Horrible exporting on long shadow effect

[andrea_8933]

Hi all,

I'm working on a project in Illustrator and when I export the file, the long shadow looks HORRIBLE. Does anyone have any fixes for this? I'm using the blend tool for this effect- it looks great in illustrator and passable in PDF, but any other image format destroys the appearance of the blend. 

[Anubhav M]

Hello @andrea_8933,

Would you mind sharing a link to a sample AI and screenshots of the export settings used after uploading them to a file-sharing service like Google Drive, so I can check it on my end?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

[Bobby Henderson]

The problem looks similar to moiré. Somehow the size of the graphic and number of steps in the blend are not working well with the target size and resolution of the PNG image you're creating.

You could try experimenting with the blend by varying its number of steps.

Color choices can also affect the look of the blend. Are you working in RGB or CMYK color mode? The black at the far end of the blend looks like a flat CMYK black that uses only black ink. That kind of a black has a more limited number of blend combinations than a deeper rich black that uses all four CMYK ink colors. A blend from Red to Rich Black is going to look more natural.

[Monika Gause]

Don't create the long shadow (Block shadow, Superhero) like that. Period.

Blends are not suitable for it. Neither is using the transform effect with gazillions of copies. 

There are better ways.

https://www.vektorgarten.de/long-shadows-with-illustrator.html

https://youtu.be/SD1HARFrszs