Skip to main content
D
defaulttz5ld9symjzi
Participating Frequently
October 14, 2022
Question

AI loses image fill when opening SVG

  • October 14, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 584 views

The attached file opens just fine in a browser, yet when opened with AI the shape has no fill.

Adobe Illustrator 26.5, macos Monterey, M1 Macbook Pro.

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 14, 2022

I would assume there are just too many groups inside groups.

 

You should never bring yourself into a situation where you have to re-open an SVG in Illustrator. For Illustrator SVG is an export format. It's famous for not being able to read its own SVGs.

 

Your work file should be AI.

D
defaulttz5ld9symjziAuthor
Participating Frequently
October 16, 2022

Yes, I'm well aware that AI has problems reading SVGs it creates. I have also reported to Adobe how it adds extra groups when saving SVGs that contain shapes with clipped image fills. Their responses, as I follow up, are either "it was fixed in the latest release, please upgrade" or "it will be fixed in the next release", both of which have yet to be proven true. Speaking as an experienced software developer, fixing this bug in AI should be very straightforward.

 

I have also seen the open time message about an SVG having too many nested groups and warning that content may be lost, and so have a Python script to remove these extraneous groups before reopening the file. The above example though does not give this warning.

 

My conclusion is that Adobe have intentionally decided to add those extra groups and not always warn about them in order to deter the use of AI for round-trip SVG work. Interestingly, a competing product also introduces unnecessary groups when exporting SVGs. We though have now found another product that does work well for editing SVGs and will be dropping the use of Illustrator.

 

 

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 16, 2022

The only serious application that uses SVG as its native file format, is Inkscape.

 

When an application doesn't use SVG as its native file format, it will always have to covert the document, thus changing the structure and introducing nasty stuff as well as deleting probably important stuff. And that is why you should not roundtrip SVG files with Illustrator.

 

Even Inkscape has 2 flavours of SVG: the super native ones that contain native elements and the standard ones that only have things in it which are fully covered by the SVG standard.

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices