I have this 192 x 30 inch Inkscape SVG file which includes a whole bunch of small, blurred circles in the middle amongst other things. When I try to save the file as anything aside from SVG the program encounters an internal error and crashes. I also tried opening the SVG with Illustrator and it just uses all my CPU for an extended period of time with no apparent progress.

I resized the whole thing down by a factor of 100 and it exported fine, and AI was able to open the shrunk SVG file although it did not render it properly. I'm led to believe this is a resource issue and wanted to look for a way to flatten the image and discard all useless pieces that are hidden from view, but it seems like this functionality doesn't exist.

I'm wondering whether I have any other alternatives to reduce the resource requirements, or whether I could use another program to export the SVG into an EPS file of the same size (192x30 inches @ 300dpi for print).

I was also wondering why Inkscape has no trouble at all opening the file but AI grinds to a halt when trying to do the same.

Thanks!!

Are you using layers in inkscape? Also, is the file a true svg or is it "inkscape svg"?

In Inkscape, with image at the normal giant size, File menu > Vacuum defs. This gets rid of a lot of stuff in the data file that you might have used in creating your image, but deleted or undid or edited, or whatever. Then try the Export again. It might help, I'm sure at least a little bit, maybe fix the problem. Worth a try in any case

llogg: when I try to import the SVG in AI I used a plain SVG. When I'm exporting in Inkscape it's a layered Inkscape SVG.

brynn: I tried that and went to export again, but unfortunately it still crashed the program.

I also tried removing the layer with all the blurred circles, and although it still won't export properly, it didn't crash the program this time. AI was also able to correctly import a plain SVG without the circles layer. I think a combination of the size and number of blurred objects is causing this problem.

I've attached the circles layer so you can see exactly what it is.

I couldn't find any function in Inkscape that might be able to make it into one giant object or do something else to reduce the resource usage, any further suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

primexx wrote:I'm led to believe this is a resource issue and wanted to look for a way to flatten the image and discard all useless pieces that are hidden from view, but it seems like this functionality doesn't exist.

Although the result will be a bitmap image in PNG format rather than a vector image, you might find that the "Export Bitmap" option is worth trying. In that dialogue you can also set a custom area to export, so you might be able to get around the resource limits by exporting the image in several sections, then stitching them back together in something like The GIMP or Photoshop. It really depends on your end-usage as to whether or not a rasterised image will be acceptable.

Thanks Xav, that's a really neat idea I hadn't though of before ^^. Rasterized images are OK, but I'll face the same problem by exporting it in small sections since I won't possibly have enough resource to stitch the entire PNG back together. I guess there's not any ways to get around it on this computer then? I think I'll go and try to figure out why AI isn't able to import it.

Maybe this is what you meant, but make sure that you are saving as plain svg in inkscape before you try to open in AI.

Yea, I did use plain SVG when trying to import to Illustrator. It looks like it's choking on the filters during import.

One thing you might try is consolidating some of your paths. In the bubbles, for instance, select all the bubbles that will have the same color and blur and do path>combine. May be tricky to keep the same depth of field as the original though, so I'm not sure if this will work or not. Just a thought.

Xav wrote:you might find that the "Export Bitmap" option is worth trying.

I'll second this as an approach. I've exported 1.5x1.5m pngs, which were then chopped up and poster printed to multiple sheets.

primexx wrote:Thanks Xav, that's a really neat idea I hadn't though of before ^^. Rasterized images are OK, but I'll face the same problem by exporting it in small sections since I won't possibly have enough resource to stitch the entire PNG back together. I guess there's not any ways to get around it on this computer then? I think I'll go and try to figure out why AI isn't able to import it.

The big difference is that the PNG image will be a flattened version of your original, with all the blurs "fixed" rather than being calculated on-the-fly, and any overlapping objects reduced to a collection of pixels. This should significantly reduce the burden on the computer as there's far less that needs to be calculated.

If something like The GIMP proves too resource-hungry when you come to stitch the pieces together, you could look at ImageMagick, which is a command-line suite for working with bitmap images. It's capable of working on huge images, provided you've got sufficient disk space. A Google search found this page, which suggests that you can use ImageMagick's "convert" program, with the "+append" option to stitch each row of images together to a single image for the row, then the same command with the "-append" option to stitch those rows together into the final image.

hmm, the ImageMagick thing looks promising. The reason I originally went with vector instead of bitmap was for resource considerations (I couldn't possibly edit a bitmap image that size, and there'd still be layers), but I never thought about something like just using disk space and appending the finished images. The file has now been passed onto other people who are going to print it, so I'll recommend this to them if they also have similar problems.

Thanks everyone!! Really appreciate your help