PDF/X export leaves me unhappy everywhere

[ygoe]

I just can't say the PDF/X export does anything useful. I've had problems with it before (1.6) and version 1.7 seems to be even worse than that. While version 1.6 produced a totally wrong background behind bitmaps with transparency, version 1.7.0.258 rasterises the whole thing from the start. My PDF export doesn't seem to contain a single vector, everything's just in pixels, including text and other graphics. Then I tried to rasterise that problematic gradient rectangle and use that background bitmap in place of the gradient. Since it's a very subtle gradient, raster resolution shouldn't be an issue in print. But that fails, too. Version 1.6 crops that background rectangle at the left, top and right edges to the document sizes. Only the bottom edge sticks out into the bleed area. The rest is gone. That will produce white edges in print after cutting for sure! v1.7 seems to preserve the real size of that rectangle but the resulting PDF doesn't contain any data outside the document size. The bleed area is just white. Not what it's meant to be for. Here's the full image file, you can try it out in 1.6 and 1.7.

So I'm still pretty clueless and unhappy with Affinity Designer when it comes to print export with PDF. I'm not sure why print shops want PDF/X from two decades ago when every web browser can render modern PDF just fine. Maybe the print machines are two decades old and there's no software upgrade for them? So I might even be able to run my own code through a security hole on their machine, or whatever. But that's the requirement. I can't go to a print shop with a modern PDF. That means I still can't use Affinity Designer for the job.

Since I've already made the whole design in AD, I need to figure out what I did last time to convert a modern PDF to a proper PDF/X with Adobe Illustrator CS6. It would be really helpful if that export would work one day. I don't care about the gradient, I can rasterise it if needed, but even that fails as of now.

Also, the bleed area handling is still completely misleading. I never know what it's doing there. Do I have to add it to the document size or not? Will it be added? Should I select the "include bleed" option on export? What if not? What will it do? No idea, really. Again, Adobe Illustrator CS6 does that so much better and I never had to ask any question.

[Sean P]

Hi ygoe,

There is a known issue in 1.7 (that has now been resolved) that was causing entire artboards to be rasterised when they shouldn't which is what you've been running in to. I can confirm your document now exports to PDF/X-1 without that happening, however you do still get the odd gradient issues with the vehicles.

Unfortunately I'm not sure there is much that can be done about it - the issue is that PDF/X-1 and PDF/X-3 do not support transparency - but do support gradients. This means that on export the transparency is removed by trying to best interpret the gradient and filling the space with that. However this doesn't match up with how Acrobat is rendering the transparency so you do get that discrepancy.

The only thing that you can do is to rasterise the gradient rectangle object, this will give you much better looking output without those hard boxes. You could also rasterise that together with the 4 vehicles to ensure there is no hard edges (as of next build). Have you asked your print shop why they don't support PDF/X-4 or looked in to a shop that does?

Lastly with regards to the bleed area it is a known issue that artboards cut the bleed area off, so I'll get that bumped with development.

Hope that helps!

 

[grapher]

+1,

im crying blood here. Problems with Bleed... its otherwise so great software, why so childish problems, not solved months?

everytime i have to scratch all artboards, and export one by one ..... very annoying.

Another little glitch - Everytime using export to print PDF - its exporting unnecessary objects (like if you add  photograph in your artwork, crop it to 1/10, then you will have whole photo in the export, resoluting laaaaarge files.)  in few months back i saw exporting also hidden layers.... maybe its solved now, dont know.

 

 

 

[grapher]

By the way, the bleed workaround - you have artboard 10x10, and want bleed +1 - make square ~12x12, centered, filled with 100% opacity. Then move everything from the artboard inside the square in the layers. So whole artwork will be cropped to 12x12. Then move the square in layers out of the artboard, out of ANY artboard, to the bottom of all layers. Then simply export the original artboard...  Tadaa artboard with bleed.

 

[MarcusK]

On 3/26/2019 at 11:29 AM, grapher said:

By the way, the bleed workaround - you have artboard 10x10, and want bleed +1 - make square ~12x12, centered, filled with 100% opacity. Then move everything from the artboard inside the square in the layers. So whole artwork will be cropped to 12x12. Then move the square in layers out of the artboard, out of ANY artboard, to the bottom of all layers. Then simply export the original artboard...  Tadaa artboard with bleed.

 

Thank you grapher!  Your workaround works for me, and saved me from some more painful workaround options in order to get my multi-page artboard documents ready for print this week.  I sure hope this is fixed in the next beta drop.

[Wosven]

You just need to dupplicate (or drag) the content of the artboard above or below it for the bleed to be exported. For your document, only the background below is enough.

[MarcusK]

4 minutes ago, Wosven said:

You just need to dupplicate (or drag) the content of the artboard above or below it for the bleed to be exported. For your document, only the background below is enough.

Thank you Wosven, that worked for me too, and saves the step of making the rectangle.  The rectangle might help with clipping in case someone doesn't remember to still select the "empty" artboard for export and instead selects the contents (or group) that you drag out of the artboard grouping in Layers.  My bleed elements extend beyond the desired bleed, so selecting the empty artboard(s) still uses the specified bleed setting/dimensions to clip everything properly.