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Hi guys,

 

first things first, thanks for this attempt. We really needed a serious try!

 

I by myself try hard to establish Designer in our agency workflow. But the most important thing for me ist still unanswered.

Your website an every article ist pointing out, that Designer is capable of handling .AI-files. 

 

At least from my perspective, I tried everything to open AI-files. My attempt always ends with an alert that the file format is not supported (see attachment). I tried to save my files for older version, but no success. Is there something I get wrong?

 

Cheers,

Alex

post-253-0-38504200-1406724189_thumb.png

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  • Staff

Hi Alex,

 

Welcome to the forums! :)  You're doing nothing at all wrong - Affinity Designer will be able to open your .ai files, but in this current beta it is not yet finished, so has not been included yet. In retrospect, perhaps it would've been better for us to pop up a dialog that tells you that the functionality is not ready yet when you attempt to open a .ai or .pdf file, for which I apologise. This feature will be coming soon, so please hang in there :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

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  • 1 year later...

Hi there, 

 

[ 15 months later:]

What's the current state of .ai (Illustrator) import?  [Oct 2015]

 

I want to recommend Designer to a friend, but they'll need to know if it can handle their .ai files.

 

Thanks,

 

- pbass

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pbass: Affinity apps now recognise the .ai file extension. For newer files we read the PDF stream. We don't currently support embedded fonts, or the more esoteric fills (eg mesh fills), and some Illustrator information isn't in the PDF at all such as all the layer names. If the .ai was saved without PDF then we can't open it.

 

Very old versions of Illustrator use EPS rather than PDF. The current beta will also open them, with even more caveats. In particular, text will be converted to curves.

 

In practice opening .ai files usually works pretty well. You could use the free Designer trial to check whether it handles the particular files you want to open.

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Opened a .eps illustrator but it did not come in as a vector but an image. Anyway to convert this to vector art?

 

Hi, astateecreative. Welcome to the forums.

 

Did you open it with File > Open, or did you Insert it as an image? If the latter, it will have become an embedded document. Using File > Open and then copying the contents to the document you want them in currently gives better results.

 

If the former: we do support vector from EPS so it sounds like your EPS just contained a bitmap. In which case, to convert it into vector art you would need to trace it. We don't have any way to do that automatically.

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Thanks for the quick & useful response, Dave.

I don't personally deal with Illie, but wanted to know before recommending Designer to someone who does.

 

While I have your attention:

How much of a Designer-exported .pdf makes it into Illustrator? Basic layers with shapes/fills/strokes & placed bitmaps?

 

Thanks,

 

- pbass

 

 

pbass: Affinity apps now recognise the .ai file extension. For newer files we read the PDF stream. We don't currently support embedded fonts, or the more esoteric fills (eg mesh fills), and some Illustrator information isn't in the PDF at all such as all the layer names. If the .ai was saved without PDF then we can't open it.

 

Very old versions of Illustrator use EPS rather than PDF. The current beta will also open them, with even more caveats. In particular, text will be converted to curves.

 

In practice opening .ai files usually works pretty well. You could use the free Designer trial to check whether it handles the particular files you want to open.

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  • 1 year later...

Today is October 30th 2016 and this issue is STILL not fixed!

 

Where can I get a refund? A program that's supposedly designer friendly STILL can't even open ai file easily! Are you people serious? You are wasting business owners' time!

 

This won;t be getting a good review from me on the MAC APP STORE

 

Terrible

post-34503-0-68790800-1477837418_thumb.png

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conundrum_11,

 

From your screenshot, the file has a ".ps" extension. That identifies it as a Postscript file, not an .ai one.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well…

If the .ai file is not pdf compatible then all I get inside AD is that Illustrator error panel telling me there is no pdf content.

 

If there is pdf content too, then AD imports it as pdf, and the size is not right.  It is scaled with this horrible 2.87… factor (coming from these archaic "point" measures).

 

So the question remains:  how do I convert my .ai files to AD without losing scale and without having to pass them all through Illustrator to give them pdf content?

Robert

(Affinity Designer—Affinity Photo—LiveCode—Mac OS X various)

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So the question remains:  how do I convert my .ai files to AD without losing scale and without having to pass them all through Illustrator to give them pdf content?

Short answer: you can't.

 

Longer answer: As explained here in the "Create PDF Compatible File" part of the "Save in Illustrator format" section, you must select this option even if you just want the Illustrator file to be compatible with other Adobe applications.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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And I would add that the "Create PDF Compatible File" is the default Illy setting. I understand users shutting that off as it saves on file space. But it makes it near useless to (as mentioned) other Adobe applications and those without Illy.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

Is there a trial version that I may download? I am really wanting to move away from Adobe but have some concerns about being able to access and edit my existing work so I'd like to give it a go before I purchase.

Thank you,

EIKT

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  • Staff

Hi EiKT,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Yes, you can download trials for both programs (both for Windows and Macinstosh) from the product pages on our website.

Here's the links: Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo. Scroll down to the bottom of each page and look for the Trial link right below the Buy buttons.

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  • 5 months later...
  • Staff

Hi blabbermouth,
This file doesn't include any PDF stream so we are not able to display/load anything from it. Affinity can only access the PDF stream of the Ai files - all the rest is proprietary. If the file wasn't saved in Adobe Illustrator with Create PDF Compatible File option checked there's no way to load/import its content in Affinity.

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