pdf export rasterises simple shape

[woefi]

I know that some elements have to be rendered to pixels for output, which varies for different versions of pdf you choose. (And I imagine if exported to SVG there have to be other supported and unsupported shadow-styles and gradients...)

But: Not every part has to be rasterized, as you see if compared to the same doc in InDesign.
So you have a simple rotated rectangle with inner shadow. the content of the rectangle becomes a pixel image, but the (sharp) border doesn't have to. It can keep being a vector (-mask).

- pdf from publisher rectangle with "shadow inside":

 

 

- Indesign "shadow inside" with cr*ppy noise added for better illustration:

- viewed in acrobat pro (zoom 3200%)

 

 

[garrettm30]

It might be instructive to know what PDF export settings you were using when exporting from Publisher.

[woefi]

Just now, garrettm30 said:

It might be instructive to know what PDF export settings you were using when exporting from Publisher.

In my original example I used various custom settings, ranging from pdf v1.4 to pdf version 1.7 and pdfx3 and pdfx1

 

Here again, I used the 4 standard settings, export, print, web(1.7), flatten(1.6)

You can see a difference in the resolution, but what really matters to me, that none of these are keeping the vectorshape of the boundingbox, which is a rectangle.

 

PDF has support for pixels inside vectorshapes – there is no need to rasterize the border. You could even add a shadow around and it and put another shadowed object on top of it.

In this example in Indesign, it even translated the shadow into an somewhat resolution-independent native pdf-object (pdf1.3 and 1.6 the same).

I'm no expert to the pdf-format, but there are obviously more features available than what I'm getting from Publisher at the moment.

 

[TonyB]

42 minutes ago, woefi said:

PDF has support for pixels inside vectorshapes – there is no need to rasterize the border. You could even add a shadow around and it and put another shadowed object on top of it.

This is very true for newer PDF versions. This should be an improvement request.

[woefi]

8 minutes ago, TonyB said:

This is very true for newer PDF versions.

Well, my example in indesign CS5 (from2010) was pdf version 1.3, which is from 1999, as wikipedia says...

[woefi]

1 hour ago, PatrickM said:

Uh, it scares me a little

To be honest, since today, i'm a little scared too. I love working in Affinity apps and already adjusted to much of the changed workflow.

Now that I can carry over my recent indesign files via idml to publisher, I better see the differences (and maybe shortcomings). I already started some work exclusively in APub but only now realize that we are not there yet.

...Unless I find a way to get an output which is not more rasterized than this 10years old InDesign version that I'm using, which, I thought, is not asking for too much...

 

Please, Affinity. I know I don't have to explain the basic elements of a decades-old PDF format to you, so what's the limitation?  

[Lorox]

I, too, find that PDF export from Publisher (1.7.3 on Mac) is really problematic. Coming from InDesign CS 5 (which is about 10 years old and yet delivers impeccable PDFs for print that pass Acrobat Pro's preflight checks 99% of the time) this is a bit hard to swallow I'd say – given that when using the Afinity apps many designers (me included) want to finally break free of Adobe's claws...

With my latest little project I noticed that everything(!) on my page had been rasterized when using a proper CMYK for print setting on exporting – text, vector shapes, everything. I haven't seen anything the like in ten years of InDesign and I'm really disappointed! And I didn't get it, why this strange behaviour occured.

As it turned out this will not go away as long as you have any element using pixel FX (drop shadow, glows, the like) on a layer above your vector elements (including any text which you most certainly want to stay crisp and clean in the PDF). It doesn't even matter if the areas of those elements overlap: you can have the element with pixel FX in the upper right corner of your page and a small vector logo in the lower left corner – a hand's width apart – as long as that pixel FX element is above the vector element in the layers panel it will still cause the vectors of the latter to be rasterized in the PDF!

You can – of course – try to stack your elements differently (putting all elements that should stay vectors on top of the heap)  but this may make giving your layers a logical order (in terms of content) an almost impossible task.

So PLEASE, PLEASE work hard on Publisher's PDF export to really produce the quality of PDFs we are used to for so many years now.

[Jeremy Bohn]

Agreed. The first time I encountered this was with text that I added a bevel and shadow to. I thought maybe I did something wrong in the PDF export settings, but nothing I do stops that text from being rasterized. When I create the same effect in Indesign CS6, the text is not rasterized — the bevel effect is rasterized and contained within the vector shape of the text.

[woefi]

13 hours ago, Jeremy Bohn said:

the bevel effect is rasterized and contained within the vector shape of the text

this: I get that some complex things MAY be rasterized. But they at least have to be CONTAINED within a crisp vector shape.

The underlying function set in the pdf standard is there since 20 years ago!

[Lorox]

Exactly! What I brought into this discussion is actually something additional: why does an element (with pixel/transparency-FX) cause another (vector-)element which doesn't overlap and is not even near that first element on the page to be rasterized – obviously ONLY because it is above that second element in the layers’ stack???

For us designer who are designing for print it is absolutely essential to be able to output production ready high end PDFs that enable actual first class print quality and – as well – pass any "normal" prepress checks in Adobe Acrobat or PitStop without any fuss.

In my opinion this is a key feature – a plain must-have – and Publisher absolutely must be as proficient and reliable in this respect to be taken seriously as THE InDesign replacement app we have all been hoping for. Well, it's been on the scene not for that long by now, so I really DO hope it'll catch up yet – hopefully sooner than later...

[Peter Maas]

So now it's 2022. That's two years later. Did anything happen to improve PDF export? other than that I do get a masked object? The flattener options are too limited. If this is your best shot at flattening a transparent PDF then that will seriously damage your opportunities in the graphical market. Think of it what you will, but if printers claim on their site that they would like to receive a flattened PDFx1a then Affinity should do a better job and not cripple the design when exported to PDF. 

• I should be able to have just this text with transparent object on top of it converted to outlines.
• I need to set a resolution higher than 400dpi for everything that is supposed to be readable. Your flattener stops at 400dpi.

[garrettm30]

On 3/7/2022 at 10:30 AM, Peter Maas said:

Your flattener stops at 400dpi

You can enter numbers higher than 400.

[Peter Maas]

When I enter numbers higher than 400dpi when exporting to PDF the result will be no more than 400dpi. But when I change the document resolution and set that to 1200dpi, I can refer to the document-dpi and get 1200dpi in the PDF. I think it's misleading to offer me a place to choose a resolution where it doesn't actually make that resolution in the PDF. I consider this document-dpi-setting to be a workaround for something that should have worked better in the first place.