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manekdsilva
Participant
December 8, 2024
Question

Unpredictable results for Layer Comps to PDF...

  • December 8, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 372 views

Hey just wanted to get some more opinions on this. Layer Comps have always been extremely useful, but I've found "Export>Layer Comps to PDF" to be highly unpredictable in terms of accuracy. The various issues I've seen are:  layers hidden in the Comp become visible in the export, strokes sometimes change weight, gradients/clipping masks are sometimes affected, and probably MOST frequently, text becomes garbled (example screenshot attached).

 

Just for clartity, I've noticed these errors for several years across many different PSD files, different fonts, and different versions of Photoshop (on Mac). So I'm having a hard time isolating the problem. Meanwhile, the "Save As>PDF" works super consistently, and even "Export>Layer Comps as files" to other formats like PNG/TIFF all work perfectly with the same Layer Comps. But the moment I try Layer Comps to PDF, Photoshop seems to short-circuit. It's such a convenient feature for batch processing for print, and I'm continually forced to abandon using it because of these unpredictable glitches, so thought I'd ask the experts. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

1 reply

Rene Andritsch
Community Expert
Rene AndritschCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 16, 2025

Which Photoshop version are you using? Have you tried to use a different font with the same design and does that result in the same garbled typography?


You could also try to place your PSD file into inDesign and use the Layer Comp feature there and export a PDF from InDesign to see if the same error occurs.


See the screenshot below how to access your layer comp in InDesign when placing an image (sorry for the screenshot in German). You have to show the import options when placing the image or go into the object layer option in the object menu or right-click on the placed image for the context menu to get access to the layer comps in InDesign.

    M
    manekdsilvaAuthor
    Participant
    January 16, 2025

    Hey Rene, thanks so much for the suggestions. Yes this has happened across various files and fonts over the years, like I described it even often happens with strokes, but I haven't really figured out what exactly causes it.

     

    The InDesign workaround is interesting, but since I'm often working with 20-30 layer comps, that can be quite tedious. For now I've resigned to just exporting as PNG instead of PDF. Not the best, but at least it always works consistently. Hopefully eventually it'll get fixed in some version in the future. 🤞

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