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sglee

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open .ai file without Adobe Illustrator

Are there free software that can open .ai file created in Adobe Illustrator?
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Paul MacDonald
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GIMP and IrfanView are both free and both can open .AI files. Regards, Joe
Joe, GIMP and IrfanView can Not open .AI files on my computer.
Hi Dave,
I don't use AI here, but I have some sample AI files for testing purposes, and both GIMP and IrfanView can open them. As with most things Adobe, AI is a complex format, so it doesn't surprise me that they can open some AI files and not others. At the end of the day, AI is an Adobe proprietary format, so I suspect the only total support is from Adobe itself. Wikipedia has a list programs that support AI files, which, in the free arena, contains Ghostscript and XnView (via Ghostscript), so I guess they represent other free possibilities for sglee, although I haven't tried them (btw, that may be why IrfanView works — it utilizes Ghostscript, too — although neither IrfanView nor GIMP is on the Wikipedia list). Regards, Joe
I have Ghostscript (CutePDF needs it and it works fine for that) and it says that the only AI sample I have is an invalid file format.  GIMP crashed on trying to open my only sample.  If you could post a sample that I could check, that would be nice.
Dave,
I said "samples", but upon closer inspection, I should have said "sample". :)  It has a copyright symbol, so I'd better not post it. I downloaded it from the web just for testing purposes, but did not retain the link from where I got it (and the file time stamp is 2007, so it was a long time ago). But you may be right — I don't think it's a "real" AI file. Even though the file type is .AI, when I just ran it through TrID, it came up as PDF with 100.0% match! This is surely why GIMP and IV had no problem with it. I'll try to find some "real" AI files and will report back. Regards, Joe
Note that 'internally' an AI file can have more than one format.  EPS and PDF are the main ones but I'm not sure what else.
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sglee

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I downloaded GIMP, but it I did not even recognize .ai files. .ai files are in their File Type drop-down menu.
For InfanView, I did not even bother downloading it because it took me to http://download.cnet.com where any downloaded program comes with pesty malware or something you don't want/need.

Zamzar worked fine. Thank you.