Export to PDF, but lost shadows

Posted by Dillone on Feb 07, 2009

I am exporting from NodeBox to PDF. The paths seems right on the result PDF file, but the shadows lost completely.
And I also exported the same code to JPG and TIFF, all works quite well, the shadows are all there.

I used the Colors library. The shadow code snippet is simple: shadow(bx=5, by=8, alpha=0.25, blur=10)

My question is : Exporting to PDF does not save shadow data?

BTW, my computer is a MacBook 2.00GHZ doul core, 2G RAM

Anyone encountered the same problem?

Posted by Dillone Hailei Wang on Feb 08, 2009

I found a side way to accomplish the task.

Export image with shadows to EPS format, then open it with Photoshop (you will have a chance to set the PPI to 300 or any number). Then you can save the image to TIFF, JPEG or any other format.

The shadows and effects are all there!

But I still hope there will be a solution of export image with shadow from NodeBox to PDF.

Posted by Tom De Smedt on Feb 13, 2009

I've noticed a difference between exporting from the File menu and doing canvas.save("filename.pdf") discussed here.

The second method exports PDF with Core Image stuff and it might work for shadows as well. Shadows seem to be problematic on some systems. Can you include some more source code?

Also, I've noticed that they are not always there when rasterizing a PDF in Photoshop (even when they are present in the exported PDF). In this case, you should use GraphicConverter to rasterize the PDF instead of Photoshop.