Fine lines around things when exporting PDF

[Buell8abe]

Hi there Gabe and Co, I have an issue with exporting a flatteded PDF from Affinity Publisher Beta v. 1.8.4.687. There are artefacts (maybe a border or some other thing) around a rectangle shape and around a font character (please see pic., attached). This is a really simple layered graphic using a simple rectangle shape and simple text with no effects applied, I have double-checked that the Borders are set to transparent. You can just see a faint grey line along the top edge of the yellow rectangle, and an outline to the top portion of the flower character of the font - which is a white character (set to 50% opacity) on a white background. I'm using the latest version of AP (1.8.4.687), on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro running Windows 10 Pro. Please can you help? Many thanks in advance. xx

[Jon P]

Hi @Buell8abe,

Can you upload the document and a screenshot of your export settings here

If you open it in a different PDF viewer (for example, using Chrome) do you see the lines in every PDF viewer?

[Buell8abe]

Hi Jon, have just uploaded 3x files. Thanks v. much  xx

[Buell8abe]

I can see the extra lines in Chrome, I opened it in Edge and I can see them there too.

[Jon P]

Hi @Buell8abe,

I can see the issue in the attached pdf you uploaded, but am struggling to see any issue in the example afpub file you provided when I export it. Can you attach the PDF you exported from the uploaded afpublisher file?

I may also need access to the fonts used inside the file

[Buell8abe]

Hi Jon, that example PDF was exported from the original AP file. Yes, that is correct - the lines *only* appear in the PDF (around the font, and around the rectangle) after exporting. There are no lines, no applied effects or other artifacts in the AP file. I do not have access to the font file at present but will do later this week. [ Edit: I have just attached the PDF export as requested. I can still see lines (or something!) around the flower font, and around the yellow rectangle (created with the 'Shapes' tool). I have also attached the font. ] Thanks again Jon. Tanya xx

TEST 001.pdf DT Flowers 1.ttf

Edited July 29, 2020 by Buell8abe
Attach files as requested.

[Jon P]

I can see it now with the font installed, this is because you are flattening on export, so it rasterises the font.

If you click "More.." when exporting and change the jpeg compression to be higher the artifacts around the font should go away.

[Buell8abe]

Hi Joh, thank you, that makes sense. I have tried at 100% quality setting but am still seeing lines! I have attached the latest PDF export along with a screenshot of the settings ...  xx

TEST 001.pdf

[Buell8abe]

Hi there, pleaes could you let me know if there has been any progress on this issues? Is there something else that I can try? Thanks very much. xx

[Pauls]

if you have to rasterise everything you could try an higher dpi value as well

[Buell8abe]

Hi Pauls, Thanks for your reply. I am currently exporting at 300dpi - it should be fine there I would have thought? (I can't go too high as I need to keep my exported file size down, but it does need to print crisply on domestic printers.) What dpi did you have in mind pls - is there a sweet spot?

[Pauls]

I have seen people using 600dpi and higher when trying  to reduce the impact of rasterisation

[Buell8abe]

Thanks Pauls. That is quite high! I really need this to work at lower dpi's than 600 to be of use. Rasterisation at 100% quality (even down to, say 60%-ish quality) I would have thought should not really be causing these additional lines around fonts ...?? Is it something the Dev. team are looking into do you think? Thanks very much again. Txx

[Pauls]

Can I ask why you are rasterising everything ? 

[Alfred]

17 hours ago, Buell8abe said:

I really need this to work at lower dpi's than 600 to be of use.

If 300 is too low but 600 is too high, try 400. Having said that, I would echo Paul’s question:

5 minutes ago, Pauls said:

Can I ask why you are rasterising everything ? 

 

[Buell8abe]

Hi Pauls, (if that question was for me ...) I am exporting to PDF, to be printed on home printers with no font dependancies. xx

[Alfred]

For home printers, which I take to mean consumer-grade, 300 DPI should be adequate. That aside, if you leave it to the printer to do the rasterizing the file size will be relatively small anyway.

