Affinity Desiger - problems with transparencies when exporting

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Edit: Cmd key?

Not for resetting an Affinity application during startup. That is Ctrl on both MacOS and Windows.

[loukash]

On 1/25/2021 at 3:46 PM, BofG said:

it's something to do with the blend modes on the ellipse layers

And you are likely correct!
I have now toyed with it some more – hey, it's a challenge! – and found an interesting phenomenon.

Here's the document as is. Note that the Artboard fill is set to black:

Now I disabled the artboard fill… and there it is:

It's those ellipses:

When I disable them, the rest is normal:

When I put a black rectangle underneath, the blend for those ellipses returns to "normal":

So it's something about the black artboard fill that's messing up your export by going missing.

Why? No idea.
Place a black rectangle on the artboard and try again.

[Pšenda]

6 hours ago, loukash said:

Now I disabled the artboard fill… and there it is:

Because this only happens when exporting, it must be something in its settings - like Matte color?

Standard is Matte disabled (no fill), maybe GT70 has set Matte fill in Export dialog. 

[loukash]

4 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Because this only happens when exporting, it must be something in its settings - like Matte color?

1 hour ago, BofG said:

I've tried different matte options, cannot reproduce the issue.

Neither can I.
Also tried various slice settings from the Export persona. But given how the document is built up, I don't see a way to bypass the Artboard fill for export unless you'd deliberately move its children outside this hierarchy.

1 hour ago, BofG said:

What specific version of Designer are you both using?

1.8.6, Mac App Store version.
Usually working in El Capitan. Now I just rebooted from the Catalina partition but no difference. However, I'm syncing my Affinity preferences between partitions, so my app settings are exactly the same on both systems. The only difference would by the underlying OS.

[loukash]

On 1/24/2021 at 9:50 PM, GT70 said:

If I rasterize into Designer, the same thing happens...

Yep, can reproduce:

BUT:

If I put a black background rectangle behind all elements inside the main group:

… and then rasterize the whole main group:

So…

Whatever causes this glitch on your part, make sure to put a solid black rectangle as a background. Don't rely on the black Artboard fill only.

[GT70]

OK, I've put a black box underneath and the image is now exported correctly, so whatever the problem with this strange behaviour, there is a small solution. We certainly lose the possibility of background transparency.

Out of curiosity I installed the beta and the problem still exists. In addition, the solution in the box below no longer works. In my opinion we should warn Affinity in figuring out what is going on in this file and fix it. 

 

[loukash]

31 minutes ago, GT70 said:

We certainly lose the possibility of background transparency.

No, you can't have transparency here as is. The black background is an integral part of the image. The ellipses blend mode you've chosen will apparently only work as expected if you have black background.

38 minutes ago, GT70 said:

we should warn Affinity in figuring out what is going on in this file and fix it. 

No one else has been able to reproduce your export problem so far. We now understand what's likely to be happening but we don't know why.
It's just that for some yet unknown reason, on your system(s) the black artboard fill is being ignored on export.

And the "issue" that the colors change if we rasterize the main group inline is in fact a non-issue: it's only the logical consequence of the object hierarchy you have chosen. Because by rasterizing the main group, the black background is not included, thus your ellipse blends are being rasterized against a default background which would be white. It's all just math.

[GT70]

All right then. Thank you for your explanations and for all the help you have given me. The fact that no one is able to replicate the problem worries me, because I'm afraid that in a future job I might run into something similar.
To avoid possible further problems in the future, do you have any tips for a better workflow? How would you have proceeded? I'm asking because maybe I made a mistake in the workmanship and the problem could recur with something else...
Thanks!

 

[Pšenda]

11 minutes ago, GT70 said:

do you have any tips for a better workflow? How would you have proceeded? I'm asking because maybe I made a mistake in the workmanship and the problem could recur with something else.

Because it is not yet explained what causes the error, or what exactly you did, it is difficult for anyone to advise you on the "more correct" procedure. This is also because your file is fine (the export turned out well for everyone else), so the error must be somewhere near you (on your PC). I'm told you tried Factory Reset - really? Have you tried APhoto and ADesigner (trial versions)? 

[loukash]

59 minutes ago, GT70 said:

no one is able to replicate the problem

Sometimes mystery happens.
Recently someone on the forum mentioned the Glyphs app: when I open https://glyphsapp.com on my El Capitan partition I don't see any text on the website! No idea why, hasn't happened before. Same in Safari and Firefox, so it must be something systemwide. But the website works on all other partitions, including Mountain Lion (via Waterfox) and Catalina (any browser). So at least I can roughly isolate the problem already.

Troubleshooting is detective work. The best approach is excluding "usual suspects" first.

59 minutes ago, GT70 said:

do you have any tips for a better workflow?

In this case I'd use more nested layers, add different Layer Colors via Layer Properties for easy navigation, applying blends and effects to layers or groups where applicable rather than to individual objects, naming layers and objects, etc. etc. That all helps when trying to find and identify a problem.

When I'm working on complex designs or layouts, I'm waching and controlling just as many aspects via the Layers panel as via artboard.
(Speaking of which: What I'm still missing in Affinity compared to InDesign/Illustrator is an "ultra small" Layers view mode. Even the "small thumbnails" are way too big for my taste, especially since I'm naming objects anyway!)