Grey line around image in exported pdf

[Spacific]

I placed a image (psd) in publisher, exported it to a pdf but there's a fine grey line around/in the image in the exported pdf.

 

[Jon P]

If you want to upload the PSD here I'll take a look, what PDF settings did you export to?

[Spacific]

Hi Jon,

I uploaded the file. See the export settings attached.

 

[Spacific]

Hi Jon,

I uploaded the file. See the export settings attached.

[Jon P]

I'm not seeing that on my export here at the moment, can you upload the document you are exporting and I'll export from that? Might also be useful to see the PDF you have exported.

Thanks

[Spacific]

Hi Jon,

I uploaded the pdf and the publisher document to the dropbox. Maybe it's the pdf viewer (adobe acrobat reader DC) I use?

Send you the screenshot of Acrobat reader as well.

Edited July 16, 2019 by Spacific

[Jon P]

I'm fairly certain it is the PDF viewer, as I see the same as you.

"Edit" > "Preferences" > (Untick) "Smooth Images" will cause it to render correctly in Acrobat Reader.

If you re-open it in our app it will display fine.

[Spacific]

Ok, problem solved, the setting smooth images unticking solved the problem. Thank you!!

[Felipe FM]

Hi Jon,

I just don't see this problem as the PDF viewer problem. I used to export InDesign files as PDF and this didn't happen. Now I'm making pretty similar files in Publisher and I have many PDF problems:

1. grey line around images as mentioned. This has to do with Publisher because I can't call every client I have and ask them to untick something to see the file correctly. Let's keep in mind I didn't have this issue exporting PDFs from InDesign. If I open the PDF in Preview, I see no grey lines, but if a client open the file on mobile, Google Drive, Gmail or PC… grey lines appear.

2. PDFs are way too large. The similar file I used to export from InDesign had around 4mb size, in Publisher it has 15-20mb (believe me, I tried all sorts of PDF options in Publisher, just lost 2 entire workdays trying to sort this out). Only way to get 4mb size is rastering everything, but the grey lines keep appearing for my clients (if I open it in Preview, I see no grey lines).

3. PDF export takes too much time. Really. I understand Publisher is a new software and I love it is a nice alternative to InDesign. But if it fails at the PDF exporting, it is almost useless. I really like Publisher, take this as a constructive criticism please. I really want it to export fine PDFs too.

Do you have any other possible reason for the grey lines around images? This would help me a lot as I can't guarantee every client will change their PDF readers properties. They surely can accept larger files for a while (I hope this gets better too!), but "uglier" files aren't good for my business.

Thanks!

Edited August 21, 2019 by Felipe FM

[Jon P]

Hi @Felipe FM,

The grey lines are only visual and not actually in the document, but I'll look into this again and try get you a better answer as to why they are appearing.

Regarding the export sizes and times, can you attach the document you are exporting here? If you have equivalent documents made in InDesign I can export and compare them too.

What export times are you getting? So I can compare on some Macs here

[Felipe FM]

Hi Jon, thanks for your prompt answer and attention to the PDF lines problem. I hope you can discover what (in the PDF) causes such a visual problem, this is very important to all the work I do in Publisher. 

I'm uploading the Publisher file for you to test the PDF export times and grey lines. It's a file supposed to be viewed on mobile, so it must be RGB and PDF for multiple pages.

Export times:

- if I rasterise everything, it's ok: more ore less one minute (but grey lines appear on PC, mobile and Google Drive or e-mail) and file sizes are 4-6mb

- if I export as the attached file (sorry about the Portuguese interface, but I think you can figure it out), it takes 10 minutes easily, sometimes more. File sizes increase to 15-20mb and no grey lines appear (!!). This can be a solution, but the file sizes are way too large. I need this to be around 6mb maximum (this file made at InDesign exports a PDF of more or less 2mb). Sorry but I don't have the InDesign files anymore (yeah, I really changed to Affinity and need it to work!) :-D


Thanks

[Felipe FM]

Hi Jon, any news? I discovered that *.aphoto files don't generate grey lines or grey backgrounds as PSDs and JPGs does. I hope this information can help you to discover what's wrong with the PDF exporting.

