Annoying white borders around all PDF exports (Designer)

[zil]

Hiya, 

I'm new here and wondering why all of a sudden I'm getting white borders around my Affinity Designer PDF exports? It happens regardless of what I do. I've tried dragging the colour beyond the border, I've checked that there aren't any bleeds or margins when setting up the document, I've "forced pixel alignment", I've checked to see if there's anything else I could do differently but it really never changes the fact that all PDFs have an annoying white border, despite looking full bleed in Affinity. I've included a screenshot of an example - Image should be full bleed and brown to edge, and instead I'm left with this white. It's not that I've zoomed out slightly in preview - this border is genuinely part of the doc for some reason, and ends up being printed.

Any advice would be appreciated since this is fairly urgent.

[Hangman]

Hi @zil and welcome to the forums,

You are just seeing the default background displayed in Apple Preview which you can change under the 'Window background' General preferences. Perhaps change it to match Acrobat Reader for a better experience. I have mine set to #282828.

[markw]

I’ve had this happen to me too. Though not often.
The white border is defiantly part of the exported file and can be seen when viewing in both Adobe Acrobat and Preview.
Thing is the white border doesn’t always get added. If a file has it after export that file will always export with it. If it doesn’t have it that file will never have it on export.
But what is determining which PDF exports get it and which don’t I’ve yet to discover.

[Hangman]

Hi @markw,

Do you have a sample PDF exhibiting the white border behaviour as it makes little sense, more so if the file includes bleed? Are there particular PDF Formats where you see this behaviour and others where you don't or does it tend to be file specific?

[zil]

Hi guys, 

My bad - this appears to be a software problem with the operating system itself, since the same thing happens even if I export to PDF from the Preview app on my MacBook. The white border is definitely there and not part of the preview background, and it has ruined many prints I just sent off, but it would appear that the fault lies with Apple and not Affinity. 

I'm going to update the OS and then if that doesn't work I may come back here, but thanks for your help!

[markw]

5 hours ago, Hangman said:

Do you have a sample PDF exhibiting the white border behaviour as it makes little sense, more so if the file includes bleed? Are there particular PDF Formats where you see this behaviour and others where you don't or does it tend to be file specific?

Attached is a past project that always exports as a PDF with a white border for some reason?
If you can find something in the project file that I have overlooked that is causing this I would be most interested!
The included PDF output is from the stock ‘For Print’ preset but it happens with all PDF export variations I’ve tried with this file so far.

WhiteBorderPDF&ProjectFile.zip

[thomaso]

30 minutes ago, markw said:

Attached is a past project that always exports as a PDF with a white border for some reason?

Though I can't open a V2 document the PDF appears to hint to a possible culprit: it contains a setting for Transparency / Blend Mode / "Mischfarbraum" (sorry, I don't know the English term) which indicates the use of an effect for instance (as visible in the text) … which can increase the exported page dimensions.

I wonder whether an export will still get the border added if you disable any transparency before export.
Or: What happens in Affinity if you group + rasterize all layers, does the final bounding box exceed the canvas size?

[Old Bruce]

42 minutes ago, markw said:

Attached is a past project that always exports as a PDF with a white border for some reason?

If you save a copy and then on that copy use Document > Flatten then it will export. I don't know why the border appears, there is some weird stuff happening with the various masks being oversized. Was this originally a much larger image that has been cropped?

Another way is to select all the layers and group them. Now drag out a rectangle so it snaps to the edges and use that to clip the group. Export works fine and this is a non destructive workflow.

[markw]

Thanks for taking a look @thomaso and @Old Bruce some fresh eye taking a look is always helpful!
No I’ve not cropped the original base image, other than it’s sitting inside an A3 proportioned document, it is as it was supplied to me.
Why the size of the two masks stick out to the left as far as they do I’ve no idea🤔???
Old Bruce, following your suggested fix I actually found that just grouping it all into one group fixes it without the need for clipping they overall group as well.
Apart from the OP of this post I’ve not seen anyone else here reporting this so I’m inclined to think it required some very specific events to cause it.
Will keep an eye out in case it should happen again but at least the fix is simple!
Thank you all again🙂

[loukash]

Looks like a bug to me. I remember similar issues being reported before with v1 already. It has something to do with "spread origin" that gets somehow "displaced" by the filters, if I recall correctly.

In general, I'd recommend working in Publisher or Designer with a proper layout setup and using Picture Frames for images before adding any masks or filters.

[loukash]

4 hours ago, markw said:

WhiteBorderPDF&ProjectFile.zip

43 minutes ago, loukash said:

I'd recommend working in Publisher

I just did a "quick'n'dirty remix" in Publisher:

1. copied the clean original image and converted to Picture Frame first
2. copied both masks and placed them inside the Picture Frame container
3. added the rest

That fixed it:

Alternatively you may want to place the finished afphoto document into an A3 Publisher layout or a Designer artboard if you don't need bleed.

(P.S. The guy on the photo resembles my late dad before his hair got white )

[zil]

Hey all - 

Just nipping back in here to say that the brunt of it does appear to have been an issue with my Mac on my end. I updated the operating system and it is no longer a massive issue. Weirdly some of my pdfs still export with a teeny tiny white line along some of the edges, but extending the objects / colour beyond the barriers of the artboard before exporting seemed to fix that for me. I'm still on V1 so this may well be a bug, however if it happens to anyone else, be sure to check your OS etc first!

