Rolling Rook Studio Posted May 8, 2015 Share Posted May 8, 2015 Hello all! First off...let me say that I am absolutely LOVING Affinity Designer! I'm using AD to do layouts, logos, ads and illustrations for clients and I just had some reservations about the output of files. I really have to have something that can go to the printers. Print files used to mean vector graphics, so maybe I'm old school, but I'm now realizing that a lot of the effects I do in AD end up being rastered/flattened when saving to PDF or EPS files. :( Is there a better output method that insures that what you created will be exactly what you output (besides a raster file)? I need industry standard files I can send to clients (typically PDFs). I hate to compare to Adobe, but if I made something in Illustrator, everything created as a vector image, remained a vector image and nothing changed in output to EPS or PDF. I've even had lines I created in AD with variable widths end up without the variation when I exported it (just lines of one width). I've also noticed when converting these lines to curves, they shrink in width. Any help on "best practices" on using Affinity Designer professionally, would be great! :) Love this app! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted May 8, 2015 Staff Share Posted May 8, 2015 Hello Rolling Rook Studio, Welcome to Affinity Forums :) Thanks for your feedback. There's still a considerable number of features for commercial/professional printing that weren't implemented yet. They are already on our roadmap and will be added as a free update. Currently we are also using Apple's PDF code for PDF export which explains some of the current limitations. Soon we will be changing to our own custom PDF exporter which should improve the PDF output considerably. Some of the issues with lines you are describing are also known bugs that should be fixed soon. O. Chevetaigne 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MattP Posted May 8, 2015 Staff Share Posted May 8, 2015 Hi! If you use the current beta version, you should find that the output of lines with pressure or certain styles is more predictable now, so at least that's one issue hopefully out of the way... With regard to best practices, the only advice I can give is that everything that can be described as vector does go out as vector right now, but the moment you apply a layer effect or an adjustment you will force rasterisation - just like in Illustrator... the only difference is that we (currently) rasterise the whole object, but we should be seeing if the effect is possible to detach from the object and then overlay the object in vector on top of the effect (for shadows, for example) so this will be one noticeable difference. If you can post any things that you have problems with (or if you'd prefer not to share things on the forum then just send them to support@seriflabs.com) then we'll do our best to help you as promptly as possible. As Miguel says, we're writing our own PDF exporter so that we can actually target professional level output and go way beyond the scope of anything else on the App Store. This will come in time, but right now if you need to output I'm sure we can get you to a good level with advising you on some specific cases :) Thanks again, Matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted May 8, 2015 Share Posted May 8, 2015 the only difference is that we (currently) rasterise the whole object, but we should be seeing if the effect is possible to detach from the object and then overlay the object in vector on top of the effect (for shadows, for example) so this will be one noticeable difference. Actually we can already do that in some situations. Draw a circle, give it an outer shadow, untick Fill knocks out shadow, export as PDF, then re-import. You'll see the circle is a curve and the shadow is an image behind it. This is in the MAS version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MattP Posted May 9, 2015 Staff Share Posted May 9, 2015 Actually we can already do that in some situations. Draw a circle, give it an outer shadow, untick Fill knocks out shadow, export as PDF, then re-import. You'll see the circle is a curve and the shadow is an image behind it. This is in the MAS version. The problem is that this isn't the default behaviour - so I'm hoping that RRS would ask how to achieve specific things and we could advise - in this case, if the effect would appear no different in their specific usage, then we could obviously advise this, and it would surely help greatly :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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