# Any Adobe Illustrator users fancy doing me a small favour? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 23, 2007, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497 "2007-11-23T11:50:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2007, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/1 "2007-11-23T11:50:11Z")
I don’t have Adobe Illustrator, but I’ve been playing around with vector graphics a bit lately - and I’ve found that many of the effects and techniques described in the huge number of online tutorials are more or less replicable in the excellent open-source vector editor [Inkscape](http://www.inkscape.org/). So I created an SVG image that makes copious use of blurring and tried to export it as a PNG file, only to find that there’s a problem with Inkscape’s PNG export specifically affecting blur filters and it will take hours and hours to convert the image. So, I’m wondering if Illustrator will export it. The SVG image is [here](http://www.atomicshrimp.com/stuff/aliens.svg) (and it’s supposed to look like [this](http://www.atomicshrimp.com/stuff/aliens.png)(that’s from a screen grab) - I’d like it converted to a high resolution PNG, say at least 8 inches across at 300dpi (i.e. at least 2400 pixels wide, if you prefer to work that way). Anyone fancy helping me? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2007, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/2 "2007-11-23T12:57:47Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] I don’t have Adobe Illustrator, but I’ve been playing around with vector graphics a bit lately - and I’ve found that many of the effects and techniques described in the huge number of online tutorials are more or less replicable in the excellent open-source vector editor [Inkscape](http://www.inkscape.org/). So I created an SVG image that makes copious use of blurring and tried to export it as a PNG file, only to find that there’s a problem with Inkscape’s PNG export specifically affecting blur filters and it will take hours and hours to convert the image. So, I’m wondering if Illustrator will export it. The SVG image is [here](http://www.atomicshrimp.com/stuff/aliens.svg) (and it’s supposed to look like [this](http://www.atomicshrimp.com/stuff/aliens.png)(that’s from a screen grab) - I’d like it converted to a high resolution PNG, say at least 8 inches across at 300dpi (i.e. at least 2400 pixels wide, if you prefer to work that way). Anyone fancy helping me? [/QUOTE] I’ll have a look when I get to work. 🙂 Heh… I just clicked on the SVG as it lay on the Desktop and it opened in The Gimp. Rasterise and save as PNG–no problem. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2007, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/3 "2007-11-23T13:11:17Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] I’ll have a look when I get to work. 🙂 Heh… I just clicked on the SVG as it lay on the Desktop and it opened in The Gimp. Rasterise and save as PNG–no problem. 🙂 [/QUOTE] How’s [this](http://www.sunspace.org/aliens_big.png) (2400 x 3394; ~ 2 megabytes)? Now I have to get ready for work. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2007, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/4 "2007-11-23T13:12:08Z")
I’ll try that - I have the Gimp somewhere, I think. I tried a few other image editors, but they opened the SVG without supporting the blur effects and it all looked awful. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2007, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/5 "2007-11-23T13:26:38Z")
That worked perfectly. Thanks for discovering it. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2007, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/6 "2007-11-23T15:45:01Z")
I realised that I imported the SVG into The Gimp at a lower resolution. If you put in 3000 pixels wide right in the first import dialogue box, The Gimp will rasterise the SVG at the high resolution and not leave any jaggies on the thin lines. Also, I opened the original in Inkscape and exported as PNG; it took about 3 minutes (significantly-slower than usual, I admit). How fast is your computer? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2007, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/7 "2007-11-23T15:45:20Z")
I realised that I imported the SVG into The Gimp at a lower resolution. If you put in 3000 pixels wide right in the first import dialogue box, The Gimp will rasterise the SVG at the high resolution and not leave any jaggies on the thin lines. Also, I opened the original in Inkscape and exported as PNG; it took about 3 minutes (significantly-slower than usual, I admit). How fast is your computer? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2007, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/8 "2007-11-23T15:53:13Z")
Interestingly, Illustrator CS3 did NOT open the SVG properly. (“An error occurred during the processing of this document.”) No gradients. This in spite of the fact the the preview in the Illustrator file dialogue showed the gradients! ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2007, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/9 "2007-11-23T16:08:25Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] I realised that I imported the SVG into The Gimp at a lower resolution. If you put in 3000 pixels wide right in the first import dialogue box, The Gimp will rasterise the SVG at the high resolution and not leave any jaggies on the thin lines. [/quote] Thanks. Now I know I can use the Gimp, I’ll be able to tweak and optimise the image for the intended purpose. > [@](#): > > Also, I opened the original in Inkscape and exported as PNG; it took about 3 minutes (significantly-slower than usual, I admit). How fast is your computer? Pretty fast - I think it might be the case that the export bug has slipped in on a fairly recent version - I’m running the latest stable release - which version do you have? ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2007, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-adobe-illustrator-users-fancy-doing-me-a-small-favour/427497/10 "2007-11-24T02:31:22Z")
[QUOTE=Sunspace] This in spite of the fact the the preview in the Illustrator file dialogue showed the gradients! [/QUOTE] My recollection is that an SVG file can contain a pre-rasterized preview image. However, I’m not finding that in the [W3C doc](http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/), so my recollection may be faulty.