[Old Bruce]

17 minutes ago, zil said:

Weirdly some of my pdfs still export with a teeny tiny white line along some of the edges

I see that you are working in mm. Worth pointing out that the PDF size is calculated in dpi, not mm. mm and inches do not play well together. You are always going to have a "fraction" of a pixel if work in mm sized paper.

[Hangman]

10 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I see that you are working in mm. Worth pointing out that the PDF size is calculated in dpi, not mm. mm and inches do not play well together.

The official PDF unit of measurement is points, not mm or inches even though you can equally select both mm or inches if you wish to determine the size of the PDF, though that is simply a unit conversion.

PDFs do not in and of themselves have a dpi. PDFs can contain raster images which will in and of themselves have their own ppi but text and vector graphics are scalable and so do not have a dpi.

Inches and mm play very well together, an inch is officially defined as exactly 25.4 millimetres.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

Inches and mm play very well together, an inch is officially defined as exactly 25.4 millimetres.

How 'well' do they play together if for instance you set a dimension to 25.00 or 200.00 mm?

[zil]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

I see that you are working in mm. Worth pointing out that the PDF size is calculated in dpi, not mm. mm and inches do not play well together. You are always going to have a "fraction" of a pixel if work in mm sized paper.

I read a bunch about this last night and did try to mess about with document setup, in addition to trying the "forced pixel alignment" thing but just couldn't get it to work. I deal with standard paper sizes all the time so I'm glad I at least have a vague workaround now !

[Hangman]

9 hours ago, R C-R said:

How 'well' do they play together if for instance you set a dimension to 25.00 or 200.00 mm?

I’m not sure I understand the question…

• 1 mm = 0.0393700787 mm
• 1 inch = 25.4 mm

25.00 mm = 0.9842519685 inches or 63/64th inch
200.00 mm = 7.874015748 inches or 7 7/8 inch

Neither are relevant with respect to PDF files…

[Hangman]

Just to add to what others have written above, the issue is caused by the Gaussian Blur Live Filter but it's a little weird.

• Toggle the Mask for the Gaussian Blur off and you still see the White Border
• Toggle the Gaussian Blur Live Filter off and you still see the White Border

So despite that 'layer' not being active or visible, it is still causing the White border resulting in the exported pdf file being 15.4 pt larger in both width and height on export, however, delete the Gaussian Blur and its associated Mask layer which technically should be no different to toggling the layer off and the White Border goes away so I would concur with @loukash about this being a bug.

Applying a destructive Gaussian Blur to the masked background (perhaps unsurprisingly) doesn't cause any issues and the file exports correctly without the White Border.

15 hours ago, thomaso said:

Though I can't open a V2 document the PDF appears to hint to a possible culprit: it contains a setting for Transparency / Blend Mode / "Mischfarbraum" (sorry, I don't know the English term) which indicates the use of an effect for instance (as visible in the text) … which can increase the exported page dimensions.

The transparency in the file is a result of transparency being applied to the gradient rectangle which covers the masked background and in this instance doesn't have any impact on the exported page dimensions.

[Dan C]

Thanks for your files provided here @markw and the investigative work conducted by other members in this thread

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

the issue is caused by the Gaussian Blur Live Filter but it's a little weird.

• Toggle the Mask for the Gaussian Blur off and you still see the White Border
• Toggle the Gaussian Blur Live Filter off and you still see the White Border

So despite that 'layer' not being active or visible, it is still causing the White border resulting in the exported pdf file being 15.4 pt larger in both width and height on export, however, delete the Gaussian Blur and its associated Mask layer which technically should be no different to toggling the layer off and the White Border goes away so I would concur with @loukash about this being a bug.

I've been able to replicate this here, both with Marks files and in a new document - it appears to simply be the presence of the Gaussian Blur layer and only seems to affect PDF export.

I'm getting this logged with our development team now, as I cannot see any previous reports of this specific issue.

I hope this helps!

[zil]

Alright lads, I am sorry to return for the millionth time, but it appears to STILL be an issue for me. Although the pdfs look fine when viewed through preview, I've just gone to order a fresh batch of these and the lines are STILL there, although smaller this time. I'm really not sure what to do at this point - I even downloaded the free trial of V2 and they are exactly the same looking pdfs as the ones I was getting with V1. I'm supposed to make documents of a very specific size for my printers - what on earth is to be done?

[HCl]

.

[Hangman]

Hi @zil,

Could you upload one of the Affinity documents along with an exported PDF showing the issue so we can take a look at what may be causing this issue for you?

Could you also confirm which PDF preset you're using?

[markw]

Hi @zil are you able to post a sample working file that shows this problem for the good people here to prod and poke to see what may be the cause of the problem for you?

[zil]

Hi - I've just been using this checklist as an example but it's happened to literally every file I've been working with for the past few weeks - initially unbeknownst to me as it's not something I've ever encountered so wasn't looking for it, until I got the prints back and realised. I've worked in A4, A5, and DL. These are all very standard paper sizes that people export pdfs of all the time.... I've also tried the "force pixel alignment" thing and I always use snapping when designing anyway. I've also tried a few different export options, including deliberately not rasterising anything 🤷‍♀️ but can provide a few example files and their pdfs below!

Check-list.afdesign Check-list.pdf Meal Plan.afdesign Meal Plan_PRINT.pdf Recipes.afdesign Recipes_PRINT.pdf

[zil]

also just to say I always use "PDF for print" because I print things, but these were the other things I most recently used