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I'm really keen to ditch Illustrator and move to Designer, but I have two clients whose workflows require me to supply live AI documents.

 

It occurred to me that I could probably sell them on the idea of my using Designer as long as they get files they can work on at their end, but EPS files exported from Designer seem to have all text outlined by default and there's no way to turn it off.

(I've also tried PDFs, but these don't respect the text blocks, with text remaining editable, but broken seemingly randomly into lines, words and sometimes individual characters as separate objects.)

 

This is actually a pretty big deal — I certainly can't afford to antagonise these clients, and I'd need to be able supply them files they can work on in AI before I could switch to Designer…

 

Am I missing an export option, or should I make a feature request?

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If we output text to EPS then you would still have the same issues as PDF separating the text into lines. This isn't something that is solvable by us as it's up to the reading application to decide what to do with text lines.

 

Affinity tries to combine text lines into frames when importing PDF files but not many other Apps do.

 

 Sorry we can't offer any better suggestions.

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  • 1 month later...

I imported an eps file and every text string was broken up into a separate text box for each individual character of the text string.  It would be nice if there were an eps import option to tell it to not break it apart but keep the text together in a single text box.  Maybe this is a problem because maybe the eps file has the text as individual characters and so you don't know what text belongs together as one text box???

 

ted

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  • 1 month later...

Sorry for my English. My whole life I use Illustrator. I really like AD (I buy AD for my Wife too) and I would like to use AD in our company. 

I work in larger graphics studio. All we works on Mac platform.  But for our customers it is important to be able to edit the text.

Rather than blocks of text etc. Many clients have PC and Illustrator too.

Export into EPS must have editable text in text frames etc... For this time is not possible to switch from Illustrator to AD.  

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  • 1 year later...

Today I took my kids to see Ferdinand, and as I'm sat watching the incredible animation, I'm thinking, "I cannot get a simple text box from Affinity into Illustrator and remain formatted and editable."

 

I understand that the majority of the problem lies in Illustrator. But heavens above.

 

This week I faced the task of producing editable .pdf files from Affinity. Yes, I know Acrobat can handle them (or I think: it had no problem reading my export as unified paragraphs), but the truth is, my client wants a file he can open in Illustrator.

 

Simply put, I found no way to do this. At all.

 

I looked into bridges. Sometimes different software can fill in gaps, or change something critical. Nothing worked. Sketch outlines text, Acrobat brought the same errors into Illustrator (or Illustrator read the .pdf in the same way, creating errors). InDesign is useless. 

 

Illustrator: a) destroyed some tracking; not all, just some; b) resized fonts in some cases, and not all; c) outlined two lines of text in a paragraph for no apparent reason; and d) put everything on a single line each anyway.

 

I had to recreate a complex text layout from scratch.

 

Wonderful.

 

Again, I know Adobe and Illustrator do their own thing. But is it impossible to figure out what they actually do?

 

Is Publisher, when it arrives, going to resolve this? Will Designer also benefit from whatever you're developing for Publisher?

 

Watching two hours of incredible animation made it so stark how hobbled we are in our everyday tasks while also trying to be loyal to Affinity.

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I have the same problem, but for PSD export. Basically right now I export from Affinity to PDF, open in AI, save as AI, open in Fireworks, tweak the text (lines get messed up, so they have to be recreated), and then export to PSD. It's stupid, but it's the only way right now :D Right now it seems it's not possible, and we have to find silly workarounds. Hopefully Serif will realize that this is probably one the most problematic matters and will add these features in a future version. Better sooner than later :) On the other hand, I still won't use PSD or AI, I'd rather recreate the text and use a software I love.

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4 hours ago, ianrobertdouglas said:

Today I took my kids to see Ferdinand, and as I'm sat watching the incredible animation, I'm thinking, "I cannot get a simple text box from Affinity into Illustrator and remain formatted and editable."

 

I understand that the majority of the problem lies in Illustrator. But heavens above.

 

This week I faced the task of producing editable .pdf files from Affinity. Yes, I know Acrobat can handle them (or I think: it had no problem reading my export as unified paragraphs), but the truth is, my client wants a file he can open in Illustrator.

 

Simply put, I found no way to do this. At all.

 

I looked into bridges. Sometimes different software can fill in gaps, or change something critical. Nothing worked. Sketch outlines text, Acrobat brought the same errors into Illustrator (or Illustrator read the .pdf in the same way, creating errors). InDesign is useless. 

 

Illustrator: a) destroyed some tracking; not all, just some; b) resized fonts in some cases, and not all; c) outlined two lines of text in a paragraph for no apparent reason; and d) put everything on a single line each anyway.

 

I had to recreate a complex text layout from scratch.

 

Wonderful.

 

Again, I know Adobe and Illustrator do their own thing. But is it impossible to figure out what they actually do?

 

Is Publisher, when it arrives, going to resolve this? Will Designer also benefit from whatever you're developing for Publisher?

 

Watching two hours of incredible animation made it so stark how hobbled we are in our everyday tasks while also trying to be loyal to Affinity.

