Forum: Inkscape Being able to work with Adobe Illustrator files in Inkscape

Hello,
I would like to share something that I have found extremely helpful,

before I migrated completely to linux I had adobe illustrator and 
photoshop
etc. But then I left window because of all its problems and now I use 
linux
exclusively.

The problem that I had faced in the past was whenever I had to use 
drawings
I had made in adobe illustrator cs and obviously because of format
differences I couldn't open them with inkscape. Well today I was excited 
to
have found a workaround to this problem.

before I continue you will need to have the program called GIMP 
installed in
addition to Inkscape

Here is my solution:

1) Go to the folder where you have your adobe illustrator file
2) Right click on the adobe Illustrator file and choose to open it with
GIMP, this will cause GIMP to load
3)GIMP will ask you a few things via a new window you, if you know what 
you
are doing feel free to modify them if not you can just click ok
4) Once the file loads in GIMP you can go to file-->Save AS, then type 
the
name that you want and change the extension of the file to JPEG. After 
you
do that click OK
5) when you click ok GIMP will notify you that it needs to export the
drawing, go ahead and slide the quality to 100% and click ok
6) after your drawing has been converted to JPEG open up Inkscape and go 
to
--->File-->Import bitmap, then browse to the folder where the JPEG file 
is
stored and click open. This will then place your drawing in the INKSCAPE
program.
7)When you have the drawing there you can use the Pen tool in Inkscape 
to
trace over your artwork once you are done you can discard the imported 
JPEG
and save your file as native inkscape file.

As you can see this solution requires some work to be done but hey, at 
least
you are able to use your Adobe Illustrator files and not panic about not
being able to open them like what happened to me in the past.

I hope this helps, if some one else has an easier solution feel free to 
let
me know.

Also maybe the developers of Inkscape can ask the ones who develop GIMP 
to
see what sort of converter they use to be able to open Adobe Illustrator
files.

--
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On 2007-July-10  , at 23:18 , chacmool wrote:
> [...]
> I hope this helps, if some one else has an easier solution feel  
> free to let
> me know.
>
> Also maybe the developers of Inkscape can ask the ones who develop  
> GIMP to
> see what sort of converter they use to be able to open Adobe  
> Illustrator
> files.

Illustrator files are basically PDF files with some extra stuff for
editing (a bit like Inkscape SVG files are SVG files with some extra
stuff for editing). Therefore, any PDF converter should be able to
process at least some of it. I tried some files with pstoedit and
some went through quite well. Furthermore, Inkscape has an AI import
filter which should allow you to open at least some AI files. The
extension is written in Perl so you need perl on your system (but you
probably have it already). There is even a python replacement in the
patch tracker if I remember well.
All this should allow you to get the information in vector form
directly, rather than retracing over your old drawing.
Another solution your your purpose is to install use Illustrator via
wine or any other windows virtualization software on linux and to
save all your AI files to svg for futher use in Inkscape. A quick one-
liner terminal command to locate all of them:
find /home -name *.ai

I hope this helps.

JiHO
---
http://jo.irisson.free.fr/



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On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:06:39 +0200, jiho wrote:

> Furthermore, Inkscape has an AI import filter which should allow you to
> open at least some AI files.

Personally, I've not had good luck with it.  Unfortunately, the files
themselves are internal-use only files, so I can't share them to improve
the filter (which bugs me no end), but I believe all of them are either
AI 10.0 (which I run under VMware when I need to) or CS3.

Jim



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On 7/10/07, jiho <jo.irisson@gmail.com> wrote:
> Illustrator files are basically PDF files with some extra stuff for
> editing (a bit like Inkscape SVG files are SVG files with some extra
> stuff for editing). Therefore, any PDF converter should be able to
> process at least some of it.

In fact, I expect that our PDF importer, currently in the works based
on libpoppler, will import _most_ of modern AI files (CS, CS2 etc).
They are standard PDF as far as I know. The libpoppler library grows
out of xpdf, so you can just install xpdf and try it on your AI files.
In my testing, it was able to display all of the PDF-based AI files I
have without any problem. And this means these files will soon be
directly importable into Inkscape.

> some went through quite well. Furthermore, Inkscape has an AI import
> filter which should allow you to open at least some AI files.

