Fireworks to Affinity! Maintain Vector editability, keep content from pages.

[dizeyner]

Here's how to save your valuable Fireworks Assets, preserve editable vectors, keep the content on alternate pages from completely disappearing, or having to be painfully saved out as separate files.

You may desire to save all your FW PAGES out as individual files preserving layers instead of choosing to include them all in one file.

Before proceeding please note I have not tried this with PAGES that have "shared" layers. SO your mileage may vary.

My testing so far only includes FW files with multiple layers, groups and pages. None of which was shared across pages.

Open your fireworks file and for best results make sure EVERYTHING on every layer and every page is UNGROUPED, UNLOCKED and VISIBLE.

Convert text to paths IF you need to preserve the styles and effects applied to text. If you do not the text may remain editable when you open in Illustrator but it will have lost the styles and colors applied and be a weird pale green color.

EXPORT the file as "FXG and Images" Select ALL PAGES from the Menu before clicking on "save".

Open illustrator C5 or newer.

Create a NEW Illustrator document.

PLACE the FXG file you saved out from FW into the new document.

EVERY page from the original FW file is present but now everything is now on one "page". You have lost individual pages--but at least everything is there and you can add artboards or pages to affinity and move items over to additional pages or artboards. Not as neat as your FW pages were but better than nothing. And considering all Affinity has to offer its a small price to pay. 

NEXT Go to the layers panel and make sure everything that can be ungrouped is UNGROUPED, UNLOCKED, and NOT Hidden. If you have not already converted text to paths do it now as editable text will not be preserved when you open the file in Affinity Design.

RESAVE AS an Illustrator CS5 or better .ai file. UNcheck "compression" before you save.

OPEN the .ai file in Affinity. DONT FREAK OUT. The thumbnail preview will look scary but its all okay. Just click to open the file.

Viola. Every vector is there and editable. Though you may have to yet again UNGROUP if you neglected to do this in any of the steps above.

Not all of your styles or effects will have been preserved in the vectors. At least you havent lost everything. And wont have to start from scratch. Select individual vector items and you can ADD their styles in Affinitys style panel for use in other projects. 

NOTE: you might ask why cant I just save out as .ai from FW. Well the problem there is that FW only saves out as an ancient version of Illustrator 8 and nothing is preserved when the file is opened in Affinity. 

You can also save from illustrator as an EPS and open that in Affinity. I don't like using EPS as the colors "shift" noticeably and the quality of the graphics dont seem to be as well preserved as when you go from Fireworks to FXG and then to Illustrator and back out as C25 .ai or better.
 

[dizeyner]

Appending to add an image showing other methods for going from fireworks to Affinity. I think saving as a PSD and then opening in Affinity was the least painful. I was surprised to find the vectors remained editable. You have to save one page at a time though. SVG allows exporting all pages to files at one time. Everything remained editable...just not always desireable to look upon.

I so wish I could just open my PNG from fireworks in all its glory. I mean if you can open a "proprietary" PSD why not a "propriety" Fireworks PNG. Just my two bits.

I sure HOPE affinity can create an apple as I did in Fireworks.

Click image to view larger. all Image rights reserved. You may not use them under any conditions.