SLOW PDF export

[PaulB2]

I recently purchased the Affinity suite. Upgraded to 2.3. Running it on a new Macbook Pro M3. Started testing and everything looked good till I tried to export to PDF. Very slow! The preview is slow to load. Every time I change an option in the dialogue box the preview reloads and takes a long time. When I'm eventually able to save the document, it takes a long time to export too. I'm a graphic designer and I need to produce press-ready PDF files quickly and regularly. If I can't do this with Affinity I'll be really disappointed. I was hoping so much to find an alternative to Adobe 😞

I see the issue has been around for a while but no information suggesting that the Affinity team is working on this. Can some one from Serif tell us what is happening and if there will be a fix coming soon?

Thanks,

Paul

[MikeTO]

Hi @PaulB2 and welcome to the forums.

I'm on an M1 Pro so it's somewhat slower than your machine but I don't find exporting to PDF to be slow, other than the preview. Note that you don't need to wait for the preview to display, just ignore it and click Export.

Can you describe the types of documents you're exporting and how long they take to export?

 

[PaulB2]

Hi MikeTo, the document in question was a relatively complex illustration initially done in an old version of Adobe Illustrator. Simple vector shapes and colors but a lot of them. I'll attach a small jpeg to give an idea. I'd have to redo the experiment to get the exact time, but delays were probably between 30 seconds to 2 minutes. I'll have to check again but I was under the impression that I couldn't click export while the little circle was turning. I think I tried it. When I did click on export it took maybe a minute to process. It seemed like a really long time tho. I usually work on an old 2013 iMac with super old Adobe creative Suite and it's really fast.

These delays may not sound like a lot but when I'm constantly correcting documents and exporting press-ready PDF files I think my efficiency will really take a hit.

I must say the the Illustrator document opened up amazingly well in Design 2. Perfectly translated, layers and all.

See attached file. JPEG of a highly detailed vector illustration.

[PaulB2]

UPDATE: I've tested a more standard document - a doubled-sided flyer with a couple of PSD images in it. The export to PDF worked fine. Hi res with cut marks. No delay in the preview. I'm reassured. Panicking for nothing here. This means I can work with AD 2. For now I can only guess that there is some anomaly in the conversion from AI to AD for my bicycle illustration. I won't know until I create a similar illustration completely in AD. In fact, the flyer was done in AI too, but I deleted and replaced the PSD files and saved as in AD before exporting to PDF. Anyways, thanks for your interest. We might chat again some day 🙂

[MikeTO]

It can also take longer if you choose to rasterize everything so check your PDF export settings.

Good luck!