Illustration trapped on Inkscape
June 21, 2017 12:31 PM Subscribe
I have about 150 hours in an illustration on Inkscape, but now I can't seem to save or export it in any other format than .svg without it losing a significant amount of detail. I've tried sending it to a friend who has Illustrator as an .eps and it won't even open the file. I have a ton of time in this, so any help would much appreciated.
When I was a lot younger I taught myself Adobe Illustrator. Fast forward 15 years and I needed to create a vector drawing, didn't want to pay for Illustrator and so stumbled across Inkscape, assumed it had all the same capabilities and jumped right in.
However, what is it they say about assuming? After finishing my illustration I came to export it as an .eps (that's what my printer needs) and stuff started to get weird. Layers were disappearing, gradients were flattening, it wasn't pretty.
Having done a little research it turns out Inkscape does not like gradients or transparencies. Problem is my illustration has a ton of them.
I'm relatively front end savvy, not so much back end, but I'm at my wits end with this. I've spent a ton of time on google and can't seem to find a solution that will work. Any help on this would be very gratefully received.
When I was a lot younger I taught myself Adobe Illustrator. Fast forward 15 years and I needed to create a vector drawing, didn't want to pay for Illustrator and so stumbled across Inkscape, assumed it had all the same capabilities and jumped right in.
However, what is it they say about assuming? After finishing my illustration I came to export it as an .eps (that's what my printer needs) and stuff started to get weird. Layers were disappearing, gradients were flattening, it wasn't pretty.
Having done a little research it turns out Inkscape does not like gradients or transparencies. Problem is my illustration has a ton of them.
I'm relatively front end savvy, not so much back end, but I'm at my wits end with this. I've spent a ton of time on google and can't seem to find a solution that will work. Any help on this would be very gratefully received.
Response by poster: Thanks. I just tried this, but it's telling me the same thing as when I sent it to my friend and he tried to open it 'This operation cannot complete because of an unknown error [RNDR].'
posted by AllTheQuestions at 1:31 PM on June 21, 2017
posted by AllTheQuestions at 1:31 PM on June 21, 2017
Best answer: I do fine with gradients and transparencies in Inkscape, but I only use it casually.
What happens if you open the svg in chrome or firefox? From there you could print to pdf, and then use pdf2eps to convert to eps, though that may also cause problems. Also if you can get it to save as .ps then ps-> eps is pretty safe and trivial.
But as for the source of the problem: have you tried doing things like simplifying paths, converting all objects to paths, things like that? What this comes down to is that the exact same rendering can come about from any number of distinct conceptual sources, and some of the methods may have advantages in use but result in insanely large files or other problems. Consider e.g. making a zillion little gray squares filled with gradients, vs. making one little gray square and cloning it a zillion times. Neither one is necessarily "better", but one may be fine for your exporting and the other not so much. Generally my exports go smoother and files get much smaller when I simplify paths and, often object > path helps too. See here for details on those if you need it.
Also: Inkscape can be rather computationally and memory intense, and sometimes these intensive things break more when the system is under load . Have you tried the export on a more powerful computer, or on your computer but with everything else shut down?
Finally, there's an "Inkscape svg" and a vanila svg. I think basically inskcape can do some things with svg that aren't part of the formal spec, so saving your project as normal/plain svg will probably help with the illustrator import. If the plain svg looks different than the inkscape svg, then you are using features that plain svg cannot handle. Once in plain svg format, try this online svg->eps converter.
As I said I'm no expert but I have mucked around with this stuff before, if you want to send me the file or post it online I could take a look for things specific to your SVG.
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:34 PM on June 21, 2017
What happens if you open the svg in chrome or firefox? From there you could print to pdf, and then use pdf2eps to convert to eps, though that may also cause problems. Also if you can get it to save as .ps then ps-> eps is pretty safe and trivial.
But as for the source of the problem: have you tried doing things like simplifying paths, converting all objects to paths, things like that? What this comes down to is that the exact same rendering can come about from any number of distinct conceptual sources, and some of the methods may have advantages in use but result in insanely large files or other problems. Consider e.g. making a zillion little gray squares filled with gradients, vs. making one little gray square and cloning it a zillion times. Neither one is necessarily "better", but one may be fine for your exporting and the other not so much. Generally my exports go smoother and files get much smaller when I simplify paths and, often object > path helps too. See here for details on those if you need it.
Also: Inkscape can be rather computationally and memory intense, and sometimes these intensive things break more when the system is under load . Have you tried the export on a more powerful computer, or on your computer but with everything else shut down?
Finally, there's an "Inkscape svg" and a vanila svg. I think basically inskcape can do some things with svg that aren't part of the formal spec, so saving your project as normal/plain svg will probably help with the illustrator import. If the plain svg looks different than the inkscape svg, then you are using features that plain svg cannot handle. Once in plain svg format, try this online svg->eps converter.
As I said I'm no expert but I have mucked around with this stuff before, if you want to send me the file or post it online I could take a look for things specific to your SVG.
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:34 PM on June 21, 2017
Best answer: I'd do a "select all" and "Path->Object To Path" and "Path->Stroke To Path" a couple of times, and then send the resulting EPS or SVG.
