Shawn Seale

Compound objects for the major win! 😎

Thanks for those responses. In terms of preparing the Erase blending mode layers for printing, the successful approach seems to be using the Shape combinations to cut out the text, rather than just rasterizing the layers. This appears to retain the vector-based graphics in the PDF file and does also get me to the "nothing will be rasterized" message at PDF export, which somehow makes sense.

Komatos, Yes, I've tried various PDF export options. Assuming PDF files are the best answer here, I particularly have trouble with layer effects being "honored" in the PDF creation process. Layers which have an "erase" mode, for example, appear white in the PDF, rather than the punch out effect intended. I can work around that by grouping and subtracting the "punch out" text using Shape combinations, but that does not allow me to retain the original design elements in an editable way, which is counter to what I'm after. I also don't know how you get to the "Nothing will be rasterized" setting on the PDF export. No matter how I set things in the "More..." menu, I am still getting "Some areas will be approximated" message. Thanks for any help/ideas that you my have on this. sticker sketch 2022.pdf

The printers we work with are all happy to receive Adobe Illustrator files, which I typically provide in a "package" format to them. I'm looking to fully transition to Affinity Designer, but I'm struggling with the best way to get art files to the printers for printing. One piece of art that we work with has a number of effects (such as knockout text or layer effects) that don't translate well to generic PDF files. What have others done to successfully work with commercial printers in terms of providing clean, high-quality source files to them?