PDF Export | Calibri appears bold in one text frame, but not the other text frame

[BrianUni]

Please see attached video

[Dazmondo77]

I think that maybe you'll find that the bold looking text will be a four colour black and once you make it a single solid black it should look OK - I setup my own application palates for CMYK and greyscale, as just selecting a standard affinity swatch can cause loads of colour bother like super dense blacks that would be rejected by most print service providers 

[BrianUni]

Thanks so much for your reply!

I did some testing in the video below.  I also tried it in grayscale with the same result.

[VolkerMB]

Hi,

by any chance could you share either the original .afpub file or another .afpub that demonstrates the issue? Would help to get to the root of the problem.

Cheers,
Volker

 

 

[BrianUni]

Yep!  Please see attached.

Calibri Bold Problems.afpub

[Dazmondo77]

I have been caught out before with this issue, although I have a CMYK end to end workflow and setting all the CMYK blacks to C0 M0 Y0 K100 (solid black) has always solved the problem, I can only guess that it may be a colour profile issue, I did however notice that you didn't change the documents colour settings to CMYK before changing blacks - therefore the document would still produce an RGB PDF, and even selecting a CMYK colour profile on output to pdf would change the blacks, affinity stuff can really mess up blacks if you change colour profiles which is why I stick to an end to end CMYK Fogra27 workflow, although I sometimes use a print provider that requires ISO300 CMYK profile which is (currently) a nightmare to sort once you change over profiles on an existing job, as all the single solid black will all change to 4 colour black  

I've done a quick screen grab of the issue I've had - in the end PDF you can see the 4 colour black looks slightly bold - although most print providers would reject 400% black as it would cause set off and not dry correctly 

[Pauls]

I think there's something up with the text frame, Copying the text and pasting it back into a new one makes the export look OK for me.

[MikeW]

Your rich black to registration black (i.e., 100% each 4 colors) isn't right, as well as you should be using a cmyk/8 document color type of document. For consistency's sake, you should also set up text styles. 

Calibri Bold Problems 2.afpub

[carl123]

1 hour ago, MikeW said:

Your rich black to registration black (i.e., 100% each 4 colors) isn't right, as well as you should be using a cmyk/8 document color type of document. For consistency's sake, you should also set up text styles. 

Calibri Bold Problems 2.afpub

Your file still has the same problems with the "bold looking text"

Actually there is a bug here to do with Drop Shadows & that Brightness and Contrast adjustment layer

I would need to recreate it in a simplified document to explain it, so maybe tomorrow unless someone saves me the trouble overnight (please!) 

[MikeW]

11 minutes ago, carl123 said:

Your file still has the same problems with the "bold looking text"

Actually there is a bug here to do with Drop Shadows & that Brightness and Contrast adjustment layer

I would need to recreate it in a simplified document to explain it, so maybe tomorrow unless someone saves me the trouble overnight (please!) 

No, not really. What APub does wrong, though, is create a mask that encompasses the logo at the top-right and the ruler image:

That if deleted in Acrobat simply changes the apparent boldness of underlying text. But it prints properly, whereas the original file, well, doesn't.

[carl123]

Bug?

Attached is a simple APhoto document with 2 identical text frames, a shape with an outer shadow effect and a Brightness & Contrast adjustment layer 

Problem: When exported to PDF (for export) the lower text has a bold like effect (file attached)

The adjustment layer will cause the lower text to be rasterized (understandable) but the inclusion of the outer shadow on the shape makes the lower text look bold.  If the shadow on the shape is switched off then the text no longer looks bold when exported to a PDF.

I've recreated the above in APhoto 1.8.0.486 beta (file attached) but I think it is what the OP is also experiencing in his Publisher file due to the outer shadow effect on the ruler image and the Brightness / Contrast adjustment layer below that. Switching off the outer shadow effect in the OP's file also eliminates the bold like effect reported on the text.

 

bugdemo2.pdf

bugdemo2.afphoto

[MikeW]

5 hours ago, carl123 said:

Bug?

Attached is a simple APhoto document with 2 identical text frames, a shape with an outer shadow effect and a Brightness & Contrast adjustment layer 

Problem: When exported to PDF (for export) the lower text has a bold like effect (file attached)

The adjustment layer will cause the lower text to be rasterized (understandable) but the inclusion of the outer shadow on the shape makes the lower text look bold.  If the shadow on the shape is switched off then the text no longer looks bold when exported to a PDF.

