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I used Inkscape last week to convert an SVG vector image to EPS, for insertion into a PDF. The conversion was not perfect. I am using FPDF with an EPS add-on,

by chasil 5y ago

I used Inkscape last week to convert an SVG vector image to EPS, for insertion into a PDF. The conversion was not perfect. I am using FPDF with an EPS add-on, and after study of the PHP source, I was able to open the EPS with a text editor and reformat it so that it would successfully import. Unfortunately, it loaded upside down, so I was forced to flip and save again in inkscape, then repeat the formatting. This odd behavior is also present in the (downstream) TCPDF library, which appears to have close to the same code. Complain as I may, I didn't have to buy Adobe Illustrator.

simondotau 5y ago
I must say that as someone who is a very occasional user of vector drawing tools (and mainly uses them for prepping SVG for web) I’m sufficiently impressed by the latest version of Affinity Designer as an Illustrator replacement. I was able to open an .ai file, modify it, and export an .svg which was a perfect drop-in replacement for an .svg previously exported by Illustrator. It’s still too expensive for me at full price but I nabbed a Mac App Store license when it was on sale a few weeks ago. I haven’t tried Inkscape recently, but last time I did it failed horribly at the most basic tasks of path editing and SVG prep.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  At $25 on sale (which it currently is), a permanent license for Affinity Designer is cheaper than one month of Adobe Illustrator. Adobe likes to advertise it as $20.99/month, but that's only with a 12 month commitment, and you can't cancel early without paying. Renting Illustrator for a single month will really cost you $31.41. Even at full price ($50), Affinity Designer costs less than two months of Illustrator. Not a professional artist and don't use it often, but it's enough of a value that hobbyists like me can actually use it. Any of Adobe's products, not so much.
- jdhendrickson 5y ago
  I bought all of their products the minute I found out they were still pursuing that oh so old fashioned idea of allowing you to OWN the software you buy from them.
  - stevenicr 5y ago
    same reason I just bought my 8th(?) copy of photoimpact first one around 2005(?). (two of those for other people's machines so they can use it without worrying about license failures or/and recurring billing) I don't mind paying for a new license for each new box I want to use it on - because it still works on my xp machine, and each other one - with or without internet connectivity - no license check needed- it just works.
- girvo 5y ago
  Affinity Photo and Designer are brilliant. I'd second their recommendation. Also, the Apple Photos integration for Affinity Photo is pretty damned handy :)
  - sprkwd 5y ago
    Moved over to affinity a while back and the only thing I miss is line trace from illustrator. Bunch of great little products.
    - jiveturkey 5y ago
      use inkscape for that! i find affinity to be lacking but very very good value for money. so no complaints
- yeko 5y ago
  > I was able to open a .ai file, Actually it doesn't, Affinity open the embbded pdf in Ai file, some metadata like textframe/alignment does not exist in pdf.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    Good to know, this probably explained why the notionally transparent artwork was imported with a white background. But the fact that it’s not a true .ai import I don't think this is ever going to be a concern to me because I never use SVG to typeset flowing blocks of text. The main things I'm concerned about are: 1) Path and style integrity 2) Artboard dimensional integrity 3) Export file quality In my testing, I was able to open a file I had edited and saved in Illustrator, export it as an SVG, it was an utterly pixel-perfect drop-in replacement for a previously exported SVG. I was also able to confirm that all of the SVG files I care about can be opened directly, edited and exported with no errors. That's enough for me to confidently say goodbye to Illustrator forever. It's robust enough that I know I can deal with the occasional import glitch if it ever does happen.
    - fractallyte 5y ago
      There are some really annoying things about Designer, though - like how it insists on rasterizing Gaussian blurs, even though SVG supports them as a vector operation...
    - jiveturkey 5y ago
      affinity artboard support is newish, and not great. you may want to deep dive into it to be sure their implementation is good for you
      - simondotau 5y ago
        Yes, I did. My files are simple. Around 15 or so assets. One file per asset, no elaborate effects used.
- toastal 5y ago
  Not commenting on Affinity's quality, but being closed-sourced and Linux support will (and probably should) turn off a lot of the HN community.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mkl 5y ago
The upside down behaviour sounds like failure to convert coordinate systems: SVG has its y axis going down from the top left (like pixel coordinates) but EPS and PDF have their y axis going up from the bottom left (like maths plots). There has to be a better way than dealing with EPS files in 2021 though. It's a pretty archaic format, and poorly and incompletely supported by most programs. Can you use PDF for the embedded image instead? That's what I do when generating PDFs with PDFLatex and friends.
- prokoudine 5y ago
  You can flip Y coordinate in Inkscape since v1.0. Unsure how it affects EPS exporting though.

