Pdf displays foggy in apple mail preview

[Olaf Welling]

Hi all, I made a complex illustration for a poster with lots of structures, brushes etc. The exported Pdf shows a strange fogginess in some parts of the illustration in Apple Mail only – in Adobe Acrobat, in the app Apple Preview, the preview in Finder and when converted in Photoshop everything looks fine and the values seem to be o.k., too. However it is not only irritating me, I am afraid my clients may see the same effect in their mail programme, so I wonder what is the problem and how to get rid of it. Any ideas? 

Screenshot attached shows the display in Apple Mail 13.4 on MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 on the left, the original file in Affinity Designer 1.8.6 on the right.

Edited November 25, 2020 by Olaf Welling
Added screenshot of Pdf export settings

[Callum]

Hi Olaf,

Unfortunately if this only occurs in your mail client it likely isn't an issue with Affinity Photo. Does this also occur if you export to different file types?

Thanks

C

[Olaf Welling]

@Callum Well, it didn’t occur with Pdfs from other software, yet. And no, the Jpg generated from the same file was displayed well, just as a pdf of a second artboard where I used the same content, but to keep things simple, except for the type rasterized to a single layer. Neither is the effect shown, when I export an Eps from Affinity, and in Illustrator open and safe it as a Pdf – but then, any effects that might be involved are rasterized on that process, too.

I suppose the effects might be involved, as the foggy area includes a “notch” around the yellow candle, probably because of the gaussian blurred shadow beneath.