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1st attempt - export issue?


ChrisP

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I have been going thru Illustrator guru Von Glitschka"s Vector BasicTraining book (highly recommended) and made this from one of the exercises using Affinity Designer. Didn't take much time at all since I could bend the paths because it's a built in tool, whereas in AI, you would need VectorScribe plugin (~$90 US). Then I used the "insert inside the selection" feature and presto. Gradient background for good measure. I would like to see the ability to move and alter the gradient like in Illustrator thou.

 

Also noticed that the exported PDF (on left in image below) seemed slightly different in color and intensity than in the view in ADesigner (on right).

post-377-0-77242700-1407389602_thumb.png

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Hi Chris,

 

I think we need a bit of information first...

 

Did you design in CMYK (go to Affinity Designer's File menu and choose Document Setup and see what colour format it is in). Did you set up any non-standard colour profiles?

 

I would definitely expect to be able to just select the gradient-filled rectangle in the background, choose the Gradient Fill tool and edit it - does that not work?

 

Thanks,

Matt

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Hi Matt,

I won't be home to check on my computer until later tonite but I believe the doc is 800X600, CMYK, 300dpi. I will confirm later.

As for the background gradient, I created a rectangle 800X600 on the layer below and added the gradient thru the layer effects menu. I tried double clicking the rectangle to see a gradient indicator in the viewport but didn't see it. Could only adjust gradient layer in side panel. Is there a way to visually alter it's position and the gradient itself in the viewport?

 

Thanks,

Chris

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You should be able to use the Fill tool, and select the object that has the gradient on it. The Fill tool will let you position the gradient centre and adjust the stop positions.

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Ah, the key was that you mentioned you'd added the gradient through the layer effects menu! :) The layer effects are all raster effects, and while the gradient overlay layer effect will make the same visual effect that you're after, we have a much better way to achieve what you really wanted to do... You should just make a rectangle for the background then use the Gradient Fill Tool (half way down on the left tools toolbar) and drag on a gradient. This is a vector gradient - it has no implied DPI and is by far the best way to do gradients in a vector editor :)

 

Hope that helps,

Matt

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That's great news Matt!

Ok so I went back into my file for the design I did and found the proper (vector) gradient tool. Works great. It is CMYK colors and 800X600 pixels.

 

I then want to create a drop shadow but did not go thru layer effect menu because it's not vector (right?) so I duplicated the design layer, placed it below, filled it with black, and changed opacity to 25%. I offset it to create drop shadow. I then exported as PDF and got funny random thin black lines in drow shadow. Could this be from how I created it with the pen tool? Also when I zoomed in it was getting fuzzy like it was not a vector design. The design exported much smaller than the doc setup of 800X600 also.

I realize these things could be from my lack of knowledge of vector vs raster software and workflow.

I will post images and the file later tonite for you to have a look if you want.

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Hi Matt,

I created 2 different files: Dragon3 and Dragon4.

 

In the pics for Dragon3 you can see my setup. The exported PDF is considerably smaller (192x144). Is this a bug or my fault in being a newbie? Also attached is the Dragon3.pdf file and a closeup showing those funny thin black lines and the rather jagged drop shadow which was created by just duplicating the design, placing it behind, filling it with black and dropping opacity to 25%. Not sure why this is. Do you know?

 

In the Dragon4 file doc setup window I simply switched the “Type” to “Print” and it changed the size (to 3508x2480) as you can see. Not sure why it would change it by itself from 800x600. After clicking “Ok” my viewport changed and my design and background was now smaller and in the upper left corner, so therefore it did not automatically adjust when I adjusted the doc setup. I had to manually resize. The resulting exported PDF was also a smaller dimension than the doc setup, just like in the Dragon3 file. If you look at the zoomed in image of the exported pdf you will see the same issues of a slightly blurry shadow and those thin black lines. The funny thing is, when I zoom in in the viewport, everything looks fine, but my exports don’t.

 

I’d love to get your feedback on this

 

Thanks!

post-377-0-62555100-1407562047_thumb.png

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3-Dragon3.pdf

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Dragon3.afdesign

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post-377-0-00094700-1407562136_thumb.png

5-Dragon4.pdf

post-377-0-46493400-1407562142_thumb.png

post-377-0-28984500-1407562154_thumb.png

Dragon4.afdesign

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Hi Chris,

 

My initial thoughts are that you aren't necessarily doing anything wrong from what you've described. The 'New document'/'Document setup' dialog is far from finished (I think this is why you've had the problem where it changed the number of pixels in your document without you telling it to!) and it needs to make use of our backend commands to convert colour spaces and resize documents, which are all there but just not wired in quite right at the moment...

 

When you use transparency, I don't think the PDF is able to export that properly, so it will be rasterised to make sure that all levels of PDF viewer/printers will be able to open it and show it correctly. You're seeing the thin black lines because of either a bug from our side, or a bug in previewing the final file. There are a number of PDF-related problems here and I think a lot of them are fixable fairly easily. The PDF export resolution issue is something that we'll look into...

 

Thanks for your files - it makes testing the behaviour much easier! :)

Matt

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Okay, I've just had a look at your files and tried to export them to PDF - I think it's doing what I'd expect it to...

 

If you open Dragon3 and press Cmd+8, the zoom will change to show you the actual print size. Notice that it's quite small. Exporting the document to PDF does indeed create a PDF file at 300dpi that is the actual size shown, so I think that one is working as I'd expect.

 

Dragon4 has also been exported to PDF at the correct size and with the correct DPI, which is good.

 

The next problem you mention is the transparent vector shadow area being rasterised - I'm not sure if this is something that we have control over because we're making use of Apple's built-in PDF functionality. I didn't write the PDF export so I don't know it well enough to say whether it's possible to fix this, but it's basically rasterising the area because it's a transparent vector. We output the area as a series of tiled bitmaps in order to avoid ever running out of memory if you were to export an extremely large area. This actually seems to show thin lines in the built-in Preview application when you view the PDF. I've just used our new PDF importer to view the file properly in Designer and I can see that these tiles don't overlap and they don't contain any dark lines, so it's just a bug in Preview. It's worth us considering this though and trying to not output tiles if the whole bitmap would've been fairly acceptable in size if just output in one go - at least that way we could still tile if you were  outputting something huge, but it would look correct in Preview most of the time.

 

Basically, we have work to do here, but the files it's creating aren't actually a bad starting point. I'll have a chat with the team next week :)

 

Thanks again,

Matt

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I have worked in the post-production and printing area for many years and I have seen this black thin lines issue quite a lot.

The problem really resides in Preview. Usually, if you view the same PDF file in Acrobat Reader, it previews fine.

I believe it has to do with the way Preview calculates the viewing size of the tiles. Maybe the calculation is performed in single precision (Real) in Preview and in double precision (Double) in Acrobat Reader.

So, usually, this is a non-issue for the final result.

The problem is when clients view the files in a visualizing application that shows these lines and get worried that it is a mistake and will show up in print. Some of them keep worrying, even after being told that is just a visualization issue.

Usually, I tell them to open the file in Acrobat Reader.

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As mentioned above by rui_mac, it's a Preview issue that's showing the dark lines that aren't actually in the file - but as I mentioned I think we can reasonably look at fixing this for most cases so it will look just fine.

 

Thanks again,

Matt

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