Thanks

[Jon P]

Hi Felipe, I've exported the attached file on a couple of Macs and not had it take over a minute when using the settings in your attached screenshot. I am however missing some of the images as they are linked on your machine, if you embed these images and re-upload it I can give it another go (not sure 15 or so missing images would turn it into 10 minutes).

Can you give me some info about the Mac you are using, specs etc?

Also can you clarify the settings you are using when rasterising everything? An export over here didn't export with the lines like your attached PDF.

 

[Felipe FM]

Hi Jon, I'm uploading another file, all embedded.

About exporting options, I tried A LOT of options, but I'll post two of them so you can try something:

1.

This is all raster and generates grey lines and/or grey backgrounds on images. Did you open the PDFs on different machines and softwares? The problems don't appear on my Mac, but appear on PCs, appear when opened in the browser (Google Drive and Gmail) and appear on mobile too.

2.

This generates perfect JPGs, but if I combine them into PDFs using MacOS Preview or Adobe Acrobat, grey lines and/or grey backgrounds appear (same thing as above: grey lines doesn't appear on Mac, but appear everywhere else). So  it isn't a good workaround.

About my computer:

This is a powerful machine, never seen it take so long for this kind of tasks. I used to export far more complex PDFs in InDesign in less time.

Is it possible that the software is somehow misconfigured for this specs?

Thanks for your help.

[Jon P]

Thanks Felipe,

Exporting in the above settings with a macbook quite similar to yours takes a couple of minutes. I can ask the devs to look into this and see where the majority of this time is being taken, we have had a few other reports of long pdf export times (most frequently on Mac), but i'm not reproducing the 10min+ times you are getting at the moment.

I asked a developer to look over the grey line issue to confirm my conclusion that this is a viewer bug and he is in agreement. We have however noticed this only seems to happen at certain jpeg compression levels, if you set to 30 or 90 it doesn't seem to happen from what we can see.

We've also inspected the outputted PDF's themselves and the grey lines are certainly not in the PDF. I can see multiple threads on Adobes forum mentioning this issue (here, here and here), but we have raised a report with them ourselves for some further clarification.

 

[Felipe FM]

Hi Jon, thanks for your work on this.

I'm disappointed about the grey line issue. As I said before, it makes the software almost useless for mobile / on screen PDFs. Can you explain more about the JPEG compression levels that generate grey lines please? Are you talking about the linked JPGs in the file or about the file exporting? I really need some way to avoid the problem.

Abou the PDF exporting time: I hope you can find a way to improve it in future updates. (:

 

thanks!

[Felipe FM]

Hello everybody. It's sad no one had any other insight on this. But I discovered myself a workaround on this issue (as mentioned before, it's a Affinity Publisher software bug, not a PDF rendering / reading problem):

If you link all your images as Affinity Photo files WITH adjustment layers (such as levels, HSB etc) the PDFs exported from Publisher don't generate any grey lines. I hope this can help other people with this issue while we wait for some software update to fix this.

cheers!

[JeremyTankard]

On 9/23/2019 at 3:05 PM, Felipe FM said:

Hello everybody. It's sad no one had any other insight on this. But I discovered myself a workaround on this issue (as mentioned before, it's a Affinity Publisher software bug, not a PDF rendering / reading problem):

If you link all your images as Affinity Photo files WITH adjustment layers (such as levels, HSB etc) the PDFs exported from Publisher don't generate any grey lines. I hope this can help other people with this issue while we wait for some software update to fix this.

cheers!

Thanks this solved my horrible lines around images on Publisher PDF export!!

[sunjewel]

Hi,

Was this ever resolved from the Affinity side? I tried doing the addition of the layers and it did not work. Though I can make the suggested adjustment of unchecking the appropriate box in my personal viewer, the files I am working with need to ultimately be uploaded/submitted to another website where they are then processed and compiled into a larger file. During this process the lines appear in the final file again, presumably because the software doing the compiling has this bug and I can't control this. Any further help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Sunny

[lottedraws]

On 9/23/2019 at 4:05 PM, Felipe FM said:

Hello everybody. It's sad no one had any other insight on this. But I discovered myself a workaround on this issue (as mentioned before, it's a Affinity Publisher software bug, not a PDF rendering / reading problem):

If you link all your images as Affinity Photo files WITH adjustment layers (such as levels, HSB etc) the PDFs exported from Publisher don't generate any grey lines. I hope this can help other people with this issue while we wait for some software update to fix this.

cheers!

