Exporting to Illustrator

[duskwalker]

Hi,

I've just downloaded the Affinity Designer trial, and am quite impressed. However, I am a design student and my school computers have adobe programs. As far as I can tell, I can't find any way of exporting Designer files as Ai files? I can see the option to export as psd, and I've tried to open Ai files using Designer with no problems - but I wanted to check whether there was a way of exporting to Ai that I had missed.

Thanks 

[MEB]

Hi duskwalker,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

No, Affinity Designer/Photo is not able to export as Ai. Your best bet is to export as PDF. Although a few things will be lost (meaning they will not be fully editable in Illustrator or may be rasterised) it's probably the best format to keep most things editable.

[Roger terry]

I just tried exporting in PDF, SVG and EPS from a created afdesign file.

all the results are different, please see attached. This export issue is a bit of a problem.

[befehr]

I have been in CorelDRAW this week and have been playing with their export function as Adobe Illustrator. They do a pretty good job and gives you the option as to what version of Illy you want to export to, up to CS6. 

So, I thought Affinity couldn't add that functionality because of some licensing issues with Adobe. Is that not the case? Corel seems to be doing it.

hmmm?

[MrPhysicist]

Export from Affinity Designer seems to be a total trainwreck so far. PDF export loses layer structure and names in addition to rasterizing objects instead of preserving the vector format. I am using v1.65.123.

This is game breaker, as I need to export fully compatible files to collaborators who use different apps like Illustrator.

 

Please, please, PLEASE implement improve the export function. Also, Illustrator file-export would be great (as long as it preserves document appearance and structure, of course). This feature would definitely make switching over to Affinity much easier for people.
 

[EDIT] Although far from perfect, SVG at least keeps layer groups and titles. it does still rasterize objects, though.
[EDIT2]: SVGs generated this way are imported into Illustrator with heavy artifacts such as wrong line thicknesses. Thus no alternative.

[Tevya]

I'm using the trial to assess if we can switch from Photoshop and Illustrator to Affinity. So far this is the only issue we've encountered. Sometimes we need to produce Illustrator files for printers.

I 2nd that: PLEASE get a proper export/save function to AI format. It imports them just great (as far as I can tell), why not export them as well?

[befehr]

For now, anytime I need to provide a file as an AI (or even a good PDF) , I'll just create the artwork in CorelDRAW because I can't get anything out of Designer, at least not a print-friendly scalable vector. I don't dare think about trying to creating something for a large print job like a banner.

Sadly this means I have to run Win10 on my mac just for CorelDRAW, which is stupid, but you do what you have to do.

[Tevya]

Dang! Between this and the fact it doesn't do gradient meshes (won't even open them properly from AI), I'm not sure I can switch. I pay over $50/mo just for Photoshop and Illustrator. I was really hopeful I'd pay 2 months worth for Affinity, and be done with that mess. But between these 2 issues, I just don't know if I can go all in. : (

[befehr]

I hear they have the gradient mesh tool planned. Whether or not THAT will be compatible with ai is another story.

[ckly26]

Hello  
so I'm facing a similar issue too, whereby I'm required to collaborate with Adobe users. So far, I've found that exporting into EPS helps but they don't quite seem to like it. 

[befehr]

3 hours ago, ckly26 said:

Hello  
so I'm facing a similar issue too, whereby I'm required to collaborate with Adobe users. So far, I've found that exporting into EPS helps but they don't quite seem to like it. 

I hope the developers make this a priority. 

[liakos]

hey everyone, i just wanted to say that i use AD for animation assets and without AI export i end up having to brake-down the svgs and rename 300-400 layers. even rudimentary illustrator format exporting would help me too :D

[jamesholden]

On 11/17/2018 at 10:51 PM, liakos said:

hey everyone, i just wanted to say that i use AD for animation assets and without AI export i end up having to brake-down the svgs and rename 300-400 layers. even rudimentary illustrator format exporting would help me too

 

Wow. Please developers comment on this ASAP.

[wtrmlnjuc]

Yeah, exporting to PDF doesn’t cut it right now. Not when all the text is exported as shapes instead of embedded fonts. Makes it hard to collaborate with Ai users. 

[Fixx]

5 hours ago, wtrmlnjuc said:

Not when all the text is exported as shapes instead of embedded fonts

Text is exported to PDF with embedded fonts unless you have selected "Convert to curves" in export settings. 

But yes, legacy AI format would help.

[liakos]

On 11/19/2018 at 4:29 PM, jamesholden said:

 

Wow. Please developers comment on this ASAP.

Just need to mention that upon further research even an illustrator file would have me do shitloads of work but it'd be a start.... the easiest way is to rasterize and export PSD. For a full workflow, affinity would  need to save a full proper AI file and my animation software would need to get that full, layers and naming included as it does with psd's...

[ppscvalentin]

Just a had a really embarrassing moment when trying to export some mockups I wanted to pass to another designer. Horrible export options with unpredictable loss of data! Am I using a hobbyist's software?

