Placed PDFs come in as rasterised?

[Intuos5]

Hi, I just placed a bunch of vector PDF files in Designer (and linked them in the resource manager). It appears that these layers all come in as raster images. Is there a way to link (pdf) files as vector?

https://affinity.help/publisher/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Media/placeImages.html?title=Placing content

The manual also states DPI settings for linked files, which is what I am also seeing as part of the rasterisation:

[Old Bruce]

We would need to see one of the "vector PDF files".

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

It appears that these layers all come in as raster images.

Are you Placing them as Passthrough, or Interpreted? If Passthrough, they may appear to be images when you're viewing your document, but if you Export to PDF format they should be vector in the PDF file you export. What leads you to think they're rasterized?

If you are not seeing that, can you provide a sample set of files to demonstrate the problem you see?

[Intuos5]

Ah thanks @walt.farrell switching to interpreted changed the display so I can clearly tell it respects the vector format.

[lacerto]

2 minutes ago, Intuos5 said:

Ah thanks @walt.farrell switching to interpreted changed the display so I can clearly tell it respects the vector format.

What you are experiencing might be a kind of a workaround. "Passthrough" should respect native PDF data (keep vectors as vectors, pass through color values, embedded fonts, overprinting settings). If you get rasterized output when "passing through", and non-rasterized, when "interpreting", you should check carefully that the interpretations are correct (non-installed fonts have not been silently replaced with installed ones, color values being translated, etc.). So when you allow Affinity apps to "interpret" PDF, they might interpret vectors fine, but might mess up many other things.

If "passthrough" really causes rasterization, the reason for that may be that the placed PDFs use PDF/X-based methods, or that you export using PDF/X-based methods. These combinations work poorly with Affinity apps. You might want to try to export using the "PDF (Press ready)" preset and then possibly also checking "Convert image color spaces" under the "More" options of the Export dialog box to see if that resolves your problem so that the placed PDFs are exported unchanged.

[Intuos5]

I'll have a look at that in QGIS, I'm not exporting any text, just vector lines. It's also giving me a white background, even though that's not supposed to be in the PDF file, so that's weird as well. I'll also compare with Illustrator tomorrow morning, just in case.