Why is Affinity Publisher compressing my Page Numbers?

[Demonskunk]

I'm encountering a strange issue where Affinity Publisher 2 is compressing some of my numbers (The Page Numbers, and the little sideways number on the title line), but not other text.

I screenshotted my export settings, and I included a PDF of a 2 page spread showing off the issue.

Edit: It's like it's rasterizing the text for some reason?

AA_PT01_Intro.pdf

[thomaso]

I am not sure what you mean by "compressing my PageNumbers" but in case you refer to the rasterization I assume you applied the white stroke around the black text as an effect (fx). Effects always get rasterized on export in Affinity. – If that's the case, apply the stroke via the Swatches / Colours / Stroke panel instead.

[Demonskunk]

13 hours ago, thomaso said:

I am not sure what you mean by "compressing my PageNumbers" but in case you refer to the rasterization I assume you applied the white stroke around the black text as an effect (fx). Effects always get rasterized on export in Affinity. – If that's the case, apply the stroke via the Swatches / Colours / Stroke panel instead.

That's exactly what I meant. When exporting my pages, the page numbers were blurry to the point of being borderline unreadable.
But if it's just because of the FX panel then that's an easy fix. Thank you!

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Demonskunk said:

blurry to the point of being borderline unreadable.

This is actually caused by your low export resolution of 72 dpi. For print these elements can work even rasterized if the resolution is sufficient.
(Note that almost everything will ultimately be rasterized during the printing process, unless it consists of only 100% colour values. Therefore, the red or yellow/orange circles behind these elements will be rasterized, and so will the white outline edges.)

[Demonskunk]

3 hours ago, thomaso said:

This is actually caused by your low export resolution of 72 dpi. For print these elements can work even rasterized if the resolution is sufficient.
(Note that almost everything will ultimately be rasterized during the printing process, unless it consists of only 100% colour values. Therefore, the red or yellow/orange circles behind these elements will be rasterized, and so will the white outline edges.)

Well, my issue is that the text was considerably blurrier than the page text or the other shapes.

[GarryP]

Any layer which has an effect directly applied to it will be rasterised upon export no matter which export format is selected.

Additionally, any layer which is a child layer of a layer which has an effect applied to it will also be rasterised along with the parent layer.

We can’t see the difference in your example PDF – you have only included the problem text, not the text that looks okay – but I suspect that the text that is rasterised had an effect applied to it, or was a child layer of a layer which had an effect applied to it, but the other text didn’t.

[thomaso]

5 hours ago, Demonskunk said:

Well, my issue is that the text was considerably blurrier than the page text or the other shapes.

Yes, that's why I mentioned the export resolution. If you export with 300 dpi – instead of 72 dpi as in your uploaded PDF – the result will be less blurry / a lot sharper.

Even if your illustrations will be drawn with vector only they may get rasterized parts on export where an effect, filter or a certain blend mode is involved.

[Demonskunk]

On 11/17/2023 at 2:39 AM, GarryP said:

Any layer which has an effect directly applied to it will be rasterised upon export no matter which export format is selected.

Additionally, any layer which is a child layer of a layer which has an effect applied to it will also be rasterised along with the parent layer.

We can’t see the difference in your example PDF – you have only included the problem text, not the text that looks okay – but I suspect that the text that is rasterised had an effect applied to it, or was a child layer of a layer which had an effect applied to it, but the other text didn’t.

Yeah, sorry about that. The issue was that I had an FX layer on it. After I removed it and replaced it with a stroke the problem went away.

[Demonskunk]

On 11/17/2023 at 3:39 AM, thomaso said:

Yes, that's why I mentioned the export resolution. If you export with 300 dpi – instead of 72 dpi as in your uploaded PDF – the result will be less blurry / a lot sharper.

Even if your illustrations will be drawn with vector only they may get rasterized parts on export where an effect, filter or a certain blend mode is involved.

Which of the settings should I change to only downsample the images? I'm trying to keep my file size low while I'm working on it because it's a big book.

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, Demonskunk said:

Which of the settings should I change to only downsample the images? I'm trying to keep my file size low while I'm working on it because it's a big book.

You can keep the file size of your book low if you place image as linked resources (not embedded). This is an choice to set in the Document Properties for future resources and in the Resource Manager for already placed resources. Then the file size / resolution of placed resources has little influence on the file size of the layout document.

[Demonskunk]

8 hours ago, thomaso said:

You can keep the file size of your book low if you place image as linked resources (not embedded). This is an choice to set in the Document Properties for future resources and in the Resource Manager for already placed resources. Then the file size / resolution of placed resources has little influence on the file size of the layout document.

File size for the exported document, not the layout document.

But that said, will having them as linked resources improve Affinity Publisher's performance while editing?

[thomaso]

5 hours ago, Demonskunk said:

File size for the exported document, not the layout document.

What is about the "File size for the exported document" ?

I can't follow your thoughts any more. You started the thread about a "strange issue" with "compressing some of my numbers" which appears to be a result of rasterization at too low resolution (72 dpi).

Then you ask how to "downsample the images?" … which would result in more blurry/rasterized or "compressed" look … and you combine this with the goal "to keep my file size low while I'm working on it".  –  I assume you are not working on "the exported document".

It maybe less ambiguous/more clear to ask your various questions in separated threads, this thread was/is about how to avoid low quality. Another could be how to achieve low file size (image quality?), separated for certain exported file types versus working document. And another thread could concern the working speed and/or the difference between linked versus embedded resources, or the app performance options. Also the topic of the connection between resolution & resampling & quality/compression may be interesting. – However, each of this topics is discussed various times in the forum already and may contain/offer the wanted or missing info.

[Demonskunk]

16 hours ago, thomaso said:

What is about the "File size for the exported document" ?

I can't follow your thoughts any more. You started the thread about a "strange issue" with "compressing some of my numbers" which appears to be a result of rasterization at too low resolution (72 dpi).

Nevermind, the initial problem has been solved.