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Outline Effect on Text displayed strangely


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When using an Outline Effect on some text and zooming out, Affinity Designer appears to cut off the text strangely. The more one zooms out the less the text shows. This causes File Thumbnails to basically show no text if the file contains large artboards. And when the file is open one has to zoom in to see the outline rendered correctly.

This is using a 1px white centered outline on the bottom text in the screenshots. Screenshots shown are at 3 different zoom levels.

#1.png

#2.png

#3.png

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, SPaceBar said:

Hi @zimmt Thanks, I've got the file you uploaded but you forgot to add the font. I can't recreate the issue without it.

Try heredetective.gif

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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HI @zimmt Your file looked fine for me using Arial which is why I wanted to check your original font. I can still see it at 25% zoom. When I select 10% it disappears. I changed the text to your original font and I can see that this does happen at 25%.

This is actually by design as when Filter FX are displayed they're applied to the size the objects appear on the page (I believe this is to help with speed). So when you zoom out the text is much smaller so the white outline appears stronger. The more you zoom out the more you see the FX. This will be more prevalent on thinner fonts which is why Arial was fine for me at 25%.

I've seen this before in other packages which is why thumbnails often look different to the larger file.

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A certain disappearance can be especially desired by design if a contour becomes assigned to text ...

1639269518_textstrokevseffect.jpg.e09f257530d19a9aaf714541f663ea09.jpg

... but you may get more quality while working (and export *), with a stroke instead of an effect.
* because effects will get rasterized.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Hi @zimmt I remember, before layer effects were a thing we had to work the text a bit more. Have you tried adding an additional text layer on top so the effect isn't actually on the same layer as the text? This is how I used to make my text show up in thumbnails. Obviously some designs work better than others.

Text-effect-layered.png

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That's an interesting solution. Not sure how well this works with an effect to reduce a font though.

Another workaround is creating a copy, converting it to curves, joining them all, adding an inside stroke, removing the inner fill, and then setting the filter to Erase. But that is too much work for production files where text is frequently changed.

I have also moved away from FX on fonts as it causes color shifts for me once they get rasterized.

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