How do I get rid of thin lines at the edges of vector shapes in Designer (and possibly Photo and Publisher, too)?

[Lorox]

Obviously there is a problem manifesting itself in the form of thin lines appearing at the edges of vector shapes under a couple of circumstances. (Affinity Designer v. 1.9.3 on a 2019 iMac running macOS 10.14.6)

Example 1 (Designer):

The edge of the rectangle clipping the circle (left side) remains faintly visible – in my experience this will be rendered as well (and so keep visible) if the artwork is exported to a pixel format file (e.g. JPG).
Note that when doing the (visually) same sort of "masking" using the same sort of elements by way of a subtractive compound these thin lines do apparently not appear.

Example 2a (Designer):

screenshot: area from artwork viewed in Designer (zoomed in at 400%) – no thin lines visible at borders

Example 2b (Designer):

screenshot: area from previous artwork after having been exported to JPG (100% quality); opended and viewed in Designer (zoomed in at 400%) – thin vertical lines visible where vector shapes touch (absolutely flush pixel perfect positioning!)

Example 2c (Designer):

screenshot: same as in 2b but flat black colour applied to the touching shapes (whereas in 2b there had been an additional 40% noise to the black)

Obviously it doesn’t matter if some noise has been applied to the individual objects’ fills thus possibly causing some sort of interference at the borders – those thin dividing lines continue appear with flat colours, too.

Other users report that this kind of problem also pops up with (seamless) patters where the pattern’s tiles touch. I haven't tried this but I guess they're right.

I've actually noticed those thin lines first when I started with Designer (v. 1.5, I think) quite some time ago – I had tried to get a first grip on masking then and at the time had hoped that they were some kind of temporary display glitch... However, when the lines kept showing up in the JPGs as well, which I exported from Designer I began to suspect that there might be something more to it.

I really hope, this problem will be adressed by Serif some time soon as it tends to severely hurt delicate artworks. Anybody looking just a bit closer will see these annoying lines, I'd think.

[MEB]

Hi Lorox,
To fix the first issue (when using clipping) go to Affinity Designer Preferences, Performance section and tick Use precise Clipping.
Regarding the other issues make sure all objects are pixel aligned (that is their X,Y coordinates and width and height are all integer values) and ideally check the image at 100% zoom. If pixel aligned correctly these (vertical and horizontal) lines shouldn't appear in the exported files.

[Lorox]

5 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi Lorox,
To fix the first issue (when using clipping) go to Affinity Designer Preferences, Performance section and tick Use precise Clipping.
Regarding the other makes sure all objects are pixel aligned (that is their X,Y coordinates and width and height are all integer values) and ideally check the image at 100% zoom. If pixel aligned correctly these (vertical and horizontal) lines shouldn't appear in the exported files.

Hi MEB,

thank you very much for replying this quick! The "Precise Clipping“ option had actually escaped my attention up to now. Anyway, this seems to work – so thanks again!

I had in fact made sure eventually that pixel alignment had been applied exactly as you suggest. Being someone who'd been designing mainly for print this hadn't seemed so obvious to me before, but when I encountered this issue I already thought precise pixel alignment would certainly be helpful and possibly minimize any rounding/antialiasing effects.

This having been said I also noticed that putting some element of the same or similar colour behind those elements’ boundaries also seems to make the lines disappear. But this might not be visually possible everywhere – so hopefully activating "Precise Clipping“ will do the job on a general basis.

[Chris_06]

I noticed this same phenomena in AP. Turns out that if the image in a picture frame has the 'Page Box' set to 'TrimBox' these very thin lines will appear upon printing, but not show on-screen in AP. Neither the above suggestions nor any amount of cropping/editing in/out of app would remove them. Switching the Page Box to Minimum/Maximum Content fixed the issue.

@MEB This may be a bug. I'm running AP 2.5.5 on Win10.

[Chris_06]

A further bit of maddening info: Duplicating (select - enter) the object brings back the lines. All attributes appear to be duplicated correctly, yet the lines show back up.

[NotMyFault]

Can you provide an example document?
 

Most thin lines are caused by fractional positions or size of layers, leading to antialiasing (partial alpha ) at edge pixels

[Chris_06]

Rasterize and crop fixed the problem.

I still consider this a bug. But it's probably super difficult to consistently reproduce.

[Chris_06]

18 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Can you provide an example document?
 

Most thin lines are caused by fractional positions or size of layers, leading to antialiasing (partial alpha ) at edge pixels

In this file the garland images are the issue. Hide all layers on the back cover except the garland and print as the lines are not visible on-screen (which is the more frustrating). The select the garland layer and rasterize/crop. Reprint and the lines are not there.

The garland images in this file are fractional size (px), but I have set them to just integers to no effect. So that does not seem to be the issue for this case.

The lines do not show on a print ready PDF export.

I am printing on a Canon C7565 IR-Adv.

2024_New_Years_Eve_Bulletin_bug.afpub

[Chris_06]

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

leading to antialiasing (partial alpha ) at edge pixels

If this is what's happening, we should have an optional 'hard edge' available to apply.

[NotMyFault]

Activate pixel view mode to see it in the App before printing.

It is just the rectangle on x pis 37.5

correct it to 37.0 and the thin lines is gone.

[NotMyFault]

1 hour ago, Chris_06 said:

If this is what's happening, we should have an optional 'hard edge' available to apply.

For vector layers you can simply deactivate AA in blend options.

[Chris_06]

@NotMyFault Thank you for your kind help with this.

My apologies, I should have posted pics of the print copy to clarify where the lines are. Here are shots of print copies of the garland with and without associated layers. On my screen nearly infinite zoom still does not show them.

[NotMyFault]

This is probably caused by usage of embedded images. Rasterizing all of then should solve the issue.

or simply use „merge visible“ on top of layer stack.

[Chris_06]

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

Rasterizing all of then should solve the issue.

That was pretty much my conclusion. It still seems a bit buggy, but this works fine.

Thanks again for your help. Have a great new year!

[NotMyFault]

45 minutes ago, Chris_06 said:

That was pretty much my conclusion. It still seems a bit buggy, but this works fine.

Thanks again for your help. Have a great new year!

Have a great new year, too. Happy that you issue is solved