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Question

Moving from Inkscape to InDesign

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
July 23, 2018
4 replies
7809 views

I work for a small non-profit. When I began doing marketing materials for them, I was using Inkscape. I've created quite a few materials with Inkscape (a vector editor: https://inkscape.org/en/about/features/ ). Anyway, we finally found it in the budget to subscribe to Adobe. I'm now able to use all Adobe products, and I know InDesign will be my go-to for future publications at my job. I really don't want to lose or be unable to edit my previous work (I also don't want to have to re-create 3 months worth of work). With Inkscape, I can save/export to PNG, JPEG, SVG (which is standard for Inkscape), EPS, PDF, PS, and some others that don't seem useful (to me) from Inkscape.

Is there a way to make these previous materials usable and editable with InDesign or Illustrator at least? When I've tried opening EPS or SVG files from Inkscape to Illustrator, all of my text turns into little black boxes, and/or the quality is awful.

Would it just be easier to keep Inkscape for these documents, but continue with Adobe products for anything new? If it helps, my flyer/brochure templates were coming from Freepik, as I was unable to actually purchase anything.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Derek Cross

Community Expert

EPS is an obsolete format. Stick to native formats.

The screen shot with the pink background indicates that you haven't these fonts installed.

S

shimbu

Inspiring

I would save PDFs as Postscript files and then drop 'em onto Distiller with Press quality settings. That would produce "clean" PDF. Of course if no errors will occur during distilling process. =)

L

Laubender

Community Expert

shimbu wrote
I would save PDFs as Postscript files and then drop 'em onto Distiller with Press quality settings. That would produce "clean" PDF. Of course if no errors will occur during distilling process. =)

Hi,

if Acrobat cannot open the PDF because of a font error message I would check if Inkscape can print to PostScript and try to distill that file to PDF. Let's see if Distiller throws the same error.

Regards,
Uwe

S

shimbu

Inspiring

I have - they get really nasty looking for some reason. The Distiller thing seemed to work to at least open them in the Adobe programs, but I can't edit them. It seems more likely that I'll just need to leave them as is and keep Inkscape for now, which I suppose is okay for now.

Is Your working environment Windows or Mac OS? Is it possibile for You to upload one of this InkScape files?

Scott Citron

Legend

If I were you I'd export the Inkscape docs as PDF and open the PDF in Illustrator. But be aware, that simply opening these PDFs in AI probably won't allow you to instantly work with the file. To do that, you'll need a more advanced knowledge of Illustrator to do things like release clipping masks and compound paths.

Just a thought

BobLevine

Community Expert

You export to PDF and then use a third party application to convert them to InDesign…or save as Word from Acrobat, but if you’re expecting this to be seamless, you are going to be sorely disappointed.

hbasaginawAuthor

Known Participant

Do you have any suggestions for a converter? I knew it wouldn't be seamless for sure, but I didn't want to have to recreate every single thing I've made, either. It's several months worth of materials. If you can suggest somewhere to convert I'd appreciate it. I'll give Acrobat to Word a try, too. Thank you.

BobLevine

Community Expert

Recosoft and Markzware both have converters. I’ve never used them so I can’t really comment on how well they’ll work for you.

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