Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Recommended Posts

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:

 

post-13933-0-05699000-1437868975_thumb.png

 

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?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Look in the slices panel.  Do you have more than one entry there?  I've found that if you're in the Layers panel and you select a layer then select a preset AP creates a new slice based only on the selected layer and it makes that the selected slice for export.  In the Slices panel click on the slice with the same name as the file (probably the top one) and retry the export.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't reproduce this by just adding a text layer to a pixel layer.   However, as soon as I added a live filter to the text layer it ceased to render on export.

 

 I've noticed a few problems with live filters.  The trash printing, they aren't seen by the selection tools and now it appears they won't export.

 

I think the first of these has been fixed in the latest beta so perhaps it's worth checking if this export problem is still there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've tried it in the latest beta and it's better but still not right.  If the text has a live filter on it it will render now but it looks nothing like it should.  I used black text with a Gaussian blur and it rendered without blur but partially transparent.

 

I'll put together some instructions to reproduce this and post it in the bugs forum.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Upload the file and I'll have a look but from what you've said it sounds like a bug so will need to be looked at by someone from Serif.  As a work around, in the Photo persona select the top layer and from the Layer menu choose Merge Visible.  It will give you a single-layer, flattened version of the file without destroying the original layers.

 

Hopefully that will then export correctly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It works because it renders the whole layer stack into a single bitmap placed on top with Normal blend mode - and hence hiding all layers beneath.  So any problems export is having with rendering the lower layers doesn't affect the rendered image.

 

Doing it that way is actually a common work flow and many people create that flattened image before doing final adjustments such as sharpening.  Nonetheless, exporting should still work properly without that merge so it looks like this might be a bug.

 

I suggest you post it in the bugs forum with a link to your file so the devs can determine what's going on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm looking into this currently. There seem to be three groups of problems. The first group is the ones fixed by the beta. The second is due to layers being unticked in Export persona Layers; this results in them not being output, even though the Export persona still draws them. Finally, there are some remaining bugs in our export code which I'll fix ASAP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks, Dave.

 

The second is due to layers being unticked in Export persona Layers; this results in them not being output, even though the Export persona still draws them.

 

Do you mean that I neglected to tick some layers, or that AP somehow somehow left them unticked?

 

I'm confident that at some point I made sure to tick them all, and did not see a change in the results. But sometimes I'm confident about stuff that I have no business being confident about ;-)

 

Looking forward to the fixes. I'm quite enjoying AP for book covers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm saying the file I downloaded, which I think came from the first post in this thread, had some things in the Layers tab unticked. They default to ticked, so at some point someone must have unticked them and not reticked them. With them unticked, Affinity wouldn't even try to export them, but there were other problems as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.