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Hi everybody,

I am experiencing quite a few problems to get my designs from Affinity Designer to FontLab. Theoretically, I would expect that things would work like in this video (have a look at 1:32 onwards):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2sJiFcOm-8

You can paste drawings directly from Illustrator to the FontLab sketchboard. Unfortunately, that doesn’t currently seem to work, or rather, drawings are pasted as pixel images to the FontLab sketchboard, regardless of selecting “Copy images as SVG” or not. 

But then there is the option of saving a drawing to EPS and importing it to the FontLab sketchboard. Unfortunately, the results are somewhat odd, and I don’t know what to make of it. Firstly, not all of the export options will produce an EPS file that is recognised by FontLab. “Save for Print” creates an EPS file that is recognised, whereas “Save for Export” doesn’t work. I think it has to do with the relative coordinates, but I don’t know. Secondly, when the import works, the result looks incredibly strange. Importing an Affinity Designer document showing a simple cross will end up with the result shown below. In a way, I like the result, but it is clear that you cannot work this way. Again, I don’t know what to make of it.

So is this a problem of Fontlab or of the EPS export algorithm used in Affinity Designer?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated …

Alex :)

 

Original-Drawing.png.0f81a10706428f04b32c687b009db493.png 

 

 Fontlab-Import.png.2ea6b12e6fd7b19969dc15842804c13c.png

 

Cross.afdesign

Cross-For-Print.eps

 

 

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I was just going to try Fontlab out in tandem with Affinity Designer (ADe), glad I read this.

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On 16/02/2018 at 3:25 PM, A_B_C said:

Hmm … unfortunately, it seems to work only with very simple shapes. Even an only slightly more complicated shape like this arrow doesn’t seem to work. Or I am doing something terribly wrong … these are my export settings … :/

 

uni21A6.afdesign

uni21A6.eps

 

My-Settings.png.4588e47aa72cf18c22f782508659b759.png

 

 

I imported your EPS file into High-Logic FontCreator without any major problems, Alex. The direction of the contour was wrong, and there were a lot of redundant points, but it looked correct even before I fixed those two things.

 

It will be interesting to hear what the FontLab people have to say.

 

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Thank you, Alfred, for checking this! I just received a message from FontLab, and it seems they haven’t changed their EPS importer for the new version yet. Sigh. I had hoped that FontLab VI would have better EPS import than FontLab Studio 5, which could import only very basic drawings supported by legacy Illustrator EPS formats … :(

Well, that’s actually very sad. I attached the respective page from the FontLab Studio 5 manual below. It seems that even FontLab VI just supports Illustrator 8 Legacy EPS, whatever that means. I don’t know much about the technical differences between these EPS versions. Would it be difficult to add this as an export option to Designer? With all the new snapping options that will be available in Designer 1.7, it would be just sad if we could not use Designer for drawing glyphs that could be imported directly to FontLab … :(

But thank you, everybody!

Alex

 

Illustrator-Legacy-EPS.thumb.png.367879f4e88564d6a738fddd96e6a2aa.png

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These are the warnings upon saving as an Illustrator 8 eps.

 

5a8724a1b35c3_ScreenShot2018-02-16at18_33_53.thumb.png.504c3bbd53bdba344e9cbf4cd4c120e9.png5a8724a6a1ff6_ScreenShot2018-02-16at18_34_12.thumb.png.a295da085941d9f5515c7d01452e9f7f.png

 

This is how the Illustrator 8 eps imports.

 

5a8725a281254_ScreenShot2018-02-16at18_39_36.thumb.png.feab47e87a2547612e8e0d7ebc3219b5.png

 

and this is the file to test.

uni21A6 Illustrator8.eps

 

Explanation of Illustrator 8 EPS

 

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Apparently its all about the Postscript 3.0.

 

Quote

Simply put, it’s that magic PostScript # 3.0. This is the last PostScript level that worked with non-Adobe software programs such as Corel, Freehand, etc. It’s a shame, but that’s how it goes!

