idea Export layout to Affinity Designer in ArcGIS Pro Ideas

Export layout to Affinity Designer

compass_cartographic — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 01:36:33 GMT

Create a new export format for layouts for Affinity Designer. This application is an alternative to Adobe Illustrator (for which there is the Export to .aix). It allows for vector/raster based design work in layers, just like Adobe Illustrator, with blend modes, adjustments, and other ways that allow for unique customizations. It would be great to have an “.adx” export format!

Re: Export layout to Affinity Designer - Status changed to: Needs Clarification

JeremyWright — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 17:27:08 GMT

Unfortunately it appears that the .AFDesign format (which is the extension used by Affinity Designer) is proprietry and closed. As such we have no way of being able to support it in ArcGIS Pro output.

This is incidentally the same reason that we no longer support .AI export to Adobe Illustrator - AI format is also closed and proprietary.

The plug-in strategy (.AIX out of Pro, into Maps for Adobe plugin in Illustrator) is the one that Adobe recommends to third-party developers, to be able to import their content in Illustrator.

Does Affinity Designer offer any kind of plug-in strategy which could be leveraged to import content natively into an .AFDesign?

It appears their development team does not want to publicly document the file format: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/31716-file-format-specification/

Re: Export layout to Affinity Designer - Status changed to: Open

JeremyWright — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 21:11:54 GMT

moving to open to allow voting and commentary

however as stated before without a specification to write this file format and/or a plug-in API as exists for Adobe products, we cannot directly write to this format .

Re: Export layout to Affinity Designer

compass_cartographic — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 12:37:44 GMT

Just saw this post - thank you Jeremy - I will see if I can find out whether there is such a plug in, and if not, get their take on whether they could create one. If I can find anything out, I will post back here! Thanks again.

Re: Export layout to Affinity Designer

Dana_FSC — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 14:36:06 GMT

Would also vote for this. It is possible to open .eps files but layers come across only as images it appears...

Re: Export layout to Affinity Designer

JeremyWright — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 22:56:50 GMT

@Dana_FSC the EPS format doesn't support transparency, so if any of your content involve transparency you will get images - that's a limitation of EPS. SVG and PDF should allow native support for transparency and blend modes, if you're looking for an alternative.

As I posted above, there isn't currently any way for the ArcGIS Pro development team to write to the proprietary format for Affinity Designer, so unless we can receive a file format spec and/or an API that allows us to import content (similar to what the ArcGIS Maps For Creative Cloud extension does for pro AIX to Illustrator) then we have no way of supporting this request.

Re: Export layout to Affinity Designer

Dana_FSC — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 19:33:46 GMT

@JeremyWright - I ultimately ended up exporting as a high-res PDF with layers and importing (well, used Open With in Mac) that to Affinity - worked great. Layers preserved and transparency came across super well (messing with Imhof shaded relief maps). It's a bummer that Affinity doesn't open up their platform for a direct file export process, but the PDF method seemed to work well and didn't seem to lose too much info in the process. AIX doesn't open in Affinity (at least that I could figure out.

Thanks for the response on this - much appreciated.

Re: Export layout to Affinity Designer

JeremyWright — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 19:48:53 GMT

@Dana_FSC yeah AIX is only for usage with Illustrator and Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud - I wouldn't expect Affinity to be able to open it.

I'm glad using PDF worked well for you!