Adobe Illustrator Pattern Swatch issues

[petriknz]

So I open an ai file in Affinity Designer that contained Adobe Pattern Swatches. Everything shows nicely and has the patterns applied.

However as Affinity doesn't have Pattern Swatches. How do I extract the Pattern out of the file.

Affinity nicely shows the pattern in the Fill tool as being a bitmap fill but I can not apply it to another shape nor find anyway to save it out so I can bring it back in as the usual bitmap fill.

[v_kyr]

You can try to make reusable styles out of these. - Basically copy/paste the pattern bitmap over to a new doc and export it (let's say as an PNG or JPG file), then make a style out of it.

See for example:

• creating and saving styles and swatches in Affinity Designer

• ...etc...

[petriknz]

4 hours ago, v_kyr said:

You can try to make reusable styles out of these. - Basically copy/paste the pattern bitmap over to a new doc and export it (let's say as an PNG or JPG file), then make a style out of it.

See for example:

• creating and saving styles and swatches in Affinity Designer

• ...etc...

Ah, styles was a solution. Click item that contains the Illustrator pattern. Make that "style from selection" then you can apply that to a shape you want the pattern applied and edit with the fill tool. Though the adjustment handles don't show until you start dragging.

I'd still be interested to find out how to get the original pattern out as a png/jpg. The patterned shapes in the file were cropped so they were no longer seamless. So exporting the shape wouldn't work. The only place the original Illustrator pattern shows is in the Fill Swatch on the toolbar, but how to extract it from there?

[v_kyr]

3 minutes ago, petriknz said:

I'd still be interested to find out how to get the original pattern out as a png/jpg. The patterned shapes in the file were cropped so they were no longer seamless. So exporting the shape wouldn't work. The only place the original Illustrator pattern shows is in the Fill Swatch on the toolbar, but how to extract it from there?

Well I don't have or use Illustrator thus can't tell for sure here. But if you have a copy of it, you might can apply such a fill pattern to some shape and save/export that as PNG/JPG for reusing it in AD. - Other than that maybe the following gives some ideas or helps ...

• How to create patterns with the swatches ?

• Illustrator and Affinity Designer and swatches tutorial

• Mensch Mesch creating AD patterns tutorials

[petriknz]

6 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Well I don't have or use Illustrator thus can't tell for sure here. But if you have a copy of it, you might can apply such a fill pattern to some shape and save/export that as PNG/JPG for reusing it in AD. - Other than that maybe the following gives some ideas or helps ...

• How to create patterns with the swatches ?

• Illustrator and Affinity Designer and swatches tutorial

• Mensch Mesch creating AD patterns tutorials

If I had Illustrator I'd have opened the ai file in that. So it appears the styles method is the only option one has. Hey, it works.

[firstdefence]

If you have illustrator you can just drag the patterns onto a document, then export the patterns out.

Untitled-1.pdf

[petriknz]

4 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

If you have illustrator you can just drag the patterns onto a document, then export the patterns out.

Untitled-1.pdf

That's the point. I don't.

[v_kyr]

There are also online converters like this one though I don't know if these can handle pattern swatches etc. See also ...

• https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/open-ai-files-without-illustrator/