Faint gray line or border around the the pdf document created in Affinity Publisher

[b75]

Hi!

I am getting a faint gray line around the document size along the edge. May need to zoom in to see. See sample file.

I am trying to create a .pdf file because I want to have a tidy multipage document with several png that has embedded fonts (not jpeg) files to be displayed with the best possible quality in e-mail and all smart phones (apple, android, samsung, etc…). The fonts scale well as a .pdf file but if I can’t get it to work as a pdf file, then I will settle for a multiple page pdf file from .png images for best quality.

What I’ve tried/checked:

The gray line is there when I create a document size: 500 px by 500 px or 1080 by 1920 px.

There is no stroke or line around the box
Affiity document created with no margin, no bleed settings.

When making the .pdf file, I tried it with bilinear, bicubic, nearest neighbor, lanczos 3 (sep, non-sep) at 300 dpi and 600 dpi settings.
I tried to create a .pdf from export in the file menu from a layered .afpub document and from a .afpub with no additional layers.
I tried to create the pdf file using Preview App that is installed on the iMac and still getting the same gray line around the document edges.
I tried saving the doc as a pdf x 1.7, pdf/x-1a 2003, pdf x-4.

Gray line is there if there the document background is set to white or transparent.
Gray line is there if save the files as a .ps file and convert the .ps file to a .pdf file in Affinity or the Preview App.

The gray line is not there when I create a PNG file. (see pic) It only happens when I create a pdf file. However, if I create a pdf file using the .png files to create a mulitple page pdf file, it will show the gray line.

iMAC-ventura 13.1
Affinity Publisher 2
Affinity user for several days.

Does anyone have any idea if I am doing something wrong or is this a bug with pdfs?

Thanks.

 

 

[Pauls]

I can't tell if its an artifact of my pdf viewer or not. Can you upload the afpublisher file you used to create the PDF. It can be tricky to get pixel alignment setup correctly

[b75]

Hi. Here it is.

blue box.afpub

[b75]

The gray line or border will show if printed from the .pdf file.

[Pauls]

didn't show on my printer, nor do I see anything like your screen shot. Can you screenshot the exact pdf settings including the advanced(more) options

[b75]

I can clearly see the light gray border. It looks to be a pixel wide but I can't know for sure.

blue box example.afpub blue box example.pdf

[Pauls]

I think it is a quirk of the preview app that is showing a border. Yet you say it also appears on a physical print ?

[b75]

I just sent it to the printer and it did not print. I don't want it to be seen on the .pdf file because it won't be printed but instead viewed on smart phones and on the computer which is where the gray border is showing. I really don't like that border. It ruins the look of my design.

[b75]

The border is on the imac, laptop and smartphone. strange.

[Pauls]

software often helps by putting a border around PDF's - I don't think it's actually there in the PDF. 

[thomaso]

1 minute ago, b75 said:

The border is on the imac, laptop and smartphone. strange.

I can't see a border if I open this PDF in Preview, Acrobat or APub in macOS 10.14 (Mojave).

Do your imac + laptop both use the same macOS (Ventura)?

Does he boarder appear if you open this PDF in your Affinity?

10 minutes ago, b75 said:

it won't be printed but instead viewed on smart phones and on the computer which is where the gray border is showing. I really don't like that border.

Nevertheless, you have no influence on the viewer app used on your recipients' devices, right?

Does the boarder occur to you in a different PDF viewer app? e.g. in a web-browser app or this free pdf reader https://eclecticlight.co/delighted-podofyllin/

[b75]

7 minutes ago, Pauls said:

software often helps by putting a border around PDF's - I don't think it's actually there in the PDF. 

I've done many pdf's in the past and never had this problem which makes me think this is a bug with pdf (?). Having a border determined by the software company would not be acceptable for professional designers that look at every detail. Thanks so much for your help.

[b75]

Hey @thomaso. I just viewed the pdf through mail on firefox on laptop using monterey and the border is completely gone. The border was showing up on the imac using ventura and the iphone ios 16.2, both of which are more current than monterrey so you are on to something there. As you mentioned, I guess the pdf will be based on view apps I cannot control so I will leave it at that and hope for the best. Thanks so much!

[Hangman]

FWIW, I think this is Apple specific, as in, I do see the grey border in both Apple Preview and Apple Safari on Monterey and on iOS but I don't see it in Acrobat Reader, Firefox or Chrome so to me it looks like something Apple is 'adding' (for want of a better word) when previewing pdf files...

Apple Preview Left | Adobe Acrobat Right

[thomaso]

50 minutes ago, b75 said:

The border was showing up on the imac using ventura and the iphone ios 16.2, both of which are more current than monterrey so you are on to something there. As you mentioned, I guess the pdf will be based on view apps I cannot control

Thank you for your confirmation! – Since you still don't mention if you see the boarder if the PDF gets opened in Affinity I wonder whether you never tried this at all. To me this seems a simple way to check the contents of a PDF. (though it is not a 100% perfect way)