Curves rasterized on SVG export

[Michael A. Lowry]

I'm experiencing the same problem reported by many others: when I export slices or objects from this file to SVG, curves get rasterized.

What am I doing wrong?

Nordiska Logo.afdesign

[GarryP]

I think the rasterisation might have something to do with the Shield Symbols, but I don’t know the exact reason yet. (There are ‘Unlinked attributes’ in the Symbols which might be something to do with it.)

When exporting to SVG with Rasterise: Nothing, the striped shield has changed to a gradient-filled shield, so that’s maybe something to start from.

Additional: Ah, I think it’s because at least one of your layers (“Knock-out border”) has the Erase Blend Mode applied which always rasterises the layers affected. And it's the same with other layers too, such as “Blade cutout”.

Edited November 5, 2024 by GarryP
Added more details.

[Michael A. Lowry]

Ah, that’s too bad. The Erase blend mode is really handy for defining regions where the background should show through.

The Shield symbol includes a predefined gradient for the four colors, rather than 4 distinct shapes. I guess that’s also a potential problem.

[GarryP]

You might need to use the Geometry functionalities to cut the ‘cutouts’ from the curves instead of using the Erase Blend Mode.

I don’t know why you have so many layers set to the Passthrough Blend Mode but that might not be helping, I'm not sure as I don't use that often.

Even after removing the Erase Blend Mode layers and changing the Passthroughs to Normals, it looks like the gradient in the “NRF Colours (Michael)” layer is still causing a problem upon export.

[Michael A. Lowry]

Yeah, I’m beginning to resign myself to the fact that there’s a trade-off between:

• a file that is structured logically for ease of modification, and
• a file that can be exported as curves to SVG.

This is a bit frustrating, but I’ll make the best of it.

[Michael A. Lowry]

I made the following changes, and now SVG exports work as expected.

• Changed the shield gradient to four distinct filled rectangles.
• Joined all the curves for the oars, and eliminated the cut-out layer in Erase blend mode.
• Changed the outline curve from Erase blend mode to a solid stroke of the background color.
• Changed layers in Passthrough mode to Normal mode.

The solid color outline will work fine as long as the background color is solid. If I need a transparent background, I'll have to subtract the outline curve from the oars.

Does Serif plan to add support for vector exports of gradients and Erase layers?

Nordiska Logo.afdesign

[GarryP]

34 minutes ago, Michael A. Lowry said:

Does Serif plan to add support for vector exports of gradients and Erase layers?

I think gradients export to SVG, in general, but there may be problems with some of them, possibly those which have been manipulated in some way. Someone else might have a better answer to that.

I've no idea whether Serif will make any changes to the result of using an Erase Blend Mode. Other people have requested such but I don’t know if it has even been considered. (My guess is that it won't, any time soon at least, but that's just a guess.)