I recently took an Inkscape SVG to a T-shirt printing place, and wow does Illustrator's SVG handling suck, but after a couple of tries to convert everything to path we were able to get done what we needed to get done.
posted by straw at 1:38 PM on June 21, 2017
I recently took an Inkscape SVG to a T-shirt printing place, and wow does Illustrator's SVG handling suck, but after a couple of tries to convert everything to path we were able to get done what we needed to get done.
posted by straw at 1:38 PM on June 21, 2017
Can you send the printer a TIF or PNG? Inkscape can export image files at any resolution, and when I run into edge cases or bugs in PDF renderers, I just use a high-res PNG instead.
posted by ectabo at 1:50 PM on June 21, 2017
posted by ectabo at 1:50 PM on June 21, 2017
What happens if you open the svg in chrome or firefox? From there you could print to pdf, and then use pdf2eps to convert to eps, though that may also cause problems.
Hey, there's an idea. You could just print directly from Inkscape though.
EPS is part of the PDF standard, so there shouldn't be a conversion problem. Illustrator can open PDFs directly anyways.
posted by neckro23 at 2:45 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Hey, there's an idea. You could just print directly from Inkscape though.
EPS is part of the PDF standard, so there shouldn't be a conversion problem. Illustrator can open PDFs directly anyways.
posted by neckro23 at 2:45 PM on June 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks for all the suggestions, I'm slowly trying to work my way through this.
I selected all and converted to paths and the illustration looked fine, but wouldn't convert to an eps. So then I tried stroke to path but something weird happened. Parts of the illustration disappeared. Looking at them more closely, they're still there but now they only have an outline. But when I go to fill it says black and when I look at stroke it says they don't have any stroke????
posted by AllTheQuestions at 3:19 PM on June 21, 2017
I selected all and converted to paths and the illustration looked fine, but wouldn't convert to an eps. So then I tried stroke to path but something weird happened. Parts of the illustration disappeared. Looking at them more closely, they're still there but now they only have an outline. But when I go to fill it says black and when I look at stroke it says they don't have any stroke????
posted by AllTheQuestions at 3:19 PM on June 21, 2017
Response by poster: Okay, thank you, thank you, thank! I think I got it sorted by some puzzle like combination of a number of the suggestions.
I selected all objects on all layers, converted to paths and saved as a .svg. Exporting this as a .eps or a .pdf still lost a load of information HOWEVER opening the svg in Chrome at this point worked, and so did printing to pdf without any weirdness occuring. I then opened the pdf in the trial version of Illustrator CC and saved it as an eps!!
So truly a team effort :).
posted by AllTheQuestions at 3:37 PM on June 21, 2017 [8 favorites]
I selected all objects on all layers, converted to paths and saved as a .svg. Exporting this as a .eps or a .pdf still lost a load of information HOWEVER opening the svg in Chrome at this point worked, and so did printing to pdf without any weirdness occuring. I then opened the pdf in the trial version of Illustrator CC and saved it as an eps!!
So truly a team effort :).
posted by AllTheQuestions at 3:37 PM on June 21, 2017 [8 favorites]
Inkscape operates within the limitations of the Cairo renderer. It does display things pretty well, but the print focus that Illustrator was built from just isn't there. Gradients and transparency are handled very differently from Illustrator. Good enough on the screen is usually good enough for Inkscape: few expensive repro jobs rely on it, unlike Illustrator. That's not to say it's bad, just different. Coupled with Illustrator's very limited idea of what import files should look like, I'm pretty amazed you got anything across at all.
In Inkscape, Stroke to Path on multiple paths tends to merge them all to one filled path that inherits (but doesn't draw) the original stroke width. That's likely what lost your fill/stroke information. Object depth within a layer also seems to be pretty fluid in Inkscape, so unless you've been incredibly careful with groups and layers from the start, objects can seem to disappear behind others in Inkscape.
Exporting via PDF or EPS from Inkscape is pretty much at the whim of whoever packaged the version you downloaded and chose the internal settings. Path effects are frequently rasterized on export, so you end up with a resolution-dependent export file. “Save a Copy …” → “Plain SVG” is intended to keep the best visual display accuracy, but loses most groups and layers, so it's very hard to edit afterwards.
posted by scruss at 6:57 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
In Inkscape, Stroke to Path on multiple paths tends to merge them all to one filled path that inherits (but doesn't draw) the original stroke width. That's likely what lost your fill/stroke information. Object depth within a layer also seems to be pretty fluid in Inkscape, so unless you've been incredibly careful with groups and layers from the start, objects can seem to disappear behind others in Inkscape.
Exporting via PDF or EPS from Inkscape is pretty much at the whim of whoever packaged the version you downloaded and chose the internal settings. Path effects are frequently rasterized on export, so you end up with a resolution-dependent export file. “Save a Copy …” → “Plain SVG” is intended to keep the best visual display accuracy, but loses most groups and layers, so it's very hard to edit afterwards.
posted by scruss at 6:57 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
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(If you don't have Illustrator handy, you can get a legit free trial through Adobe Creative Cloud.)
posted by neckro23 at 12:59 PM on June 21, 2017