Together with the +1 pixel issue on exports for print (see below) Affinity Designer just isn't production ready. Please fix this because I really like the software otherwise.

 

[Mitz51]

I love how Affinity Designer is as user friendly as Freehand used to be, however the inability to export to AI format is a huge oversight. I want to use AD to create scalable logos that can be handed off to clients and vendors but unfortunately they require AI format. I'm hoping this issue will be solved very soon.

[befehr]

21 hours ago, Mitz51 said:

I love how Affinity Designer is as user friendly as Freehand used to be, however the inability to export to AI format is a huge oversight. I want to use AD to create scalable logos that can be handed off to clients and vendors but unfortunately they require AI format. I'm hoping this issue will be solved very soon.

Agreed. This program, like Xara, Sketch, etc., is great for web images but for handoff of a scalable file to other members of my team or to print vendors make it useless. PDFs seem like they should be the solution, but they’re not.

I’ve just switched back to Illustrator on both my work and home computers. Never thought I’d say I missed it, but I do.

[Cobalt]

I came here today about to post for the same issue. I am having terrible time communicating dieline files with printers in China.
They all use AI and when they open the PDFs I send them a lot of things come in rasterized and structure info is lost. 

[SrPx]

On 1/20/2019 at 7:38 PM, befehr said:

 PDFs seem like they should be the solution, but they’re not.

I'm curious... Why PDF doesn't work for you? And I mean, I am interested, genuinely curious about it. Mostly as I am doing projects, exporting as PDF, and it all seems correct here, both from all the 3 Affinity products... but I might be missing a lot of stuff... So, I'd like to know... I'm versed in this kind of things, but had used less Affinity line in my workflows... till now.

14 hours ago, Cobalt said:

They all use AI and when they open the PDFs I send them a lot of things come in rasterized and structure info is lost. 

Why is that? If one hits the "more" button in PDF's Affinity export, one can set not to rasterize anything.... Maybe they rasterize them not knowing how to deal with some things in their side ? (another genuine question)

[befehr]

Certain fx or ANY adjustments are not considered vector, like blur, drop shadows, etc. So they get rasterized. Illustrator does the same thing but since PDF is Adobe it’s handled differently I guess. 

[v_kyr]

How should a real vector format handle it otherwise, if those things aren't rasterized and injected as bitmap data into an otherwise plain vector format? - Let's take a little excerpt from it's (the PDF) predecessor EPS here which tells why rasterization occurs ...

Quote

Why do EPS (vector) file formats require a specified resolution?

The key word here is rasterization.

EPS is customarily a flat file format. Flat File meaning objects are either 100% opaque or 100% transparent -- there's no in between. This means if you use raster effects such as soft shadows, feathering, glows, etc. the only way to maintain that appearance is via raster images.

All printers only print raster data. When you print vector art it has to pass through a Raster Image Processor (RIP). When the RIP sees art with the shadows and glows, it queries the print driver and asks for the resolution of the printer then the RIP rasterizes these effects at that resolution.

If you are not printing and only saving vector art with these shadows and glows, the application needs to know at what resolution you want rasterization to occur. It can't guess because it's a dumb machine which only does what its told. Most vector applications do the rasterization "on-the-fly" when saving to a flat file format such as EPS. So the app is giving you the opportunity to tell it what you want rather than just defaulting to some predetermined setting.

This is why you are asked for a resolution when saving to EPS.

Make no mistake, if you are using soft-edges effects like glows and shadows you are generating raster elements when saving to the EPS format. Any time anything needs to be "flattened" there is the possibility of introducing embedded raster images into a flat file format. So, transparency settings, gradients, blending modes, shadows, glows, etc may all utilize the resolution setting.

If you are not using such soft-edge objects, then the resolution is just there for times when it is needed. It will have no effect on actual hard-edged vector art without glows and shadows, etc. when saving. Vector data is saved as vector data, it's only when you've introduced the objects which need flattening that the resolution option is needed.

 

[Cobalt]

7 hours ago, SrPx said:

Why is that? If one hits the "more" button in PDF's Affinity export, one can set not to rasterize anything.... Maybe they rasterize them not knowing how to deal with some things in their side ? (another genuine question)

Yes, I ended up using the "Do not rasterize anything" setting, but I had to go in and remove all Fx. Any single fx basically seems to rasterize the entire layer structure it is in. Also layer nesting is not preserved in general. If a number of layers are inside a parent layer and the parent layer itself has no objects other than the nested layers themselves, the parent layer is dropped and all children are simply spilled into a large mess ... that is unless it is a glitch with my copy of Designer, or I am doing something wrong.

[lllusion]

Well crap. This is a major issue.

I can export as PDF but some elements are changed to images. And exporting to EPS is worse. What's the point of Affinity Designer if it can't export into 100% vector format files that all printers and screen-printers require????