Dithered gradients get padded with unwanted white

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
November 3, 2025
1 reply
182 views

The new dithered gradients option in v30.0 is finally here (something I've been missing for ages), but it has an unfortunate issue.

The dithered gradients are created as raster images with a clipping mask (as I would expect), but the raster image of the gradient gets padded with white (instead of an extension of the gradient) starting at the exact edge. 😬

As a result, at various zoom levels on screen, you end up seeing a ~1 px faint white edge due to interpolation/resampling that really shouldn't be there. It is even visible on the artboard while working in Illustrator (here i found a zoom level that made the unwanted edge painfully obvious):

It will be visible in e.g. PDF files when viewed on screen. Luckily it shouldn't show up on print (but if the PDF gets downsampled it likely will!!!)...

This should be fixed ASAP before too many people start using the new feature.

Bug

Monika Gause

Community Expert

The gradients are rasterized at 72 ppi by default.

What you can do is apply the Rasterize effect to just the fill and then set the document raster effect resolution to something higher than 72 ppi. Also apply a clipping mask.

I don't know if there is already a Uservoice report, but the engineers know of the issue.

Here's a video: https://youtu.be/cvxy6vtxYBs

J

JonasRogne

Author

Community Expert

The resolution of the gradient does not default to 72 PPI. It seems to follow the raster effect resolution of the document (so defaulted to 300 PPI in my situation). Regardless, if you re-read my post, the issue I see is not the resolution, but the white padding of the raster images (the gradient needs to be extended slightly beyond the edge of the clipping mask for the rasterization to produced acceptable results).

The only workaround is to make the gradient larger than you need, then use a clipping mask that's smaller (I'm guessing that is what you were suggestiong?). But that's really inconvenient (especially for more complex shapes).

Note: It is worrying that I had to only create a single dithered gradient before I discovered this issue. Not sure if Adobe properly tested this or thought through the consequences of this implementation... It's going to lead to a lot of annoying quality issues the way it is now.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

If you also turn on gradient dither, the default resolution will be the raster effect resolution.

A clipping mask can be created via the document raster effects settings as well. If you want to apply offset path: there's an effect for that.

Edit: sorry I confused it. You were asking about dithering and I confused it with perceptive.

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