Do fx export as print ready?

[McFlystradamus]

Affinity Designer V1 1.10.6.1665

I have added a drop shadow to my design. When I export as print ready PDF, or any other form of PDF, the shadow looks quite pixelated when zoomed in. Would like to use this on promotional items and giveaways, so crisp lines is important.
 Not familiar with print ready files, so perhaps I'm being too critical. Please share insights and tips. 
Many thanks in advance.

print ready TEST.pdf

pdf_x4 print settings.pdf

[OpaErnst]

Drop shadows are not vector-based effects but raster effects, of course they look pixelated when enlarged.
In the PDF export, you can set the value to be used for rasterisation (default 300) directly under the menu where you set the settings for PDF X4 Standard. Depending on the output size of the print medium and the viewing distance, different values can be used here.

If the whole thing is used for advertising material in screen printing, no drop shadow can usually be printed here.

[McFlystradamus]

Thanks for the reply. I played around with the rasterization settings and the export looks fantastic. Can I assume when printed onto promo items and paper ads, that quality will reflect as I see it now digitally?

rasterized TEST.pdf

[thomaso]

33 minutes ago, McFlystradamus said:

I played around with the rasterization settings and the export looks fantastic. Can I assume when printed onto promo items and paper ads, that quality will reflect as I see it now digitally?

Since the shadows have a hard edge (not blurred) and your layout objects are vector you can alternatively achieve an exported result without any rasterization by placing a copy of the coloured vector objects with the wanted offset + fill colour. Just increasing the export resolution (e.g. to 3000 dpi) may appear sharper when viewing the PDF on screen at a high zoom level but doesn't avoid rasterisation in a print process with its lower maximum output resolution.

The 'shadows' are extremely subtle in their dimension (< 0.2 mm) AND the brightness of gray & green are quite similar. Both are factors that may cause an unexpected print result, for instance making the green text appearing unsharp at their right/bottom edge rather than emphasized by a clear shadow. – In particular for prints on "promo items" with a special print process these subtle 'shadows' may appear different than expected (for instance not occurring or being increased).

The last PDF ('rasterized TEST.pdf') contains RGB colours. Those will be converted to CMYK ink and thus may result in slightly different colours, depending on the profile used for conversion in the prepress process. Alternatively you can create your Affinity document in CMYK (and with colours defined in CMYK) and ideally with the print profile (if known). Also an export as PDF/X can be useful since this will include a conversion profile ("output intend"), in particular if you would wand the light blue printed with Cyan only (without other inks).

If you want to achieve a print process with three inks only (C, Y, K / no M) you need to ensure an according setup + export. Then also/alternatively the use of spot colour swatches may help, depending on your print service requirements (just ask them). Avoiding an ink in for the print process reduces the a possibly deviating visual result caused by colour conversion with additional magenta for instance or a shadow printed in several inks instead of black only.

[McFlystradamus]

@thomaso
Thank you for taking the time to outline a wonderful reply. I am so grateful.

I cannot believe I never thought to duplicate the vector and change the color, it's a much simpler solution and avoids the headache I created!

Last question regarding colors in document, if I were to change the current document color settings from RGB to CMYK, are all the colors immediately converted?

[thomaso]

22 minutes ago, McFlystradamus said:

Last question regarding colors in document, if I were to change the current document color settings from RGB to CMYK, are all the colors immediately converted?

It depends on how the colours were defined initially. The Colours panel enables you to define CMYK colours in an RGB document and/or vice versa. In your example it is recommended to set the colours as CMYK to benefit from a CMYK document colour space.

If you check the current colour mode of a selected object make sure the lock in the Colours panel is deactivated, whereas to create colours in a certain space (or mode) only it is useful to have the lock activated.