PDF export ignores certain layers and effects, outputs wrong colors.

[GehrigBOTJ]

Hi there!

In my documents, I'm having an issue where publisher can output PNG, TGA, EXR etc all perfectly fine, but PDF is having issues.

I've tried literally every combination of settings I can think of in the export settings, and no matter what, certain layer effects are being ignored, as well as certain colors look like they're in the completely wrong color space. It shows up wrong even in the export preview window. 

I'm uploading the file. The problem is most prominent in the LOGLINE page, where a normal export to PNG looks fine, but when exporting to PDF (even choosing to raster all images) it looks orange. 

My guess is that something internally is rasterizing certain live filters incorrectly when exporting to PDF. 

Please advise! Thank you!

MarieDeck_General_v001.afpub

[SrPx]

For some reason, the 469 mb file arrives here corrupted in my side. Maybe it's too big for the forum. Or you were compressing it and only uploaded one part? Many pages are empty, but I could open the corrupted file. You might want to try in a server of yours, or a public Google drive link or something. Wetransfer  is free and pretty good  https://wetransfer.com   (the free version has no password protect, but you neither protected it here, so I guess it's fine).

On opening the file, it says "The file was truncated, but we could open an old version of the file. It is recommend to save as a new file".

Did you hit "open preflight" to check? It catches a bunch of errors (btw, a lot of grammar and typing errors, check that carefully, that's dangerous, commercially speaking ), among them, color profile errors. I'm not experienced in Publisher (AT ALL), but in  general in graphic design, and raster I try to flatten all effects as much as I can before exporting to PDF. Indeed, anything graphic only as one layer, rasterized, no fx, all "baked". I try to leave no graphic work for the person making the pub file. I work with a graphic profile for the document (I believe yours is in sRGB, linear(32bits)), and try all images to have been worked out in same color profile, or carefully converted previously to import (surely fine not to do so, always that your color profiles for the app, document and export are fine). And then I ensure the color profile to export is the right one in the PDF. In PDF/X, I typically use PDF/X-4 (but sometimes the company  tells you which is the only version they admit, and there are often surprises. PDF/X-1a, non PDF/X, even older...) and often export even in RGB (their RIP does the conversion). Other times in CMYK, and in the specific profile requested by the print company. It depends on the case and what is required. Check that you have color calibrated your monitor, that Publisher has the right color profiles in the preferences, the document color profiles, and check what icc profiles are you setting in the PDF export window. That's all I can think of. I don't see a difference between the pages and the export preview for the PDF, or hitting preview, so , might be the configuration of your publisher preferences in  matter of color, the document profile, and even your actual system color calibration for the monitor.

Or maybe I'm wrong and the file is perfect, and it's just due to arriving corrupted.

 

[SrPx]

I was able to do a fix to the logline page, and export only that. I somehow rasterized the text and that's not what I wanted, but it kept crashing and I don't know if its the several problems of the file, or that it downloaded corrupt, or actually the app's issues. So, I'm attaching here a tiny pdf export (edit, finally exported 2 files) in which I simply rasterized everything on that page except the text layers. ideally, the text to be kept as text (fonts embedded or provided), or as some ask for, even converted to outlines (ouch), which you can force in the export window (having  the fonts installed on that PC). As if it is all rasterized, text is going to pixelate horribly. I left the text layers out and all those live filters and fx layers, grouped and rasterized then the group, it exported without the orange issue, and I think looking as you pretended. So, might need to go doing such in all the pages, I don't know. Again, am no expert in publishing stuff neither Publisher. This tho is a super dirty export to test that the color could be fixed.

Edit, surely for not finding the fonts or whatever issue, it does rasterize the font layers when set rasterize only non compatible. So, setting rasterize nothing surely makes it a PDF/X-4 non compliant, but keeps the vectorial font edges (Acrobat Reader shows it).  You should look at it in depth (your large source file), so to provide all well, this is just a test with the orange problem. Logline2.pdf has the rasterize nothing thing. 

Edit: When eliminating all pages except the logline page, deleting then also the corrupted ones by the download, it does not crash anymore and lets me export.