I'd be very surprised if Affinity Publisher could resolve the exported live text issues in Illustrator, when Adobe haven't managed it with InDesign. Freehand, QuarkXpress and PageMaker were nightmarish in Illustrator also! 

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I detest how Adobe has had a chokehold on the design community for a quarter of a century, so I'm in support of Serif. But it's chicken and egg, precisely because of the last 25 years. Yes, Designer has a long way to go. We all know that. But the rate of adoption would be far higher if exported files could be opened without critical issues in the industry dominant software. Ironically, this would reduce the urgency of compatibility, and .afdesign files -- or at least Affinity-outputted .pdfs -- might gain a foothold.

 

Editable text seems such a basic. And .pdf is a non-Adobe standard. But Ai spits out otherwise valid .pdf files.

 

Sadly, of course, Adobe has no interest in mutual growth. Doesn't work? Tough.

 

So to deliver industry-workable files, we're left with only one choice if we stick with Affinity: create in the environment we prefer, and recreate in the industry dominant software.

 

To be honest, what working graphic designer has the time?

 

I bumped this thread in hope that someone had a neat trick up their sleeve. A method, no matter how bizarre, that didn't entail recreating designs.

 

No problem if your document is a few pages. But if it's 30+, the comfort of the UI becomes a luxury no one sane can afford.

 

We speak of problems none of us (I'm guessing) could technically solve. I have no doubt Serif knows what it is doing. I just wish there was an interim bridge. Some kind of workflow that was viable.

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47 minutes ago, ianrobertdouglas said:

...Editable text seems such a basic. And .pdf is a non-Adobe standard. But Ai spits out otherwise valid .pdf files...

The overall problem is that most of these formats, be it PDF, EPS or SVG and even they might be quite standardized, aren't handled by all software/apps equally well. EPS and PDF are much Adobe affected/influenced and there are several things here, which other than their software has still difficulties with or can't do. - The same applies to SVG here, which sadly also only few apps can handle in an acteptable manner (mostly webbrowsers and maybe partly Inkscape). For example try to import common editable curved text into AD.

Generally the parsers and generators for these formats, which are used by a bunch of different software products for import/export, are mostly incomplete or do just support a subset of the whole respective format specs. Thus always the overall difficulties and hazzle with the interoperation between applications here.

 

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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Hi all,

I think I've found a Mac solution. I'm not sure if it works in Windows, as the default text editor in Windows works a bit differently to the Mac's "TextEdit" app. 

 

The screenshot attached shows the original formatted text in AD to the left, the imported text box in AI at centre and the RTF file that I made by copying the AD text into TextEdit and then saving it as a RTF file. 

Illustrator was able to "Import" the RTF file, but I had to change the font from Myriad to the version of Helvetica that I used in AD! 

 

Screen Shot 2018-01-20 at 14.27.33.png

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6 hours ago, Paul Bravery said:

I think I've found a Mac solution

 

Doesn't work for me, sadly. In general, I have trouble copying text from within Designer to apps or locations outside Designer. For example, say I have a simple sentence. If I highlight and command-C, if I go to any app (Mail, Chrome, TextEdit, or anything else), press command-V, nothing is inputted.

 

I use the app Paste for clipboard control (quitting Paste makes no difference to the error), and it shows this if I copy text within Designer.

 

I have no clipboard issues in any other app.

 

 

Screen Shot 2018-01-20 at 10.28.08.png

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 19/01/2018 at 8:30 PM, Alirat said:

Here's a silly suggestion. Convert the clients to using Affinity. It's not a huge capital outlay and there is no subscription...

 

Thinking outside the box... Genius!  punk.gif

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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  • 2 months later...

AD has an option now to disable the conversion of texts to outlines in EPS format, but it has a strange behavior on Windows, when you uncheck it, still converts every text field to outlines. If you uncheck the "Convert texts to outlines" and click away then back to the EPS format settings in Export persona, you can see that the setting remains checked... or is it just me?

Branding, Identity Design, UI/UX Design.    |    https://whitex.design

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  • 3 months later...
On 4/26/2018 at 7:44 PM, WhiteX said:

AD has an option now to disable the conversion of texts to outlines in EPS format, but it has a strange behavior on Windows, when you uncheck it, still converts every text field to outlines. If you uncheck the "Convert texts to outlines" and click away then back to the EPS format settings in Export persona, you can see that the setting remains checked... or is it just me?

Where exactly is that option? I would like to export EPS with editable text but I can't find that option in Export Persona.

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Hi Malauch,

AD has a check box to uncheck so that the text remains editable, but for me, under Windows 10 and AD v.1.6.5.123, this box is impossible to uncheck and the text is converted into curves.
To display this option, click the "More" button in the "Export Settings" window.

Export EPS.png

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Is your text made with the "Artistic Text" tool, or the "Frame Text" tool? The latter is useless: I cannot find a way to export this in a way that remains editable, for example in Illustrator. The former remains editable, but you suffer the loss of flexibility that the Frame Text tool allows in terms of layout on blocks of text.

I'm not talking about .eps especially, but any way to get text from AD to remain editable in another program.

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