Mask not working with export?

[jackjohnbrown]

I am having an issue with masks not behaving the way I'm expecting during export. Not sure if it's a AD issue or a me issue.

- I have a white object/icon (the Massachusetts text)

- I placed the icon/text over a navy rectangle and used "Mask to Below" to create the navy icon/text

- on export to pdf, the final file just shows the rectangle as in the screenshot

Where am I going wrong here?

 

EDIT: I sort of figured it out...if I use a black version of the MA logo, it works. I am still confused by why it appears the same in the project both ways, but when exporting only works if the logo is the black version. Would love to learn more!

[Callum]

Hi Jack,

I'm glad to hear you were able to find a work around for this issue. If you provide the Affinity project file in question I should be able to look into this further and tell you why this is happening.

[deftly]

@Callum Is there any update on this? I too have an issue exporting a masked layer. I am a new transplant from Adobe Illustrator and I'm nervous that Designer is not yet able to handle this.

 

[Callum]

There was no real investigation to this issue I'm afraid as I never received the original file. Please could you provide a description / screen recording that demonstrates your problem?

[deftly]

@Callum That's a shame. Allow me to furnish you with my example: a type character that has been converted to vector and masked to a rectangle that has been rotated, with a color gradient applied. The only export that works is the rasterized png. All other vector exports reveal the un-masked rectangle. Should I be doing something to prepare Designer for vector export - some kind of layer flattening, or some such - or is this a bug?

mask export issue.afdesign mask export issue.eps mask export issue.pdf mask export issue.svg

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, deftly said:

a type character that has been converted to vector and masked to a rectangle that has been rotated, with a color gradient applied.

Why not apply the Gradient to the the S shape?

[deftly]

@Old Bruce, I couldn't see a way of applying a linear gradient at an angle to horizontal. Also, it was easier to achieve the look I wanted by masking mid-gradient vs trying to match start, end and mid-point to the shape's dimensions. In any case, is it not reasonable to use masking? Is exporting a masked shape as a scalable vector not a reasonable use case?

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, deftly said:

I couldn't see a way of applying a linear gradient at an angle to horizontal.

Just drag the gradient at an angle.

[deftly]

@Old Bruce, clearly I have some learning to do! I was using Appearance->Fill->Gradient. Perhaps it's the Fill Tool? Thanks for letting me know there is a way. So is the way I did it bad practice, or are you letting me know that there's a workaround while the feature set of Designer catches up? As you can probably tell, I'm not a professional designer, just an interested 'civilian'.

[Old Bruce]

8 minutes ago, deftly said:

I was using Appearance->Fill->Gradient. Perhaps it's the Fill Tool?

Yes

9 minutes ago, deftly said:

clearly I have some learning to do!

One thing I keep forgetting about is the information at the bottom left corner of the consolidated window. I didn't know about the Shift + Control (^) to rotate.

This is what it shows with the Fill Tool chosen. I am on Mac OS 11.7 so if you are on Windows you will see other glyphs for the modifier keys.

[deftly]

@Old Bruce that's very cool, thank you! I am also on a Mac, OS 13.4. A nice project for this afternoon!