Edit2: Yup, in the second fille the fx on the text are lost, and also the "Marie" layer. This has been a some seconds job, you will do it in detail.

logline.pdf logline2.pdf

[GehrigBOTJ]

Very much appreciate your doing all this to see if you can fix the issue.

I already have a workaround, I just export as a PNG, and then compile the PNG sequence into a PDF separately. Publisher only has the issue when exporting to pdf, and based on your trial and error, you found that to be the case as well. I'm not sure about the issues opening it, it's possible it uploaded corrupt. 

I know that rasterizing everything before export manually would work, but I'd like to avoid that step and just rasterize everything automatically as Publisher is supposed to be able to do. Thanks!

[SrPx]

Hey, if it works, it works!  

I was all the time thinking the PDF was for printing, but then I realized a lot of times PDFs are for screen only, the web, or download.  In that case, a pdf/x (which is more strict)  is not needed. Anyway, glad that you got it solved. 

[GehrigBOTJ]

Wouldn't say it's solved, I still think it's a bug worth looking into for Affinity, but thank you nonetheless  have a happy holidays!!

[Nils Sens]

This bug seems to persist for 2 years! We are paying customers, this is not some "community / open source" thing! 

I'm working on a flyer for a client, and text effects don't show up in PDF export. I tried all the hacks (exporting as SVG first, then reinserting it before PDF export) to no avail.

Thinking of asking my money back.  Affinity Designer is quite unreliable despite the ads making it look like a professional design app.

[Nils Sens]

Sorry, I reported in the wrong section, I was on V1! 

[drik]

For anyone who may be facing the same issue.

I just had the same or similar problem. The pages looked fine in AP, after exported, images in the PDF looked to have a light pinkish/orange colors as background. It looked fine if exported as JPG. 

I solved it by shutting down the PC for some time. (Maybe a restart will do)

After that, I found that even all the previously exported PDF pages looked fine. I suspect it is not an AP problem but rather the system PDF driver.

 

[Nyhavn]

The forum topic is dated but unfortunately still relevant. Could a member of the technical team tell us about the consequences of this bug? Are they working on it? Is a patch planned after all these years? Have a nice day!

[Anticia]

I am facing with the same issue! I really enjoy Affinity Design, but doing a book for print has been a nightmare because of the crashes and layer modes presenting as normal instead of the original setting and transparent pictures looking like they have fill.

Exporting to PDF is a REALLY crucial part of the process. Please, do something about this. :,(

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Anticia

If you can provide an example AFDESIGN document* which doesn’t export as expected, and give a screenshot showing all of your Export Dialog settings, then someone can look at it to see if they can find what the problem is.

* Maybe a cut-down version of your actual document which exhibits the same problem, if you can’t share the whole thing. If you provide a cut-down version then please check that the same problems occur with it before posting.

[lui2131]

This topic is still very relevant and impacting myself and my colleagues as we're finally looking to take a game that we've had in development for years to manufacturers to print, but we're finding that in many cases, when exporting to PDF, effects show up incorrectly, colors don't look right and curves aren't clipping properly.  This is a serious issue and I'm starting to seriously regret our decision to have committed to the Affinity suite.  We've got over a hundred different art files, and well over half are displaying this issue.  I've attached a sample *.afdesign and *.pdf file that displays this issue.  We're on the latest version of Affinity Designer 2.  @GarryP

For affinity troubleshooting.afdesign For affinity troubleshooting.pdf

[GarryP]

There are differences between the document in Designer and what I can see in the export preview, and what I can see the exported PDF, but I don’t know what should be different or which parts of which version are correct.

In other words, I don’t know what I’m looking at or what I’m supposed to be seeing.

Note: (This is just a friendly bit of advice for future forum postings.) While I appreciate that the issue is important to you, please don’t @ people unless you’re pretty sure that they would appreciate being notified of your posting. @-ing someone is the forum equivalent of physically poking them to get their attention. No harm has been done but some people might not like being @ed into discussions that they might have no (further) interest in.

[lui2131]

Apologies for the “@“ Gary, not a frequent poster on these forums and didn’t realize it could be considered rude.
 