 

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Thank you for this link, firstdefence … that was an interesting read. And your Illustrator 8 EPS works just perfectly with FontLab! :)

But there is one weird thing. You can actually export from Affinity Designer to Postscript 3.0. Just export to Postscript Level 2, and you will get the declaration PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0 as described in the article you shared. But despite this, FontLab won’t open the Affinity Designer EPS, but only the Illustrator 8 EPS.

 

Level-2.png.b24818010fa620753b22fafd221d2338.png

 

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@A_B_C Even though the files both have PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0 they are very different files, with the adobe version there is reams of code - its epic, yet the Affinity EPS is, in comparison, very elegant and short.

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Well I've just done God Mode on Exporting and Importing lol! And the results are in...

 

I think I have successfully transitioned a SVG exported from Designer into FontLab O.o

  • I can get SVG's into FontLab from Designer by using SVG for Export.
  • Once exported, I go to FontLab and select File > Import > Artwork... or <Ctrl> + D
  • The SVG imports and I have the Arrow you created on the sketchboard.
  • I then right-clicked on the SVG and chose Interpret SVG
  • Now you have a workable vector

5a87568535cc5_ScreenShot2018-02-16at22_05_25.png.7c3f422817dd61984fc814312c5c2d85.png

 

This is what I ended up with.

5a87568e3058e_ScreenShot2018-02-16at22_08_45.png.ce8d8f73c00ed97e5949ae0a41e591eb.png

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Note exporting from an artboard seems to mess up the svg import and you get a black box, also convert any text to curves first, I tried a more complex shape to see how well it imports in. see below...

 

5a87675a1582f_ScreenShot2018-02-16at23_18_48.png.13366c431599ff94b170869ee336401f.png

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Thank you so much for your efforts, firstdefence … :)

This is just perfect. I must confess, I have been there today as well, interpreting my SVG export in Fontlab, but my results were far from convincing. Now, after reading your last post, I decided to give it a second shot, and guess what? I immediately knew what was going wrong with my SVG transfer the whole day long. I was using fractional coordinates for my vectors in Affinity Designer and had Contour > Preview Rounding ticked in Fontlab … no wonder that my shapes came through distorted … try it with a more complex glyph and you will see what I mean … and that was basically the reason why I decided to explore the EPS route … sigh …

I am so glad that you wrote this last post tonight. Without this, I fear I would never have tried SVG a second time! Huge thanks, and have a wonderful weekend! :)

Alex

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same to you too happy Glyphing thumbup1.gif

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Hi Leigh,

basically, it seems to be a problem with FontLab. Their EPS importer obviously didn’t get any improvements in version VI. On the other hand, importing and interpreting SVG from Affinity Designer is working reasonably well now. Which was a major hurdle with Fontlab Studio 5. So the situation has much improved with the new version.

I am not sure about the differences between the file formats, Illustrator 8 EPS and newer versions. It seems, for some (legacy?) applications, Illustrator 8 EPS seems to ensure compatibility.

Explanation of Illustrator 8 EPS

But I must confess I really cannot assess if it would be difficult to add this export option to Affinity Designer. So it would certainly be welcome, if you mentioned this issue to Dave (I believe he wrote the import and export algorithms). If he waves it aside as being too difficult, well, it would be fine. I’d just go with SVG then.

In any case, thank you very much for coming back to this.

Much appreciated.

Alex :)

 

 

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  • 1 year later...

Hi, I'm currently testing FontLab 6.1.4 and Affinity Designer beta 1.7.0.11. I still can't copy and paste from Affinity Designer to FontLab in order to get it directly to vectors. It works with Adobe Illustrator CS6 though. Any news about this? I don't want to export and import and definitely don't want to use the Autotrace because it makes no sense to trace artworks that are already in vectors. Many thanks. 

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