I've recreated the above in APhoto 1.8.0.486 beta (file attached) but I think it is what the OP is also experiencing in his Publisher file due to the outer shadow effect on the ruler image and the Brightness / Contrast adjustment layer below that. Switching off the outer shadow effect in the OP's file also eliminates the bold like effect reported on the text.

Carl, your issue, while seeming to be the same, is actually different. In the OP's, there was a transparent layer that encompassed the logo and the drop shadow. But it was transparent which causes the bold appearance and, at least printing to a Postscript printer, doesn't affect the printing. I would still call the OP's issue a bug as nothing else I recreated the OP's file with does this.

Your pdf has actually created an image of the lower text that is below the text (and is a bit misaligned). In the screen shot, I moved the bitmap copy down below the actual text:

This is a worse bug than the OP's.

Mike

[BrianUni]

On 10/17/2019 at 10:53 AM, Pauls said:

I think there's something up with the text frame, Copying the text and pasting it back into a new one makes the export look OK for me.

Hi Paul, 

You nailed it!  I pasted the text into a new text frame, and it solved the problem (video attached). Thanks so much!

[MikeW]

That's because the new text frame is above the images when a new text frame is created. You can also just bring that existing text box to the front.

Or send the logo & the two other images to the back. Oh, and I would also actually drag the adjustment layer (for shirt image) and nest it into the shirt layer.

For whatever reason, those images are encompassed in a transparency layer as per the original file attached to the thread. Exporting as a pdf/x-4 should not have that transparency mask encompassing the images.

[BrianUni]

20 minutes ago, MikeW said:

That's because the new text frame is above the images when a new text frame is created. You can also just bring that existing text box to the front.

Or send the logo & the two other images to the back. Oh, and I would also actually drag the adjustment layer (for shirt image) and nest it into the shirt layer.

For whatever reason, those images are encompassed in a transparency layer as per the original file attached to the thread. Exporting as a pdf/x-4 should not have that transparency mask encompassing the images.

Thanks Mike!  Bringing the text frame to the front solved the issue too.  That's a really easy fix!

[MikeW]

35 minutes ago, BrianUni said:

Thanks Mike!  Bringing the text frame to the front solved the issue too.  That's a really easy fix!

You're welcome, Brian.

Evidently, just make sure text elements are above all adjustment layers whenever possible.

Bringing the text frame to the front doesn't solve the transparent layer encompassing the images (the send to back of the images and nesting the adj. layer does). Likely just nesting the adjustment layer inside the shirt image would also. It would still be good for Serif to take a look to see if they can improve this. If I apply an adjustment to an image in the other software I use, it doesn't do this even when the images are on top of a layer stack.

[lacerto]

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[MikeW]

In ID, any transparency on the page inside of ID makes that text appear bolder on that page (again, inside of ID). But it is not and doesn't affect the pdf. Neither QXP nor ID, nor ... have the same issue as in this thread. Especially when a pdf type can/should allow transparency.

That said, it has always been standard practice in anything to have text layers above image layers (real, discrete layers here) whenever possible, or at least having above images in the layer stack whenever possible.

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[MikeW]

Not being able to always have text in front is correct...which is why I mentioned that.

Really, just moving the brightness/contrast adjustment "layer" into the shirt "layer" should resolve the issue and it does partly. However, if that image (with the contrast adjustment moved inside the shirt image) and the IMG_2994 image are moved to actually be over text areas like so:

should still produce a good pdf and not affect underlying elements. But even using pdf/x-4, it doesn't:

here you can see that when I moved the images in the pdf, there are text elements that were flattened in the export. This should not happen.

Having rebuilt the file in QXP, and made the same adjustments to the images, when I open the pdf and move the images, nothing was flattened with the images:

further, the text in the pdf was not affected at all when the image was on top of the text:

affinity applications need better pdf export.

[lacerto]

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[MikeW]

Yes, that issue was noted above a couple times. It's pretty cool, isn't it...?

It shouldn't happen. PDF export is one reason I cannot use Affinity applications for all but more simple work.

[lacerto]

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