Im having alot of trouble with PDF X4 exports with publisher lately

[Duskstalker]

Hello,

I do print work with publisher and recently the issue rate with the PDF export is sky high for me. Im running into rendering issues with every 2nd export and its extremely annoying. 

affinity being unable to cope with complex gradients is one drawback i learned to live with, but fighting all sorts of random elements erroring out on pdf export that look fine in publisher is getting too much for me. i run a business off of this and having to check every single element for rendering issues is extremely tedious and costs me alot of extra time and if i miss something, i gotta cope with the reprint cost. and i already had one big print with a rendering issue that slipped through that i had to replace and get things straight with the customer.

i have the most issues with pdf/x4 (that i need due to gradients & transparency) and the most errors are either gradients or strokes just being corrupted or not rendering at all. for example theres a  line of text and it has a stroke applied, and sometimes, randomly, some letters dont get the stroke applied while earlier versions of the file rendered the stroke fine. then i need to get into it and redo the stroke for it to come back. it all looks fine in publisher, its just the pdf export with vectors that are visibly broken. fully rasterized pdfs do NOT show this issue. i also had gradients that are just plain white or have black strokes across.

I dont have anything to show right now because i either already fixed the issues or the files are under NDA.

since a few months I also got a new issue: one of my main online printers wont let my pdf x4 files pass the automatic print file test on upload - it will just lock up and i cannot place the order. i always have to call back and make them add the files to the order manually. apparently im the only one that runs into this issue - and connecting dots it might be that im the only one using publisher exported pdfx4.

im using the msix version. i didnt try reinstalling and switching the installer version because i need that machine running, its my daily app to use.

so does anyone else have the same issues or some ideas to resolve that?

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Duskstalker]

thanks for your input.

i never place vector graphics in the document because this always causes issues, i always convert it to affinity file format and copy the Layers/elements into the target document so they are a "native" element in the document.

i only strictly work in one single cmyk color profile (eci300%, because its required for the printers). 

in those documents that i run into issues i dont use any raster layers nor vector incompatible content, all same color space and color profile. everything is affinity created vectors and the line of text that errored out last time was a simple white text with a 0.3pt 100k stroke applied with the last letter not getting its stroke on export all of a sudden. 

I didnt do anything except resizing the stroke a few times and it came back in the export. which clearly hints towards a bug or application issue. once fixed, i cannot replicate it anymore. before "refreshing" the stroke, the issue would be on All exported PDFs unless its a fully rasterized one. 

I tried all export profiles and export settings, only fully rasterized works, any vector based output is borked. until, like i said, i resize the stroke, and then it exports fine, at least visually. it exported fine before and i didnt touch that line of text and apparently working on other areas on the document triggered something that breaks it. 


Update:

so I decided to try installing the regular .msi version and wiping the appdata of the msix version of the affinity suite and while I still have issues with the print upload with this particular printer (I am in contact with their technical support to nail down the issue, will report back) I noticed a jump in performance. the msi version seems to be quite a bit faster than the msix version and the scores in the affinity photo benchmark are also higher. so i got that going for me, which is nice. 

right now i cannot say anything about corruption issues because i just installed it. i dont have big hopes, but its faster, so maybe its also having less trouble with pdf exports lol

[lacerto]

Obsolete.