Dazmondo77 Posted September 23, 2016 Share Posted September 23, 2016 Is it possible to export vector artwork as PDF / EPS without all transparent parts being rasterised - Or is there a way to flatten vector transparency and remain before export so my clients can scale to any size like Illustrator /InDesign?? It's a major niggle if I can't have start to finish vector workflow Quote Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6 Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1 www.bingercreative.co.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff TonyB Posted September 23, 2016 Staff Share Posted September 23, 2016 Depends of the type of transparency used but export PDF (for export) should maintain the transparency. If you post an Affinity file that you are having issues with then we could offer more advice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dazmondo77 Posted September 23, 2016 Author Share Posted September 23, 2016 Heres the file I've tried all PDF formats and it just rasterised all the transparent parts - the only way I could export as all vector was by going to the more panel when exporting pdf and set rasterise to nothing but it loses it's transparency see attached PDF Lambie sep.afdesign Lambie sep.pdf Lambie sep.pdf Quote Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6 Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1 www.bingercreative.co.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff TonyB Posted September 23, 2016 Staff Share Posted September 23, 2016 Thanks for the file. This should export fine but does't so we are looking into why. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dazmondo77 Posted September 23, 2016 Author Share Posted September 23, 2016 Cheer's for the quick response Quote Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6 Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1 www.bingercreative.co.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff TonyB Posted September 23, 2016 Staff Share Posted September 23, 2016 The current problem is the transparency on the groups. We have an issue the causes this to rasterise when it doesn't need to. We will improve this soon. Many thanks, Tony. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Sorry to hijack the thread, but I have a parallel question. I have four overlapping shapes that I wanted to use transparency on, but I need only vector output. If the layers are a single color, I can choose .svg and I see "Nothing will be rasterised." But if I have a linear gradient on that layer, it wants to rasterise it. Can I use a linear gradient and the transparency tool at the same time and export as pure vector? I'm thinking about just splicing the shapes and recreating the transparency effects carefully with linear gradients of different shades, but it would be great if I didn't have to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff TonyB Posted October 18, 2016 Staff Share Posted October 18, 2016 Gradient transparency isn't supported by PDF so we have to apply a raster mask to achieve the effect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted October 18, 2016 Staff Share Posted October 18, 2016 Hi ianrobertdouglas, No, currently you can't use a gradient fill and a gradient transparency (Transparency Tool) simultaneously when exporting to SVG keeping everything as vectors. You can however apply transparency to each node of the gradient fill and this will be kept as vectors (this also implies that the transparency and the gradient fill will have the same direction). Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 You can however apply transparency to each node of the gradient fill and this will be kept as vectors (this also implies that the transparency and the gradient fill will have the same direction). Many thanks for that tip. I'd forgotten about the opacity setting within each node of the gradient. Indeed, .svg doesn't balk if I use that. But a question: I ultimately need a printable document in a standard industry format. So ... sadly, I have to export, open in Illustrator, and save as .ai. I know it's not your concern, but do you know if Illustrator will preserve that effect? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted October 18, 2016 Share Posted October 18, 2016 Gradient transparency isn't supported by PDF so we have to apply a raster mask to achieve the effect. Really? Can you define when/under what circumstances a linear fill with a linear transparency is not supported? Or just not in AD's PDFs? The below is a red-blue rectangle with a linear transparency. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 Hi ianrobertdouglas, No, currently you can't use a gradient fill and a gradient transparency (Transparency Tool) simultaneously when exporting to SVG keeping everything as vectors. You can however apply transparency to each node of the gradient fill and this will be kept as vectors (this also implies that the transparency and the gradient fill will have the same direction). @MEB. I should have looked closer. I come to the day when I need this, and it doesn't work. .svg format destroys it. And .pdf wants to rasterise it. I've attached an example, and a .jpg of the vector only output I need. The gradients are all 0 degrees horizontal linear. Mid-points and opacity are the same in all instances. I need only vector output. I'm working on the latest Beta. I need urgent help on this one, if you're able. transparent_gradient.afdesign Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted October 25, 2016 Staff Share Posted October 25, 2016 Hi ianrobertdouglas, Where are you seeing the resulting SVG file? It seems to be exporting fine for me using Designer 1.5.1. Both Illustrator, Autodesk Graphic, and Safari are rendering the file correctly. The shapes and gradients are being kept as vectors as expected. Which SVG settings/preset are you using? Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 This is exporting as vector for me as SVG with 1.51 and the current beta. In what way is it destroyed? When I re-import it to Designer and switch between the two views, they look identical to me. Looking at the file text, I see it has output the end-stop twice. That's a bug which we'll get fixed in the future release. This doesn't stop it loading and drawing in any of the apps I tried though. Is this what you mean? The same bug also prevents it exporting as vector in PDF. This bug is triggered by the gradient mid-points being 52%. PDF and SVG only support mid-points that are actually in the middle, so the gradient gets tweaked, and the tweaking adds a stop it turns out not to need. So a workaround is to adjust the mid-points back to 50%. Then SVG exports it as vector with two stops, and PDF will export as vector if you have Allow advanced features checked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 Thank you both for the swift replies. This is what I'm seeing as both .svg output, and .pdf output with "advanced features" checked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 That's bizarre. Not what I get with 1.5.2 beta 3 at all. Do you still get it if you download transparent_gradient.afdesign from this thread rather than using your original version? Can you attach the SVG it produced? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 Attached the .pdf and .svg outputs, and settings for each. I tried downloading from the thread the affinity file, but the output is the same. And this is also with the midpoint corrected to 50% on all gradient layers output.pdf output.svg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 For me your output.svg looks the same as mine, which is what it should look like. Which app are your viewing it in which makes it look wrong? Your PDF does not look like what I get with the settings in your screenshot, but if I change Rasterise to Nothing then mine does match yours. That's kind of expected as if it needs to rasterise but isn't allowed to it just does the best it can. Did you try changing the mid-points on all the gradients from 52% to 50% ? ianrobertdouglas 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 ... This bug is triggered by the gradient mid-points being 52%. PDF and SVG only support mid-points that are actually in the middle, ... Er, who says? Or, in what way? I mean, the PDF spec has no such limitation and I can reproduce that design in another application with mid-points all over the place and it PDFs as vector. So is it just that the library that AD uses cannot do so? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 Interesting. I was viewing the .svg using Apple's Finder/Quickview. But indeed, opening that file in Illustrator or AD gives more or less the result I need. In AI I'm also able to save to .pdf without issue. There is some vertical banding. But I guess this is unavoidable? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianrobertdouglas Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 I feel bad. I was judging the file from the preview. My apologies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 Er, who says? Or, in what way? I mean, the PDF spec has no such limitation and I can reproduce that design in another application with mid-points all over the place and it PDFs as vector. So is it just that the library that AD uses cannot do so? The PDF specification for Type 2 (Axial) Shadings does not have any notion of mid-points. The formula it gives is for linear interpolation, and mid-points positioned other than at 50% imply non-linear interpolation. Likewise the SVG specification. For SVG we can work around it by converting a gradient with two stops and a mid-point into a gradient with multiple stops and linear interpolation. Unfortunately this is where the limitation of our library cuts in as it cannot output gradients with more than two stops. Does that make sense? So it is both a limitation of the PDF spec and a limitation of our library that prevents us working around it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 I feel bad. I was judging the file from the preview. My apologies. Don't feel bad. And I hadn't realised you had fixed the mid-points before generating that PDF. I see now that if I do that, the PDF exports as vector but loses the gradient's opacity. So that's another bug which will be fixed in a future update, which wouldn't have been found without this thread. ianrobertdouglas and LogoLogics 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 Ah, yes. Other applications do deal with it by adding color stops which in turn have 50% midpoints. My misunderstanding of how the other applications deal with it for axial shadings. Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted October 25, 2016 Share Posted October 25, 2016 The PDF specification for Type 2 (Axial) Shadings does not have any notion of mid-points. {...} Likewise the SVG specification. I realize this is not a responsibility of Affinity to explain all the complicated nuances of the various file formats your apps support to your users, but I wonder if it would be worthwhile to either add a topic about this to the app help system or to the Tutorials (or pinned FAQ's or wherever) forum here that covers just the basics. Just enough that, format by format, we could get a good idea of what to avoid in documents when we want to avoid rasterizing anything on export would be nice.... ianrobertdouglas 1 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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