Hello Felipe,

Thank you! I would love to try this to get rid of the grey lines. But I just stared with affinity and don't know how! I've imported a jpg in an affinity designer file with 'file - place'. How do I link it as an affinity photo file? (I work in designer but have photo as well). Thank you!!

Lotte (writing from France)

[lottedraws]

On 8/30/2019 at 2:47 PM, Jon P said:

I asked a developer to look over the grey line issue to confirm my conclusion that this is a viewer bug and he is in agreement. We have however noticed this only seems to happen at certain jpeg compression levels, if you set to 30 or 90 it doesn't seem to happen from what we can see.

 

I tested this but when I export as pdf and use a 90 compression level (30 not being an option) I still get the grey lines..

Edited September 9, 2021 by lottedraws

[Felipe FM]

3 hours ago, lottedraws said:

Hello Felipe,

Thank you! I would love to try this to get rid of the grey lines. But I just stared with affinity and don't know how! I've imported a jpg in an affinity designer file with 'file - place'. How do I link it as an affinity photo file? (I work in designer but have photo as well). Thank you!!

Lotte (writing from France)

geez… so sad this is still happening. Here the gray lines are not so frequent anymore. But answering your question: Open your JPG in Affinity Photo, add some adjustment layer (like levels, HSB etc). You don't have to actually move any of the sliders, just add the adjustment layer. Then save as an Affinity Photo file. Now use this Affinty Photo file as a link, not the JPG. This is how I had to do with hundreds (no jokes, HUNDREDS) of files. Hope this helps!

[Felipe FM]

On 10/20/2020 at 8:59 PM, sunjewel said:

Hi,

Was this ever resolved from the Affinity side? I tried doing the addition of the layers and it did not work. Though I can make the suggested adjustment of unchecking the appropriate box in my personal viewer, the files I am working with need to ultimately be uploaded/submitted to another website where they are then processed and compiled into a larger file. During this process the lines appear in the final file again, presumably because the software doing the compiling has this bug and I can't control this. Any further help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Sunny

looks like it's not yet solved… I had fewer issues lately, but @lottedraws still have the issue on Affinity Designer apparently. I hope they fix this soon, it's so frustrating to still have to make the most bizarre workarounds. Hey Affinty, any news?

[lottedraws]

1 hour ago, Felipe FM said:

geez… so sad this is still happening. Here the gray lines are not so frequent anymore. But answering your question: Open your JPG in Affinity Photo, add some adjustment layer (like levels, HSB etc). You don't have to actually move any of the sliders, just add the adjustment layer. Then save as an Affinity Photo file. Now use this Affinty Photo file as a link, not the JPG. This is how I had to do with hundreds (no jokes, HUNDREDS) of files. Hope this helps!

Thank you Felipe for the quick reply! Going to try it out right away.

One thing that worked in the meantime - I read this tip in another thread - is exporting under a pdfx1a-2003 profile (in stead of the standard 'pdf 1.7(acrobat 8)' profile. BUT it but added about 10 minutes to my export time.. not practical!

I hope Affinity will do something about it. Otherwise very happy with the software!

[lottedraws]

1 hour ago, Felipe FM said:

geez… so sad this is still happening. Here the gray lines are not so frequent anymore. But answering your question: Open your JPG in Affinity Photo, add some adjustment layer (like levels, HSB etc). You don't have to actually move any of the sliders, just add the adjustment layer. Then save as an Affinity Photo file. Now use this Affinty Photo file as a link, not the JPG. This is how I had to do with hundreds (no jokes, HUNDREDS) of files. Hope this helps!

it works! thank you @Felipe FM! Even if I open the file in designer (instead of photo), add an adjustment layer and save it, it also works. Still hoping though that this bug will be fixed because it's a lot of work if dealing with many files!