[Pauls]

I would suggest rasterising only ‘unsupported properities’ and setting the embd font option to ‘Text as Curves’

[Buell8abe]

Thanks Pauls. Also an update - I downloaded the latest Beta for AD (email received this afternoon) ... and the problem seems to have been worked on. The white flower font on the white background is no longer showing an outline. xx

[Buell8abe]

Hi Pauls and Alfred, Thanks very much for your input. Just to clarify/respond again - I was rasterising everything while exporting the PDF because I believe that many people's home setup (PCs, colour printers) would be able to print a raster PDF file more easily than a vector one. I'm talking about non-designers with no specific 'design' software or utilities, who would be sending a PDF straight to their home printer. Do you think this supposition is fair, or probably not true? Thanks again for any advice. xx

[Alfred]

Home printers rasterize vector content all the time! For example, word processors don’t rasterize text before sending it to the printer.

[Buell8abe]

Oh okay thanks. The penultimate Beta release seems to have fixed the problem so I'm very happy about that. xx

[jee7]

I had the same issue and figured out the solution. The solution is to put a white rectangle behind all the graphics. Just specifying that the artboard's background color is white, does not work and produces these infinitely thin gray artifact lines around objects.

The suggestion to not rasterize is irrelevant. There could be many reasons to rasterize, and as there is an option for it on the PDF export menu, it should work. My reason was that some overlayed graphics did not get rasterized correctly in the printer. I had an orange rectangle partly behind a completely opaque black rectangle. In the vector PDF, it was fine, but in print, the orange rectangle was visible from behind the black one. Another reason is that if you have some big vector files, the printer (or even the PDF reader) might not be able to load all the layers. I have had issues, where some vector layers do not load or are shown incorrectly in the PDF when the files get too big.

[eqyizo]

On 9/22/2022 at 7:19 AM, jee7 said:

I had the same issue and figured out the solution. The solution is to put a white rectangle behind all the graphics. Just specifying that the artboard's background color is white, does not work and produces these infinitely thin gray artifact lines around objects.

The suggestion to not rasterize is irrelevant. There could be many reasons to rasterize, and as there is an option for it on the PDF export menu, it should work. My reason was that some overlayed graphics did not get rasterized correctly in the printer. I had an orange rectangle partly behind a completely opaque black rectangle. In the vector PDF, it was fine, but in print, the orange rectangle was visible from behind the black one. Another reason is that if you have some big vector files, the printer (or even the PDF reader) might not be able to load all the layers. I have had issues, where some vector layers do not load or are shown incorrectly in the PDF when the files get too big.

I had to rasterize my images to a full frame rectangle beyond the edges of the document. When I did a rectangle that only covered the stupid lines on the image, the rectangle gave me the lines too! A frickin' vector rectangle...Rasterized them together, same thing. This would be the ultimate nightmare if I was doing more complicated drawings that needed to be exported via pdf and viewed digitally (adobe acrobat). I can't imagine trying to deal with this when the document has overlapping images with different colors and text. This was frustrating enough already. It seems like something that shouldn't be a problem at all, but what do I know about the back end of it.

[lineweight]

On 9/22/2022 at 3:19 PM, jee7 said:

I had the same issue and figured out the solution. The solution is to put a white rectangle behind all the graphics. Just specifying that the artboard's background color is white, does not work and produces these infinitely thin gray artifact lines around objects.

The suggestion to not rasterize is irrelevant. There could be many reasons to rasterize, and as there is an option for it on the PDF export menu, it should work. My reason was that some overlayed graphics did not get rasterized correctly in the printer. I had an orange rectangle partly behind a completely opaque black rectangle. In the vector PDF, it was fine, but in print, the orange rectangle was visible from behind the black one. Another reason is that if you have some big vector files, the printer (or even the PDF reader) might not be able to load all the layers. I have had issues, where some vector layers do not load or are shown incorrectly in the PDF when the files get too big.

Thanks for posting this. Helped me solve a similar problem.

I had some scanned b&w images (as pixel layers) with white background laid out, all on a white artboard, but fringe lines were showing up in PDFs when viewed in some PDF viewers.

Making a white rectangle, same size as artboard, and placing it behind everything didn't work by itself, but merging it with the various pixel layers, then exportinh from this, did.