Moving from Inkscape to InDesign

[hbasaginaw]

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.

[BobLevine]

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.

[hbasaginaw]

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]

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.

[hbasaginaw]

Thank you. I'll look into them both.

[hbasaginaw]

Acrobat gave me the following error:

"Bad PDF; could not read page structure. <Bad PDF; error in processing fonts; unsupported Type2 font>"

I'm not really sure what that means. The other two converters you mentioned sound great, but unfortunately they're not free, there's no room in the budget for something like that.

I'll definitely keep Googling, though.

[Laubender]

Don't know if that will help, found this about Type 2 PostScript fonts:

https://wwwimages2.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/font/pdfs/5177.Type2.pdf

taken from this overview:

Font technical notes

Regards,
Uwe

[Scott Citron]

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

[shimbu]

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. 😃

[hbasaginaw]

It doesn't look like I have Distiller available to me - is that something I can download somewhere, or is it called something else?

[shimbu]

I assume that You have Adobe Acrobat Pro (not Reader!), Distiller is part of it, You'll find it in Acrobat folder.

[hbasaginaw]

Oh! I found it! Hah. I just needed to right click and it opened automatically with it. Thank you!

[Laubender]

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

[shimbu]

Have You tried to export Your work as SVG and open this SVG in Illustrator? Maybe that's the way?

[hbasaginaw]

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.

[shimbu]

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

[hbasaginaw]

It's Windows. I'd upload one of the files, but I don't see a way to do that.

[Derek Cross]

Post a link to something like Dropbox.

[hbasaginaw]

Ah. Thank you. I'm sorry I seem to illiterate. I'm pretty new to all this. Here's the link. There's several file types.

Dropbox - 10 Ten to Join - Simplify your life

[shimbu]

Is this SVG file Inkscape native? There's no text blocks, all text is converted to curves. Not editable.

[hbasaginaw]

Yes - it was all created and saved with Inkscape. They do have an output file type called "plain svg". Would something like that help? Or would there be a way to save the text as text? These are the file types I can save as:

[shimbu]

Check out this file, I wonder if it's opening in illustrator on Your system.

https://we.tl/v2Qnti32FK

[hbasaginaw]

Yes - opens in Illustrator, but I can't edit. At least I can get them open!

[shimbu]

Well, I can edit this file. Look at screenshot:

It will take some time to clean file like this, it is a bit messy, but it is possibile!

[hbasaginaw]

Oh! I'll keep playing around with it. I am new to Illustrator, so that could very well be in. Thank you! What did you end up doing?