrator Brush .ai files to PNG files


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I noticed that if I open or create a new document in either Affinity Designer or Photo and attempt to place an Adobe Illustrator .AI file, it instead displays this goofy rasterized SaveAs message (attached). At the same time, if I use a goofy website like zamar.com and take the same .AI file and convert it to PNG, then I can open it in affinity photo and prep the brushes to turn them into custom Affinity Designer textured intensity brushes pretty quickly.

I am curious if there is another way to do this all within Affinity tools, or if Affinity could expand it's ability to read native .ai file formats so we can convert them more easily without depending on external sites like zamar.com?

Brush-AI-error.jpg

zamar-AI-to-PNG-converter.jpg

PNG-Brushes.jpg

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Affinity is not the only program that will display that message when you try to 'open' or 'place' a native .ai file that contains no .pdf version of itself. You will get the same thing in, for example, Inkscape, and even in Adobe's own InDesign.

This is part and parcel of the fallout of Adobe's pretense that 'Illustrator's native format is PDF'. When you save an Illustrator document, by default, a complete and separate version of the document is "dumbed down" to more basic PDF objects and stored within the file. If that default option is switched off when you save the file, then no PDF version of the file is embedded in the file. Thus that bitmap image message.

Assuming you are referring to the 'library' files in which Illustrator stores its default Brushes (which are just ordinary .ai files), the Brush artwork consists of vector-based paths. If, for some reason you must use these, you would be better off:

  1. Open the .ai file in Illustrator. (If you don't have Illustrator, have someone do this for you.)
  2. Save as PDF or SVG.
  3. Open the PDF or SVG in Affinity.

That way, you'll have the actual scalable vector paths, which you can rasterize to whatever resolution you want for use as Affinity brushes.

But frankly, I don't know why you would want to do this anyway. Illustrator's Brushes are vector paths. That's their whole advantage: vector scalability. But the ones you show as examples are the kinds of Illustrator vector-based Brushes which are trying to emulate raster-based effects (so-called 'natural media'). They are just jagged vector paths trying to look like raster-based texture. Their vector scalability is not really even advantageous. Scale them up (i.e., use them at large stroke width settings), and the fakeness of the effect they are trying to emulate becomes immediately apparent. They don't look like 'natural media' at all; they just look like jagged vector paths. [This is the very same basic fallacy of the oft-claimed 'necessity' for auto-tracing.]

So why even start with jagged vector paths in order to end up with raster-based brushes? Being raster based to begin with, Affinity's brushes don't have to fake raster effects. You can make far more convincing raster effects with raster images. Why do you want to create a raster-based Brush from a bunch of vector-based jagged paths that are trying to fake the appearance of a raster-based Brush?

The advantage that Illustrator's Brushes have over Affinity Brushes is that Illustrator Brushes are vector-based. Their advantage is HUGE when used for vector-appropriate purposes.

But the inverse is also true. The advantage that Affinity Brushes have over Illustrator Brushes is that Affinity Brushes are raster-based. Their inherent advantage is just as huge when used for raster-appropriate textures. Using a bunch of jagged vector paths is a workaround for trying to make something look somewhat like a raster texture.

JET

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