I have been using Inscape to create a flyer at work, but when I used the "Save as PDF via Cairo" function, it saved my document without all the features- turns out Inkscape's PDF converter doesn't support all of its design features- such as transparency.

Instead, I have to save it as an svg file, but thats no use to me cos it still prints out all wrong, and means I cant send it anyone.

It sounds like I need to download something which I can open up an SVg doc, which preserves all the design,and then allows me to re-save it as a PDF. It seems that the best option is something called Scribus, which I downloaded. But when I unzipped it, it was just lots of confusing files and I couldn't figure out how to install it properly.

Anyone have any tips or ideas on how to solve this? Any good SVG To PDF converters???

There isn't a one-to-one relationship between the effects that can be descibed in SVG and the effects that can be described by PDF. This is why you sometimes loose some details when going from one to the other.

Cairo is currently the best SVG to PDF convertor I'm aware of, although it's worth noting that the upcoming 0.47 version of Inkscape is meant to be better than the current 0.46 version. You could download a development build to try.

It's worth noting that SVG is a web standard, not a print standard. So it's to be expected that you'll have issues when using it for print tasks. Scribus is designed for print so you can expect better support--I suspect you downloaded the wrong package as it should have an installer.

The other alternative is to save your SVG as a high resolution PNG and print that. So long as it's high resolution you'll never be able to tell it's not vector when printed on paper.

Hi all,

we are having the same issue. we were printing fine but then inkscape started resizing and randomly moving layered objects all over the place. we also noticed that saving to pdf makes our fine inkscape image composites look blocky and appears to lose the fine transparency we laid out in inkscape.

so we thought about using Scribius and found that importing the svg looks the same as when exporting to pdf. we also found this in the Scribius documentation:

SVG Importing Hints:
Scribus can handle most of the SVG features which can be created in Inkscape and Sketch, two well known vector drawing programs for Linux. The biggest issue I have observed is sometimes the paths when interpreted do not show up as closed. So parts of the SVG file look empty upon import. The simple fix is to ungroup the elements and then select the empty looking objects, then double click to bring up the editing palette for drawing objects and click on the close path button. Typically, then the invisible object will appear.

I strongly recommend against creating special text effects in SVG, unless a: It cannot be done in Scribus and Scribus has very versatile text effect tools. b: The text effects are converted to outlines before importation. Why ? Scribus uses a PostScript model for handling fonts and text, where SVG uses a model much like.html"http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Tools" class="postlink">http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Tools

GIMP
GIMP is a bitmap graphics tool in the first place, but:

it imports SVG (with help of librsvg) into bitmap or vector path, exports SVG.
GIMP's selection can be converted to a vector path, and paths can be exported/imported as SVG.
GIMP can be used to create nice textures to use in Inkscape or shapes that can be vectorized in Inkscape. Importing SVG drawings from Inkscape to GIMP allows you to do several effects by filling and stroking shapes.

There is a limited support for drag'n'drop between GIMP and Inkscape:

path, can be drag'n'dropped from Gimp path dialog to Inkscape
pictures can be drag'n'dropped from Gimp document history to Inkscape if it's in a file format that Inkscape understands.
(Drag and Drop does not appear to work in windows.)

ok, i think i'm ready to declare yippee! i posted the previous post without logging in, whoops.

i was able to install the GIMP and open the inkscape svg and it maintained my fairly complicated composites and the whole image with a transparent background! it printed immediately versus inkscape taking at least 10 mins! and i was able to save as a PSD and open in photoshop! i'm clearly a happy camper.

one caveat is that the GIMP cannot save back as a svg so we still gots some figurin to do Lucy.

upon closer examination the GIMP mashes all of the inkscape layers into one rendered image so it loses some of the finer details in my original image and since it mashes all the layers into one it effectively becomes a fork off of the original image i.e. a point frozen in time that you can work with in the GIMP but not in inkscape. it seems that one would have to import it back into inkscape as a bitmap so you would lose all of the vectors.

in my previous post i pasted in some info from the inkscape wiki that i have yet to figure out:

it imports SVG (with help of librsvg) into bitmap or vector path, exports SVG.

GIMP's selection can be converted to a vector path, and paths can be exported/imported as SVG.

GIMP can be used to create nice textures to use in Inkscape or shapes that can be vectorized in Inkscape.

Importing SVG drawings from Inkscape to GIMP allows you to do several effects by filling and stroking shapes.

I imported a couple of SVG into gimp. On a small number of paths some it dropped nodes. And gimp had a problem with gradients especially if the gradients were transparent in inkscape. And it didn't quite preserve the alpha. The stuff could probably be tweaked out but it would have been a lot of work.

EarlyBlake - were you able to maintain the vectors in the GIMP and if so how? thx

Even though it's not on the list of "save as" options you can save a file as .xcf (gimp's file extension) from inkscape by typing in the file extension in, when you do a save as. Someone else posted it here earlier. Then when you open it in gimp check the preserve paths option on the conversion menu. FYI, the conversion of the file can take a while if it's a large inkscape file.

thx for the info. i must not be getting something but this is my first time with gimp so it's no surprise. in inkscape i create an image that has several layers with different objects/paths on each layer. i save it as an xcf and open in gimp using either "open" or "open as layers" and check mark "import paths" but leaving "merge imported paths" unchecked. what i get in gimp is a "(RGB 1 layer)" file. what i would like is all the layers broken out in gimp as they are in inkscape and be able to work on them in gimp. is that possible or am i just out in left field somewhere?

i did see the paths listed in obscure path names in the path listing and was able to click the eye to show an individual path and then select "stroke path" from the pull down menus but the strokes don't stay within the paths. have you been able to do worthwhile enhancements of inkscape images or paths?

assuming i can do what i described above i.e. enhance inkscape images in gimp, i do not see an inkscape option to open xcf nor a gimp option to save svg so is this one direction where inkscape can save as xcf and gimp can open it?

p.s. after i wrote this i went back and searched these forums for xcf and see you have been wrestling with this issue for over a year so thanks for your efforts.

microUgly wrote:Cairo is currently the best SVG to PDF convertor I'm aware of, although it's worth noting that the upcoming 0.47 version of Inkscape is meant to be better than the current 0.46 version. You could download a development build to try.

A while back (10 Feb. 2009) I downloaded a 0.47 development version of Inkscape to test the PDF writing capabilities.

Indeed, the final result looks a lot better than with 0.46, more features are proprtly converted to the PDF.

However, my experience was not all that good, in fact, I stopped using it and went back to 0.46. The PDF files that are generated with the dev. version I have are much larger than the ones that are written with 0.46. With much larger, I mean several times larger. And when opening them in Acrobat Reader, they are rendered terribly slow, an A4 size page took more than 10 seconds to be rendered, against less than 1 sec when saved with 0.46. (my computer is state of the art, so that's not the culprit)

I know this is not really important when using the PDF as basis for printing to paper, but when used as digital product brochure, it's quite annoying.

When 0.47 is released, I will install it, but I will always keep 0.46 on the side, as having small, fast rendering PDF's is important to me.


just my € 0.02

thanks ErikTiePie, that's great info! we need PDFs for online brochures so small size is critical to us as well.