JevoUK Posted December 21, 2017 Share Posted December 21, 2017 I work for a print company and I am testing AD in the hope that we can replace Illustrator with AD, Now I set up a file as we do in Illustrator in AD and saved it as a PDF when I opened the file in Illustrator the text did not show up as shown in the image below, If you look closely you will notice we have a code in the top right corner of each artwork that is text but the main text is not showing. The text is not outlined. Artistic Text Tool used. I opened the file on our RIP station and the text showed up ok so I assume it will print correctly. In illustrator I highlighted the a text layer you will notice it has dropped to the bottom left of the artboard but I can not do anything with it. This happens in the App store version and the Beta version. Set up process We have a cnc cutter file (PDF) set up with camera dots on 1 layer and cutter lines on another, We then drag and drop artwork into the document and align it to the cutter lines then save the file as a PDF to send to our Vutek printer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alig Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 Try to see if it got behind the blue rectangle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JevoUK Posted December 23, 2017 Author Share Posted December 23, 2017 The text is not behind the blue rectangle take a close look at the bottom left of the art board in my screen shot I have clicked on a type layer and the text is in the bottom left corner of the art board. If you zoom in and drag it away from the corner & scale it up there is no text and it cannot be edited. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaffeeundsalz Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 I probably don't understand your workflow, so bear with me if these questions might sound stupid: If you want to ditch Illustrator, why does it even matter how it opens PDFs created by Affinity Designer? If this is mandatory to your workflow, doesn't this mean that you'd have to keep both applications? In fact, why would want to open PDFs with Illustrator in the first place, since PDF is designed as an interchange file format for completed documents? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JevoUK Posted January 1, 2018 Author Share Posted January 1, 2018 If our client needs changes to artwork and we send them a pdf to pass off that we made changes to in AD then they won’t open correctly in illustrator. If PDF is an interchangeable file format then surely it should open up correctly in all applications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 It's up to the application opening a PDF to do so as faithfully as possible. AI is the absolute worst application to open PDFs. Adobe will tell you so. PDF is a format that is only a "universal" format in regards to opening it for print or in a Reader-type of exchange. It was not and is not still a universal format intended for editing. That other applications may do so better than AI is not material. BTW, unless a PDF file is saved from AI with an embedded copy of the AI file, Illy struggles with faithful opening of it as well. AI opens the embedded AI file, not the PDF, if it is so saved with the embedded AI file (which is the default setting). If AI compatibility is important to your clients, there is no better option than to use AI. Second best, and I've never had it fail (I have had certain effects I've needed to rebuild once in a while), is using CorelDraw and saving as an AI file. It has the best non-Adobe AI export that I have experience with (beyond some simple line drawings from like a CAD application). Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaffeeundsalz Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 Thanks for the clarification, @JevoUK. In this case, PDF is not the desired file format to use. 14 hours ago, JevoUK said: If PDF is an interchangeable file format then surely it should open up correctly in all applications. This sounds like a misunderstanding, so sorry for not being clear enough. What I wanted to say is this: PDF is the format of choice for finished documents that don't need any further editing. Whenever your clients want to edit artworks you send them, the preferable solution is to use the identical editing application on both sides along with the application's native file format, in your case Illustrator and .ai files. PDF is designed for universal display accuracy. It's not (and never was) designed for editing accuracy. This is why your PDF should render just fine in reader applications made for viewing. PDF editing, while possible, will rarely go without problems, just as @MikeW pointed out. All of this means that you'll want to work in .ai as long as possible. Only when you're sure everything is done, as a last step in your workflow, should you export your design to PDF. And if you later find out that you've missed something, rather than editing the exported PDF, you'll want to go back to the latest version of you .ai document, make your changes there and then export to PDF again. If you want to switch to Affinity Designer, convince your clients to do the same and you can start exchanging .afdesign files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MattP Posted January 2, 2018 Staff Share Posted January 2, 2018 To be clear, if it shows the exported PDF has succeeded in Preview and if you can open the PDF correctly back into Affinity Designer (which I assume works fine?) then Affinity is not at fault here - we can't be held responsible for anyone else's inability to read valid PDF files. We can obviously look to tweak our PDF output to make Illustrator happy, but we really shouldn't need to be doing this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JevoUK Posted January 3, 2018 Author Share Posted January 3, 2018 Kaffeeundsalz It can be difficult to change peoples habits if all they have known is Illustrator, I mean I keep mentioning it to my department manager but he just can not see past Illustrator. but i do keep trying. MattP I just opened an AD PDF in Acrobat and it opened perfectly so yes it is Adobe that can't make things standard across their apps. So carry on nothing to see here MattP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VIPStephan Posted January 3, 2018 Share Posted January 3, 2018 Usually Illustrator opens PDFs exported from AD fine. The only problem I had was that text was converted to curves if the font isn’t stored in the default system font directory. I could imagine that the culprit with the file mentioned in the first post is that the text is rotated and not converted to curves. So, perhaps converting it to curves solves the display issue temporarily. That would mean, however, that it would have to be recreated in Illustrator if that needs changes. You could perhaps add a layer with instructions (font family, size, weight etc. to use) so that the people using Illustrator can work with it. MattP 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaffeeundsalz Posted January 5, 2018 Share Posted January 5, 2018 On 1/3/2018 at 6:50 AM, JevoUK said: It can be difficult to change peoples habits if all they have known is Illustrator That's oh so true. Hence, my comment wasn't meant without some irony. That said, I like that you're actually trying to convince people of AD. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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