Regarding the issue. That’s odd that you see differences between the file export preview and the PDF I uploaded. What I see in my export preview is the same as the pdf I uploaded.  That being said I think the crux of the issue is that affinity even when using the “render everything” option for export to PDF does not render everything as it looks when designing the vector versions of the files.
This leads to a rather big surprise when it comes time to export the files for print and the exported files look drastically different than what you were designing

[Oufti]

16 minutes ago, lui2131 said:

This leads to a rather big surprise when it comes time to export the files for print and the exported files look drastically different than what you were designing

OK but WHAT precisely are you seeing that shocks you? And what do you expect to see?

It'll help us as we don't know what you have in mind… 😊

[Ldina]

@lui2131 Your Group with the wavy lines is the culprit. Change the Group blend mode to "Normal" instead of Passthrough, and it ought to export to PDF or SVG fine. 

[lui2131]

Hi Oufti and Ldina,

Thanks for the responses.  I'll show you what Affinity Designer looks like when designing the file vs. the exported final product in PDF form. The first file is what the final exported file looks like.  The second one is what it looks like in Affinity Designer while viewing the "Designer Persona". 

Thank you for pointing out that the Group blend mode being set to "Passthrough" messes up the PDF export.  Good news is that changing blend mode from "Passthrough" to "Normal" on all related groups fixes the issue. Bad news is that it took me about 5 minutes to go through all the groups of this small part of a drawing, and we have over 200 more that we need to do the same thing for 😢.  This is a really unfortunate piece of work to find out we have to do this late into the process

 

 

[Ldina]

FWIW, I didn't see any issues when exporting to TIFF, JPG, PNG, etc, if those formats can be used.  But for PDF and SVG, and other vector export formats, I found I needed to switch the Blend Mode from Passthrough to Normal for that Group of wavy lines. Another option is to rasterize that Group in Designer, and then it exports fine, but the lines are no longer vector objects. Maybe there's a better solution to this issue, but that's all I could find. 

[lui2131]

20 minutes ago, Ldina said:

FWIW, I didn't see any issues when exporting to TIFF, JPG, PNG, etc, if those formats can be used.  But for PDF and SVG, I found I needed to switch the Blend Mode from Passthrough to Normal. Maybe there's a better solution to this issue, but that's all I could find. 

Yeah I also don't see issues with those other export options, but unfortunately our manufacturer requests things in a PDF format 🙃.  It might be worth asking if they can make the offset printing plates for mass manufacturing using some other file type, but it's just something I don't really want to do if we can avoid it. 

The other option my colleagues and I are looking at is to ensure that our DPI is set to at least 300DPI in "Document Setup" and then manually rasterizing the entire area containing our drawings prior to PDF export.  That setting controls the DPI when manually rasterizing a group/layer based on this thread comment.  So theoretically we can manually rasterize our drawings, then export them to PDF.  This looks to be working. 

The only hiccup is that the edge of the rasterized group ends up as a slightly different color (like 1 pixel all the way around by the look of it).  But luckily the way our drawings are set up, we can extend the group we're rasterizing underneath another layer just a little bit to hide that slight mis-coloration.  Still not a great user experience since I operated on the assumption that what I see in the Designer Persona is what I'll get when I export it to any filetype.

[Meliora spero]

1 hour ago, lui2131 said:

The only hiccup is that the edge of the rasterized group ends up as a slightly different color (like 1 pixel all the way around by the look of it).  But luckily the way our drawings are set up, we can extend the group we're rasterizing underneath another layer just a little bit to hide that slight mis-coloration. Still not a great user experience since I operated on the assumption that what I see in the Designer Persona is what I'll get when I export it to any filetype.

That pixel border after rasterization is something I’ve seen many, many times, and it’s insanely annoying. It seems to be a fundamental flaw in Affinity. Now, someone will probably come along and mention pixel alignment, decimal pixels, and the usual tune, but that border is simply not what one expects or should have to deal with.

I need to take a closer look at Passthrough. You seriously can’t go through a gigantic hierarchy to replace it a hundred times. That’s something that should be fixed ASAP.

The export quality and algorithm stability for PDF must have top priority.