Unable to preserve transparency exporting PDF

[lostinohio2]

I've been using Publisher for several months and love the product. However, one issue that has plagued me since day 1 is the inability to export documents as PDF while preserving transparency. In this particular case, I'm working on a document that is white-only on a transparent background, which is going to be used for screen printing on a colored t-shirt. I've tried exporting using a variety of PDF settings under "More" but none produces a transparent background. The document inevitably comes out just as a white square. This is both how the screen printing company sees it, and also how Affinity Publisher sees it when I attempt to re-open the PDF directly in Publisher.

Publisher will see the layers when reimporting the PDF, but sees a white background.

When I do a similar task in Pixelmator Pro (for instance), the transparency is preserved as expected. This definitely appears to be something wrong with Publisher (or my lack of knowledge of how to do this seemingly basic task).

 

[lostinohio2]

Attaching a few screenshots. One showing "transparent background" is selected, one showing the document that reflects transparent background. One shows the all-white document that is reimported (though I can tell the layers still show up, just with white background). Also attached my afpub document in case that is helpful.

I have tried PDF (For Export) and "PDF (For Print)" settings. I have also modified the settings to try different PDF Compatibility settings, all with the same all-white output.

GP_TShirt_Design.afpub

[Old Bruce]

I tried your file and exported like this with the result that there is a transparent background.

[lostinohio2]

Thanks @Old Bruce. I just verified the exact same settings, yet Preview and a re-open in Affinity Publisher both show a plain white document. Is there some other setting that could be causing this? A PNG and TIFF export do preserve transparency just fine, FYI.

GP TShirt Design.pdf

[lostinohio2]

FWIW, I'm using the App Store version of Affinity Publisher, running version 1.7.3 on MacOS Catalina running latest version.

[lostinohio2]

If you happen to have a copy of the export you did, I'd love to see that to see if the results are the same for me. However, I did try opening the exported document on multiple computers to make sure it wasn't something goofy with my iMac itself.

[Old Bruce]

I checked the transparency by making a new document with a coloured "background" layer to simulate the tee shirt then imported the pdf on top of that and could see the white on colour.

GP_TShirt_Design.pdf