Opening .ai files in Affinity Designer

[Furry]

Mostly I have no difficuty in opening .ai files but there are few wrinkles. I have discovered, for example, that textures applied in Illustrator become images when opened in Designer. In that case, I go back to Illustrator, remove the texture, resave and then open again in Designer and apply noise to the previously tectured fill. It's not the same but I can live with that.

But I have come across one file that has me beat on several fronts. As well as textures, it incorporates a blend. But most of all, when opened in Illustrator, its overall tone is much lighter than when opened in Designer. Some lighter shades are almost black in Designer.

I decided to upload it here (even though it is around 200MB) to see whether some of you gurus can deal with it better than I have. I am, after all, still learning Designer and persuading my brain to unlearn all the Illustrator techniques. Apart from anything else, this file is of an historic subject which some may find interesting -- the 1910 logo for Ariel, a now extinct British motorcycle company.

Ariel logo 1 1910.ai

[Dan C]

It looks like your stroke's that have been clipped have been converted to vector shapes with a default colour as it cant pull over the stroke gradient to a vector.  This is normal behaviour so will just need a little bit of adjustment post import I'm afraid.

I can certainly appreciate the logo as a motorsport enthusiast. Great work!

Lee

[Furry]

Hmmm...

Thanks for your reply, LeeThorpe. I'm not sure I understand entirely as gradients (whether stroke or fill) usually come over the Designer more or less intact. Clipping paths are another story and I usually have to extract objects from the clipping path in Illustrator and then reconstruct the clipping path shape in Designer, cut the shapes and then paste them inside the reconstructed shape -- a clipping path under another name but in a form that Designer can handle.

Glad you liked the logo. Over the years I have reproduced hundreds of them. I am not into motorsport (either cars or cycles) but am fascinated by the design of logos and, whenever I see one that appeals to me, I try to reproduce it. This is not a profitable exercise but satisfies an itch in me.

[foto-grafic]

Completely in agreement with @Lee Thorpe
we would need to lighten the snakes a little.

Great brand that unfortunately no longer exists ...

[Furry]

Thanks, foto-grafic. Yes, I know the snakes need to be lightened but my basic question is why does the switch from Illustrator to Designer cause them to darken.

Yes, a bit sad about Ariel. According to my records, “Ariel Motorcycles was a British maker of bicycles and then motorcycles in Bournbrook, Birmingham. It was an innovator in British motorcycling, part of the Ariel marque. The company was sold to BSA in 1951 but the brand survived until 1967. The last motorcycle-type vehicle to carry the Ariel name was a short-lived three-wheel tilting moped in 1970.”

Makes me wonder how many other logos you petrol-heads would like me to offer.  ::tongue-in-cheek::

[Dan C]

The limitation comes from the fact that Adobe's .ai files are proprietary and Affinity pulls the information from the PDF stream embedded within the file, which is a bit of clever workaround and works for most things.

Unfortunately this scenario isn't one of them, it generally brings over the gradient but some features in that particular gradient/layer style aren't included in the PDF.

 

[Furry]

Thanks LeeThorpe.

Your explanation sort-of makes sense to me. In my efforts to wean myself off Adobe, I have, gradually over many months, converted literally hundred of .ai files to Designer. Yes, there have been the occasional glitch (as I indicated in an earlier post) but this is the first big problem I have struck. Affinity seems to have a good understanding of the inner workings of PDFs as it is helpful sometimes to be able to open PDFs in Publisher.