Vectors Not Preserved in Several Export Formats

[Diavel222]

Hello,

I have a drawing that has all vectors. There are no raster/pixel elements whatsoever, and every assistive shape that Designer has to offer has been converted to curves. Literally everything is curves and I still can't export to a PDF without it rasterizing. According to a graphics designer whose been working with this stuff for 20 years knows that PDFs can preserve vector elements, so he needed my graphics for laser-engraving a piece of wood, and he uses Adobe Illustrator. We tried .eps, .psd, .pdf, and .svg, and all were rasterized on export. From what I've read, Affinity Designer's export module just doesn't seem to cut it in the production world and is half-baked compared to Adobe's. It appears buggy and cannot consistently output vectors, if you can even achieve that at all. Why is this? Every time we opened the file on his program, certain parts of my document were rasterized for no reason. To solve this, he had to use the "image trace" feature to vectorize my raster export that should have been infinitely precise curves on export to begin with.

Why does a vector application not export vectors without rasterizing them? That's like Logic Pro X not being able to export to a .wav file!

Any help is appreciated.

[walt.farrell]

Do you have a pure drawing, or are you applying any layer effects?

Can you provide a sample .afdesign file that demonstrates the export problem?

 

[Diavel222]

There is nothing under the "Effects" tab on any element. I am simply using the erase display mode to expose the transparent background.

 

 

[JimmyJack]

3 hours ago, Alan Raterink said:

There is nothing under the "Effects" tab on any element. I am simply using the erase display mode to expose the transparent background.

Erase blend mode will result in a rasterized output.

[thatspassion]

Hi, could you please take a look on these files? The vector pencils is always a curve and the stroke can't neither be expanded nor exported as vectors. Thanks in advance!

test.afdesign

test.pdf

[Pšenda]

6 hours ago, Alan Raterink said:

erase display mode

Erase is non-standard blend mode, and must be replaced by rasterization.

[Diavel222]

Thank you for all the replies by the way!  : )

If erase is a type of blend mode and will result in rasterization, is there a way to use two objects (one as a base, one to erase) and then "flatten" the end result to a curve? This would just make drawing a little easier instead of using the pen tool to make everything from scratch to prevent rasterization.

[gdenby]

Hi, Alan Reterink,

W/o knowing what shapes you are working w., its a little hard to say, but I suspect subtracting the object from the underlying objects may give what you want. Erase makes the appearance of a subtraction, whereas subtraction alters the vector boundary.

[gdenby]

11 hours ago, thatspassion said:

Hi, could you please take a look on these files? The vector pencils is always a curve and the stroke can't neither be expanded nor exported as vectors. Thanks in advance!

test.afdesign

test.pdf

This is a common misunderstanding. Vector brushes stretch or repeat a bitmap along a vector, changing the size and/or the opacity along the vector depending on the pressure curve associated w. the vector. At some point, there should be a vector mesh warp that will bend a complex vector outline, such as one that appears like a brush stroke. For now, on must export such images, and run them thru a bitmap vectorizer.

[thatspassion]

On 1/18/2019 at 8:12 PM, gdenby said:

This is a common misunderstanding. Vector brushes stretch or repeat a bitmap along a vector, changing the size and/or the opacity along the vector depending on the pressure curve associated w. the vector. At some point, there should be a vector mesh warp that will bend a complex vector outline, such as one that appears like a brush stroke. For now, on must export such images, and run them thru a bitmap vectorizer.

First, thank you very much for your time and good reply! Like u said i exported a bitmap and vectorized it with a tool. But that's not really satisfying. I used this brush pack: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/store/product/chunky-markers-brush-pack/and they look pretty cool and very vector (if i zoom in affinity designer i see the vectors clearly). But i don't really get it, why it doesn't expand the stroke like expecte or it does it with the default pencils.

[Andy De Campos]

I have the exact same problem. Sometimes, in a number of layers, there may be only 5% that are NOT vectors. And then it won't export without rasterizing. Is there a way to quickly identify the non vector layers? See attached. Thank you so much.

https://we.tl/t-5jFvhEesP7