by chasil 5y ago

simondotau 5y ago

I must say that as someone who is a very occasional user of vector drawing tools (and mainly uses them for prepping SVG for web) I’m sufficiently impressed by the latest version of Affinity Designer as an Illustrator replacement. I was able to open an .ai file, modify it, and export an .svg which was a perfect drop-in replacement for an .svg previously exported by Illustrator. It’s still too expensive for me at full price but I nabbed a Mac App Store license when it was on sale a few weeks ago. I haven’t tried Inkscape recently, but last time I did it failed horribly at the most basic tasks of path editing and SVG prep.

wlesieutre 5y ago
At $25 on sale (which it currently is), a permanent license for Affinity Designer is cheaper than one month of Adobe Illustrator. Adobe likes to advertise it as $20.99/month, but that's only with a 12 month commitment, and you can't cancel early without paying. Renting Illustrator for a single month will really cost you $31.41. Even at full price ($50), Affinity Designer costs less than two months of Illustrator. Not a professional artist and don't use it often, but it's enough of a value that hobbyists like me can actually use it. Any of Adobe's products, not so much.
jdhendrickson 5y ago
I bought all of their products the minute I found out they were still pursuing that oh so old fashioned idea of allowing you to OWN the software you buy from them.
- stevenicr 5y ago
  same reason I just bought my 8th(?) copy of photoimpact first one around 2005(?). (two of those for other people's machines so they can use it without worrying about license failures or/and recurring billing) I don't mind paying for a new license for each new box I want to use it on - because it still works on my xp machine, and each other one - with or without internet connectivity - no license check needed- it just works.
girvo 5y ago
Affinity Photo and Designer are brilliant. I'd second their recommendation. Also, the Apple Photos integration for Affinity Photo is pretty damned handy :)
- sprkwd 5y ago
  Moved over to affinity a while back and the only thing I miss is line trace from illustrator. Bunch of great little products.
  - jiveturkey 5y ago
    use inkscape for that! i find affinity to be lacking but very very good value for money. so no complaints
yeko 5y ago
> I was able to open a .ai file, Actually it doesn't, Affinity open the embbded pdf in Ai file, some metadata like textframe/alignment does not exist in pdf.
- simondotau 5y ago
  Good to know, this probably explained why the notionally transparent artwork was imported with a white background. But the fact that it’s not a true .ai import I don't think this is ever going to be a concern to me because I never use SVG to typeset flowing blocks of text. The main things I'm concerned about are: 1) Path and style integrity 2) Artboard dimensional integrity 3) Export file quality In my testing, I was able to open a file I had edited and saved in Illustrator, export it as an SVG, it was an utterly pixel-perfect drop-in replacement for a previously exported SVG. I was also able to confirm that all of the SVG files I care about can be opened directly, edited and exported with no errors. That's enough for me to confidently say goodbye to Illustrator forever. It's robust enough that I know I can deal with the occasional import glitch if it ever does happen.
  - fractallyte 5y ago
    There are some really annoying things about Designer, though - like how it insists on rasterizing Gaussian blurs, even though SVG supports them as a vector operation...
  - jiveturkey 5y ago
    affinity artboard support is newish, and not great. you may want to deep dive into it to be sure their implementation is good for you
    - simondotau 5y ago
      Yes, I did. My files are simple. Around 15 or so assets. One file per asset, no elaborate effects used.
toastal 5y ago
Not commenting on Affinity's quality, but being closed-sourced and Linux support will (and probably should) turn off a lot of the HN community.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mkl 5y ago

The upside down behaviour sounds like failure to convert coordinate systems: SVG has its y axis going down from the top left (like pixel coordinates) but EPS and PDF have their y axis going up from the bottom left (like maths plots). There has to be a better way than dealing with EPS files in 2021 though. It's a pretty archaic format, and poorly and incompletely supported by most programs. Can you use PDF for the embedded image instead? That's what I do when generating PDFs with PDFLatex and friends.

prokoudine 5y ago
You can flip Y coordinate in Inkscape since v1.0. Unsure how it affects EPS exporting though.