That filter only works on very old PS-based AI files (up to version 7
I think). Also it is very limited, unmaintained, and probably broken.
I think we'll just drop it as soon as we can import modern PDF-based
AI files via libpoppler.

--
bulia byak
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
http://www.inkscape.org

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Hi,

I think the best way to migrate from Illustrator to Inkscape is to save
the artwork as SVG in Adobe Illustrator (if you still have access to
Illustrator). Make sure you export to plain SVG without the Adobe
extensions.

The way you describe using Gimp with transforming your vectors to a 
raster
and then vectorize it again sounds a bit complicated and you certainly
also loose the structure of your file (layers, groups) which is 
preserved
using the SVG way.

Inkscape also has an ai.svg import filter. I haven't tried that, maybe 
it
helps to preserve even more of the original file structure?

Andreas

> The problem that I had faced in the past was whenever I had to use
> Here is my solution:
> 5) when you click ok GIMP will notify you that it needs to export the
>
> see what sort of converter they use to be able to open Adobe Illustrator
> Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take
> control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now.
> http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/
> _______________________________________________
> Inkscape-user mailing list
> Inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user
>


--
Andreas Neumann
Böschacherstrasse 6, CH-8624 Grüt/Gossau, Switzerland
Email: a.neumann@carto.net, Web:
* http://www.carto.net/ (Carto and SVG resources)
* http://www.carto.net/neumann/ (personal page)
* http://www.svgopen.org/ (SVG Open Conference)
* http://www.geofoto.ch/ (Georeferenced Photos of Switzerland)


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Ok,
I appreciate everyone's reply to my posting, I am getting some good 
ideas
here as to how to make things more efficient for me. I have tried using 
the
ai.svg filter to import Adobe Illustrator files before but I havent had 
any
good luck with that. Some one told me that importing adobe illustrator 8 
and
under files was much easier and they didnt lose their attributes (layers
etc.), but after AI 8 adobe started using a pdf type file format and 
that
made converting alot less efficient.


Jim Henderson-4 wrote:
> 
> Inkscape-user mailing list
> Inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user
> 
> 

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View this message in context: 
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On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 08:02:05AM +0200, Andreas Neumann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think the best way to migrate from Illustrator to Inkscape is to save
> the artwork as SVG in Adobe Illustrator (if you still have access to
> Illustrator). Make sure you export to plain SVG without the Adobe
> extensions.

This has worked best for me.  Illustrator does a horrible job on 
complicated
files, but anything is better than trying to re-vectorize.  Using GIMP 
to
save to JPEG, even at "100%" quality is a very bad idea, as even at that
level, you are getting files larger than a PNG, and still wasting time 
with
a lossy compression.

Jeff

Jeffrey Brent McBeth wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 08:02:05AM +0200, Andreas Neumann wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I think the best way to migrate from Illustrator to Inkscape is to save
>> the artwork as SVG in Adobe Illustrator (if you still have access to
>> Illustrator). Make sure you export to plain SVG without the Adobe
>> extensions.
> 
> This has worked best for me.  Illustrator does a horrible job on 
> complicated
> files, but anything is better than trying to re-vectorize.  Using GIMP 
> to
> save to JPEG, even at "100%" quality is a very bad idea, as even at that
> level, you are getting files larger than a PNG, and still wasting time 
> with
> a lossy compression.
> 
> Jeff

I agreed with what has been previously posted, as far as my approach:
- If you raster vector graphics (svg, pdf, ai, etc..) do not raster them 
into .jpeg, you'll loose to the artifacts of .jpeg compression 
algorithm, png has a much more efficient way of dealing with straigh 
lines, abrupt color transitions, and so on... features that are 
aknowledged in computer generated graphics (either 2d or 3d).

But, as far as Inkscape:
- Try to import the .ai (it has a lot of support - 'cause basicly it 
loads them as "pdf"s), the results for me have been great.
- Usually .ai import under Inkscape never fails, then just ungroup the 
item and its ready do be used.
- if it fails, either wine the illustrator (as well said) and generate a 
more friendly format (svg.. or alikes) or raster it to png and then 
vectorize it again - I often use POTRACE 
(http://potrace.sourceforge.net/#downloading)

Have fun,
hope it helps in any way (if not it stays as archive info for future 
questions =p)