I have created a paperback book cover in Affinity Photo, and now I want to export it as PDF to send it to the printer.
I cannot figure out how to export a PDF that looks anything like what I see in Affinity Photo. (Nor can I export anything that looks right in any other format, for that matter.)
Here is a screenshot of what the cover looks like in the Export Persona:
Here is what the PDF (for print) preset produces (I made no adjustments to the preset):
donation-cover-paperback.pdf
This export appears to include the one pixel layer from the document, with at least some of the adjustments applied to turn the bills from dollar-bill color to blue. I cannot explain the grainy waviness. I have some fill layers, which either do not appear in the PDF or appear as white. My document has a layer mask that fades the edges of the pixel layer into the background fill layer, but it does not appear to fade here. The text (in layers above the fills and pixel layers) does not appear at all.
The original image is dollar-bill colored dollar bills, with a certain amount of focus blur, but otherwise no fuzziness.
Here is what the TIFF RGB 8-bit preset produces (I made no adjustments to the preset):
donation-cover-paperback.tiff
This appears to be the adjusted image, but without the text, and without the layer mask that fades the edges of the image. Again the text is completely missing.
JPEG export looks similar to TIFF.
I get these results from the "page" predefined slice in the Export Persona, and from the File -> Export command.
The only thing I've been able to do that seemed to work is to merge the document into a single layer, then export that as PDF. I'm not sure I want to rasterize the text (I have never sent the printer rasterized text before, and am unsure whether the results will be what I want).
Any clues about where I'm going wrong?