Opening Adobe Express generated QR Codes in illustrator

[Will Price]

Hi,

Does anybody know why Illustrator would take 2-3 minutes to open a single .svg QR Code generated by Adobe Express? The latest version of Illy, macOS, on a Macbook Pro M1 Max?

I need to format several, which will sap all my remaining energy.

Thanks,

Will

[Monika Gause]

Can you upload such a file so one can take a look at it?

[Will Price]

I can't, .svg format isn't supported on here.

[Will Price]

Here's a link.

[Monika Gause]

Thank you. There are 18000 paths in it and 700000 points

Which is completely unreasonable.

The code is quite complicated (just open it in TextEdit, it's insane)

Can you tell us how you generated it? I have just tried via the web interface and this gives me a fast loading code.

[Will Price]

Yikes. Does Adobe Express pump out bad files?

[Will Price]

They work as intended, but the .svg export must be garbage.

[Monika Gause]

I have tried the web interface https://www.adobe.com/express/feature/image/qr-code-generator and it gave me a streamlined version of a file.

Can you please tell us how you made it? Because this would certainly need to be fixed.

[Will Price]

All I did was paste a link into the generator in Adobe Express, changed the format to .svg and it automatically downloaded. Once opened in Illy, I changed the colour.

[Monika Gause]

So you opened the file in Illustrator and then exported it again?

What happened the first time you opened it? Was it fast? Just to figure out if the export was the issue.

[Will Price]

The process is like so...

Generate in Adobe Express and download > Open in Illustrator (opens fast) > Change colour and save (takes ages) > File now takes two minutes to open.

I can replicate this my end.

[Will Price]

I generated another, and it's perfectly okay. Changing the colour borks the file. I don't know why.

[Will Price]

I've just noticed that you can generate a QR Code in Indesign. So I didn't need to do any of this, but if there is a bug, at least I've made you aware of it. 👍

[Monika Gause]

Glad you could solve it.

[Will Price]

Thank you for your time. 

[Monika Gause]

Thank you for the interesting problem. I have reported that as a bug. 

[Jane Davidson-Snider]

I can attest that there are still issues with this. I created a simple QR code, didn't change the color, but changed the style to round pixels. If I place it into Illustrator, and then try and cut and paste it, it will crash Illustrator.

[Jane Davidson-Snider]

Btw, the work-around is to use PNG, and use Illustrator to trace it into vector art.

[Monika Gause]

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@Jane Davidson-Snider  schrieb:

Btw, the work-around is to use PNG, and use Illustrator to trace it into vector art.

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That is not a good workaround

Use this method to clean up the SVG https://youtu.be/KQUrluJ5CU4

Or use InDesign for your QR codes. It can generate them.

[Ton Frederiks]

Or just fill it with black in Illustrator.

[Jane Davidson-Snider]

Oh, I did change colour in Illustrator -- I had to since the SVG was completely transparent.