Hi there,

I tried saving a drawing with masked areas as a PDF document, but the masks are not effective in the PDF output (or the PNG output).
Also; the edges of my objects in the PNG are highly aliased at 100%.

Thanks in advance for your help.

ScalableDrawer

ScalableDrawer wrote:I tried saving a drawing with masked areas as a PDF document, but the masks are not effective in the PDF output

This is correct. Unfortunately you'll have to create your drawing without using masks if you want to save as PDF (unless this has been improved in recent versions)

(or the PNG output).

PNG export from Inkscape should be identical to what you see on the canvas. Can you provide more details?

Also; the edges of my objects in the PNG are highly aliased at 100%.

I'm not clear on what you are saying here. Can you provide an example?

ScalableDrawer wrote:(or the PNG output)

Make sure you're using Export Bitmap, not Save As Cairo PNG.

Also; the edges of my objects in the PNG are highly aliased at 100%.

You can change the resolution of the PNG (before export, natch) to suit your needs. 100% refers to the dimensions of the picture, but you can have very fine resolution exports from Inkscape. I often use 600ppi just to be safe and give myself room to crop and zoom before printing.

Thank you all for your input. Sas, thanks for your heads-up. I found that exporting to bitmap helped (as opposed to saving as Cairo PNG). I exported the 'page' at 90dpi and it looks great at 100%. I will try exporting at 600dpi too.

Just as an afterthought, is there a place I can go to download 'fixes' or patches to the current version (0.47) I am using - maybe for a PDF masking fix?

If I open the PNG in Fireworks, I can save it as a JPEG with very little loss (not noticeable). I can send that to the client since it's universal. I tried opening the PNG in Word, and exporting as a PDF (with the Flash Paper plug-in), but the compression is too high and artifacts are visible.

Thanks again guys.

ScalableDrawer wrote:Just as an afterthought, is there a place I can go to download 'fixes' or patches to the current version (0.47) I am using - maybe for a PDF masking fix?

Inkscape very rarely releases minor versions. What you can do is try the development builds. They should work side-by-side with the stable version.

If I open the PNG in Fireworks, I can save it as a JPEG with very little loss (not noticeable). I can send that to the client since it's universal. I tried opening the PNG in Word, and exporting as a PDF (with the Flash Paper plug-in), but the compression is too high and artifacts are visible.

Word will be converting the PNG to a JPG when saving as PDF. When converting the PNG to a JPG yourself, you should be able to control the amount of compression to the point of turning it off so that you know there has been no loss of quality.