Odd gap between solid colors

[Michael Swengel]

In the attached file, there is an odd white line where there should be none. This area should be solid black. I can see no reason why there should be any light color here.

Can anyone advise?

It looks like the fill color of the object is bleeding around the border of the stroke.

Is this a bug? 

 

NotToday2.afdesign

[Michael Swengel]

I can confirm it IS the object color that isn't being covered up by the stroke. The question is why? These are my current stroke settings: 

[GarryP]

One of the technical experts will probably be able to tell you what the problem is with this, but I think it’s something to do with either antialiasing, or blend options, or both, or maybe something else.
However, one quick way to alleviate the problem is to use the Appearance Panel to add an extra 1-pixel-width stroke – aligned to centre – to the layers which exhibit the problem – see attached images.
It’s probably not ideal, but you could be messing around for ages trying to get something else to work.

 

[Dan C]

Hi @Michael Swengel,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

I think it’s something to do with either antialiasing

As Garry has mentioned, this line is caused due to antialiasing, if you disable this within Affinity and export to a raster format (such as PNG, JPEG etc) then you would find that these 'lines' no longer show -

However, if you require a Vector output (such as PDF, EPS etc) then when using the 'Align Inner' option for your stroke, disabling antialiasing will unfortunately not resolve the issue.

As Garry has suggested, you can add an additional stroke to your objects, or alternatively you can set the stoke to 'Align Middle' with a Mitre value of 3 - You will need to realign your objects, but once done this should appear very similarly to your current design, but will not display the 'thin line' -

I hope this helps

[PixelPest]

To make it clear: the AA issue appears due the Stroke alignment=Inside. What a bummer.

[Michael Swengel]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

Hi @Michael Swengel,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

As Garry has mentioned, this line is caused due to antialiasing, if you disable this within Affinity and export to a raster format (such as PNG, JPEG etc) then you would find that these 'lines' no longer show -

However, if you require a Vector output (such as PDF, EPS etc) then when using the 'Align Inner' option for your stroke, disabling antialiasing will unfortunately not resolve the issue.

As Garry has suggested, you can add an additional stroke to your objects, or alternatively you can set the stoke to 'Align Middle' with a Mitre value of 3 - You will need to realign your objects, but once done this should appear very similarly to your current design, but will not display the 'thin line' -

I hope this helps

Dan,

 

Thank you. But we shouldn’t have to work around this. This needs to be fixed. 
 

Can you tell me when we might be looking at a fix for this?

Edited September 24, 2021 by Michael Swengel

[Dan C]

16 minutes ago, Michael Swengel said:

Can you tell me when we might be looking at a fix for this?

As I understand it, this is not a bug within the Affinity application, it is inherent with vector objects and antialiasing when using the Align Inside stroke option.

This can be confirmed by opening the exported PDF within Acrobat or other vector programs such as Inkscape, which also displays this 'thin line' you're seeing.

[Michael Swengel]

1 minute ago, Dan C said:

As I understand it, this is not a bug within the Affinity application, it is inherent with vector objects and antialiasing when using the Align Inside stroke option.

This can be confirmed by opening the exported PDF within Acrobat or other vector programs such as Inkscape, which also displays this 'thin line' you're seeing.

Call it what you’d like, Dan. It is a problem. The program is not putting color where color should go. And that needs to be fixed. 

[Patrick Connor]

22 minutes ago, Michael Swengel said:

The program is not putting color where color should go.

The way this vector is drawn is mathematically very difficult and not possible to decide on a perfect solution that suits all cases. Serif have settled on this approach, as have many other applications, as it produces the best visual results in most cases. 

[Old Bruce]

I have always had good results with using the blend option setting of force off for the antialiasing. NotToday2 bruce.afdesign

[Michael Swengel]

34 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

The way this vector is drawn is mathematically very difficult and not possible to decide on a perfect solution that suits all cases. Serif have settled on this approach, as have many other applications, as it produces the best visual results in most cases. 

Then Serif needs to figure it out. This works fine with Illustrator. It does not work with Affinity. Call it whatever you want, but this is a problem, and I cannot recommend a program that does this kind of thing. Just being frank. I love Affinity for the most part - but I need to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen, and if I can't rely on Affinity, I will have to switch back to AI. I don't want to, but...

Thanks all.

[Michael Swengel]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

I have always had good results with using the blend option setting of force off for the antialiasing. NotToday2 bruce.afdesign

Where is that option, Old Bruce?

[Old Bruce]

Sorry should have included the information. It is the cog wheel in the Layers panel, choose the problem layer and hit the cog wheel.

[Dan C]

1 minute ago, Michael Swengel said:

Where is that option, Old Bruce?

 

4 hours ago, Dan C said:

As Garry has mentioned, this line is caused due to antialiasing, if you disable this within Affinity and export to a raster format (such as PNG, JPEG etc) then you would find that these 'lines' no longer show -

As mentioned however, this will only affect the viewport within Affinity, and exporting to raster formats. Exporting to vector formats will still show this issue in other apps.

[Michael Swengel]

Just now, Dan C said:

 

As mentioned however, this will only affect the viewport within Affinity, and exporting to raster formats. Exporting to vector formats will still show this issue in other apps.

Gotcha. Yeah, that's not a solution then. Illustrator doesn't seem to have a problem with this. Why does Affinity, and when can you get it fixed?

[Dan C]

2 minutes ago, Michael Swengel said:

Illustrator doesn't seem to have a problem with this. Why does Affinity, and when can you get it fixed?

From our internal testing, it seems Illustrator provides a 'silent' work-around for this which we will be logging internally with our developers as an improvement.

The Fill and stroke are separate objects in the exported PDF from Illustrator (as the 'Align Inner' forces it get expanded when exported) and Illustrator seems to 'shrink' the fill object somewhat to avoid this 'line', so we can look to improve Affinity - potentially by adding a small amount of negative contour on the export.

I hope this helps

[Michael Swengel]

Just now, Dan C said:

From our internal testing, it seems Illustrator provides a 'silent' work-around for this which we will be logging internally with our developers as an improvement.

Please do. Until this is fixed, I cannot use Affinity for the purpose I had hoped to. I just ran into this problem last night, and using it going forward just feels sloppy. I shouldn't have to do more work to fix this glaring issue.

Thank you, Dan.

[PixelPest]

5 hours ago, Dan C said:

This can be confirmed by opening the exported PDF within Acrobat or other vector programs such as Inkscape, which also displays this 'thin line' you're seeing.

Inkscape follows SVG specs and don´t have inside/outside alignment for strokes so isn´t comparable in that case.