A mysterious square that won’t go away

[Lotta]

I’m working on a book cover which needs to be sent to IngramSpark as a PDF/X-1a: 2003.

The illustration was first sent to me on a yellow background for the only reason, we thought I could just pick up that colour for the rest of the cover. While working on the project in Affinity Photo, everything was fine, but when I finally saw the preview of the file above, I could see the square of the illustration, the yellow slightly different to the cover. So I asked the illustrator to send me the image on a translucent background. It didn’t matter. I still saw a square with different shade of yellow. I started from scratch. That didn’t matter. I’ve updated Affinity. I can’t get rid of it. 

I saved the work in a standard PDF. All good. 

On the 11th of December I contacted Affinity support, was asked to send a document to a drop box link which I did. I’ve not heard from them since. I’ve now missed my deadline. I need help to fix this. Last time I made a book cover, my artist sent the image on a translucent background from the beginning, so no problems. 

Charlotte

[sfriedberg]

The community can't help you sort this out without access to some or all of the files you're working on.

[MikeW]

It's called Transparency Flattening that is the issue. That's when a transparent image has its bounding box pick up the color from what is underneath it. Affinity applications don't do a great job of that.

On a copy of the file, you might try selecting both the image and the background rectangle and flatten into a single object. You should be able to see on screen whether it does a better job than flattening when left to the pdf flattening. 

But do use a copy of your file.

[anto]

What if you use a mask? Will it not help?

[Lotta]

Thanks for the feedback. I shall try the suggestions.