thin border around the clipping curve

[ashf]

When I create a clipped object, I can see very thin border around the clipping curve.

This seems to be same as known "antialias gap" problem.

[Joachim_L]

@ashf Please check if Preferences >> Performance >> Use precise clipping is active. If not, activate it. In my case, the line is barely visible if activated and not exported e.g. to PDF.

[ashf]

14 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

@ashf Please check if Preferences >> Performance >> Use precise clipping is active. If not, activate it. In my case, the line is barely visible if activated and not exported e.g. to PDF.

Thank you. the border is not visible when the precise clipping is on, but visible in exported PDF both case.
So I guess I just need to avoid this type of clipping maybe?

[Joachim_L]

1 minute ago, ashf said:

So I guess I just need to avoid this type of clipping maybe?

Hmm, strange. No problem with my document. What was your export preset and could you upload the above document?

[ashf]

4 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Hmm, strange. No problem with my document. What was your export preset and could you upload the above document?

Ah, it is not visible when exported as PDF/X-4.

[ashf]

I just tested again, the border is visible with PDF/X-4 after all.
Might be depends on the situation?
Square vs circle ... and so on.

clipping-test-1.afdesign

[Joachim_L]

18 minutes ago, ashf said:

Might be depends on the situation?

Depends how the clipping works. In your document you used Erase and this lead to rasterising the elements. Clipping with a vector would give no problem. But anyway, this is not satisfactory when elements get rasterised you are going to see "spurs" of the clipping operation. The Affinities need some extra development here OR a definitive recipe against those clipping errors exporting to PDF.

[ashf]

8 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

Depends how the clipping works. In your document you used Erase and this lead to rasterising the elements. Clipping with a vector would give no problem. But anyway, this is not satisfactory when elements get rasterised you are going to see "spurs" of the clipping operation. The Affinities need some extra development here OR a definitive recipe against those clipping errors exporting to PDF.

P.S. The border is visible without erase mode also.(in Acrobat)

[VolkerMB]

The issue has been raised here a couple of times in the past. And it still stands.

@ashf is right. No matter what the settings are: clipping in Designer produces thin lines even in the most basic scenarios. See attached sample. I can export this to SVG or PDF (all presets) - it always gives me a thin line... sad!

clipping-test.afdesign

[Sean P]

3 hours ago, VolkerMB said:

The issue has been raised here a couple of times in the past. And it still stands.

@ashf is right. No matter what the settings are: clipping in Designer produces thin lines even in the most basic scenarios. See attached sample. I can export this to SVG or PDF (all presets) - it always gives me a thin line... sad!

clipping-test.afdesign 1.34 MB · 5 downloads

There has been a new option added in 1.9 to aid with this behaviour. If you go into the Blend Ranges dialog you can change Anti-aliasing to 'Force Off' it will stop the thin lines you are seeing.

However please be aware that in some instances (such as the example given above) that PDF files may still show this behaviour for the same reasons we were. This is something we cannot control and is down to the PDF viewer.
 

[Joachim_L]

5 minutes ago, Sean P said:

If you go into the Blend Ranges dialog you can change Anti-aliasing to 'Force Off' it will stop the thin lines you are seeing.

No. Taking the example from VolkerMB I turned off Anti-Aliasing for the rectangle or the text or both and exported as high-quality SVG. In every case the lines were visible in Chrome or Inkscape. Any further advice for us?

[Sean P]

2 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

No. Taking the example from VolkerMB I turned off Anti-Aliasing for the rectangle or the text or both and exported as high-quality SVG. In every case the lines were visible in Chrome or Inkscape. Any further advice for us?

Unfortunately it is not just limited to PDF files - I suspect most vector based formats will have the same issue. I tried an SVG and can see it, but as I mentioned this is nothing we can do - the vector items have been output and are being rendered by something else with the issue. It is similar to what Matt has said previously regarding the problem - many other applications also have the same issues.  

The anti-aliasing option does help when in app and for users who are wanting to export to raster images.

[Joachim_L]

Thanks for your answer @Sean P. I can live with that or work around. I am clueless if there would be any use-case where "Force on" or "Inherit" could be useful? As the setting has no impact on vector and who wants to see those lines on bitmaps, so I would expect "Force off" to be selected as Default.

[Sean P]

5 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Thanks for your answer @Sean P. I can live with that or work around. I am clueless if there would be any use-case where "Force on" or "Inherit" could be useful? As the setting has no impact on vector and who wants to see those lines on bitmaps, so I would expect "Force off" to be selected as Default.

The issue is that this also controls the anti-aliasing on the entire object, so if you were to have it set to 'Force off' by Default none of your shapes will be aliased then and will not look particularly smooth its a bit of a catch-22 unfortunately. That said though this is a great option if you're a pixel artist!  

[Joachim_L]

7 minutes ago, Sean P said:

will not look particularly smooth

Sorry for being so insisting, but are we talking here about how everything is presented on the display and not having any impact on the exported file? Or does it have any impact on the exported file? If it is just a rendering-looking-great-on-screen-thing, why not move the Anti-Aliasing function to a button on the toolbar? Or even better not using it on export?

[Sean P]

2 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Sorry for being so insisting, but are we talking here about how everything is presented on the display and not having any impact on the exported file? Or does it have any impact on the exported file? If it is just a rendering-looking-great-on-screen-thing, why not move the Anti-Aliasing function to a button on the toolbar? Or even better not using it on export?

It affects how things are drawn on screen, and also how they're exported to raster formats. 

[Joachim_L]

Thanks again. To come to a conclusion (for me) before you virtually strangle me: Anti-Aliasing is just a beauty thing and should not be used when exporting (I say exporting in general, because it won't work on vector and is better on raster when turned off). So I request the feature turning automatically on during screen work and turning automatically off on export.

Should I make a separate post for this?

[Sean P]

2 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

Thanks again. To come to a conclusion (for me) before you virtually strangle me: Anti-Aliasing is just a beauty thing and should not be used when exporting (I say exporting in general, because it won't work on vector and is better on raster when turned off). So I request the feature turning automatically on during screen work and turning automatically off on export.

Should I make a separate post for this?

Please don't - this is as designed. The option is there in limited cases the user may need it to work around issues such as the issue in the original post, or if users are doing specific pixel art where it is stylistically beneficial, in which case they're likely to be outputting as Raster.

Hopefully this image will help illustrate why it shouldn't be automatically changed. In the case below Inherit is the same as Force On (Inherit will just get the parent's value and use that. In the case of no parent it will use 'On').

AntiAliasing.afdesign