SVGs turning Black?

[benji-the-great]

Tried pulling an SVG from the internet. When opening it in Illustrator, all colors show as solid black. And not like it's "covered" or anything. It's fully converted. Tried it a few different ways - coping from internet, pasting into AI, saving directly and opening in AI, Tried opening, pasting and placing into AI. All are coming up bust. Almost feels like an IP security measure or something, but not really sure that's it. Anyone else had this issue before? Just not able to get this thing into AI.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

You don't open an SVG, you import it. It gets converted.

Illustrator cannot read all the constructs that can be put into an SVG. Try opening it in Inkscape and then export to PDF.

[benji-the-great]

Aha! Yep, that was it. Yes, I tried placing it before (importing in Ai), but that did the same black thing. I had to download Inkscape, but since it's free, I may hold onto it for this reason alone! I was able to Import it there and copy and paste into Ai - and it worked! Thanks much!

Ben

[Monika Gause]

You're welcome.

If you want to, please report it on http://illustrator.uservoice.com

So Illustrator can be improved if possible. They would need to have the SVG file in order to check it out.

[rcronk]

I had a similar problem as I placed an SVG into an Illustrator project.  It made the background black.  I tried opening the SVG with Inkscape and the background looked white there, but as I exported it to PDF, imported it to Illustrator, it appeared as a white background throughout the process until I exported a PNG with transparency on and then it was black again.  I fixed it by turning off transparency, and then it kept the white background.  I'm using ancient CS6 though, so there's that too.  I'm just throwing my experience here in case the fix listed here doesn't fully fix the problem for them.

[rcronk]

P.S. Just to be clear, the background looked white at every stage in Inkscape, as a PDF, and in Illustrator.  It only looked black when I exported it to transparent PNG.

[studio graphique MESR]

Hi,
For information, same problem. Not me but my client, who tells me that svg's turn black when integrated  on his site - only on Mozilla. (For my part, no problem when I open the svg directly on Firefox).
I have sent him several blind tests so far (svg exported from a CS2 / svg file saved under 1.1 / ...).
The Inskape route seems too tinkering on Mac for me; Quartz should be installed, it seems.
Regards,

[Monika Gause]

Please create a new thread.

Also: this can't be solved without having the SVG file.

And since this only happens after the SVG has been put on a website (incorporated into HTML code and most probably some CSS), there is another source of issues. If your file is OK, but it happens after that, then most likely the HTML/CSS/whatever code has caused it. CSS can mess with an SVG.

[tricio]

Hi we had the same issue: The problem is that Illustration cannot read RGBA
So from this:
<rect x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" fill="rgba(154,215,40,1)"></rect>
to
<rect x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" fill="rgb(154,215,40,1)"></rect>

Then Illustrator opens the file correctly.

[tricio]

Update:
Should be:
<rect x="0" y="0" width="100%" height="100%" fill="rgb(154,215,40)"></rect>

[rosst400]

Thank you so much. That worked like a charm.

[hariabinash]

I have a SVG file, generated from web, with HSL color format gave the same black color in AI. I installed Inkscape and opened in it. Voila!, it rendered nicely in it. Exported to PDF and then opened it in AI.

And it opened nicely in AI.

Thanks @Monika Gause for the idea.