How to get rid of outline or border around transparent png images exported from Adobe Illustrator

Question

When I export a selection on illustrator as a png with a transparent background and paste it into a word document to save as a PDF, opening the pdf document on Adobe Acrobat shows a faint outline around the image. Below, on the left is how the image looks when I paste it into a Word Document and on the right you’ll see what happens when I save that document as a PDF and view it on Adobe Acrobat.

Is there any way to get rid of this border so it does not show up in PDFs? (I export my images as PNGs with 1200 ppi with transparent backgrounds)

Brad @ Roaring Mouse · Answer

Word has a sucky way of handling the alpha channels in a transparent PNG.

Your image is being downsampled when it’s imported into Word according to a setting in your Preferences > Edit > Image Quality. It being a transparent PNG, it uses an alpha mask. The alpha mask is ALSO being downsampled, so because you are getting an anti-aliased edge (and these are semi transparent pixels), a bit of the downsampled B&W alpha mask is showing behind it when Word creates its own version of the PNG to store in the file.

Not sure if it’s possible to eliminate it, but try change your setting above to High Fidelity if it’s anything else (I believe Mac Word’s default is 220). Also checking “Do not compress” may help.

To be clear, Illustrator is doing nothing wrong with the PNG. It’s all Word’s doing.

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