Trouble with Outer Glow Effect and Saving

[felisha5C1C]

Hi there!  I am a super newbie self-taught Photoshop user, and need to send my logo file to a printer.  They require AI or PDF format, but i've been having troubles with my artwork.  My logo has several layers, and the one has a solid white outer glow (used as a thick border).  Whenever I've tried any of the below, I get the same issue of the solid white outer glow suddenly having jagged clipped edges.

Export as PNG

Save as TIFF

Export as PDF (does some other strange things)

Merge Layers

Turn into smart objects

Flatten Image

Rasterize Layers

Can someone please help?

What it's supposed to look like

*(I added the pink background to help show the white outer glow of the last layer)*

What it looks like when I do anything I mentioned.  

What it looks like when I save as PDF

[J E L]

Hi @felisha5C1C, wondering how you built (what tool) the solid white outer glow layer? Note that Illustrator is the better app for logos which need to be vector art for unlimited scalability, not raster art, which is native to Photoshop. But it's possible that outer glow effect could be achieved with another process for better export results.

[felisha5C1C]

Hi Jel!

I used Layer Style --> Outer Glow.  I have heard great things about Illustrator, and recently downloaded it.  I just recently taught myself photoshop basics, so hoping to move towards the illustrator direction.  You know I did open my logo file in illustrator, and the same jagged edge clipped outer glow appeared.  All I did was open the file - no saving/exporting/converting attempts made.

I was able to save as pdf before and send to another vendor to make stickers.  I lost the original logo file and re-made this current one.  Not sure what I did differently the last time.

[Trevor.Dennis]

I suspect that it is just a matter of getting the right settings with outer glow.  It can certainly be a tricky effect to get right. 

I quickly recreated your logo, but was not able to get the jagged outline of the outer glow.

You have four text layers.  How did you group them to make a single layer to get the outer glow?  I made them into a single Smart Object.

Were you viewing the logo at 100% zoom? It's important to do that when assessing effects.

What exactly are you trying to achieve with the outer glow? Does it need to have a hard, or soft edge?

If it's a hard edge, then maybe Outer Glow is not the best way to achieve it. 

Can you describe your workflow?  And a full res screen shot of your entire workspace showing the layers panel would be helpful.  Have the logo zoomed to 100%, and if it overflows the screen, move it so we can see the upper right outline.

[felisha5C1C]

Hi Trevor,

I have the solid white outer glow on just the last purple text layer, rather than around the entire word like in your example (so cool that you recreated that so fast by the way).  This is just a design preference.  And I like the solid, hard edge look instead of soft cloudy edges.  I always work in the "Fit on Screen" view mode, and my file is sizes 50x42".  Pretty large, but I print them on banners etc.  However in this particular need, i'm going to also print onto plastic cups at 3x2.5" as well.  Since you mentioned to view at 100%, I went ahead and did that and noticed that same jagged edge outline.  This is without me trying to convert anything.  I never noticed nor thought that it probably always appears this way, but for sure does not print jagged edge at 100% size on a banner.  Not sure what's going on here.

Viewing in "Fit on Screen" mode

Viewing in 100% mode.  This is the area above the "s" in "bestie".

Do you think it's just a matter of it viewing strangely on screen?  As I mentioned, I've never had print issues.  However, i've also never seen these jagged edges appear either.  And I still dont know why pdf doesnt convert properly.

Thank you so much for helping me trouble shoot.

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

So it looks like it was there in the image, but not visible when zoomed out.  I'd be thinking about a different approach not using Layer Styles.  I didn't know that Outer Glow was prone to ragged edges at large values, but Stroke can be.

I've increased my logo size to 3000 pixels wide here with zoom set to 100% and it is starting to get a bit ragged.  In fact it looks like it could do with some anti aliassing to soften the outer edge.  We can do something about that.

I've reduced the Spread to 80% which has given us the AA we were looking for, but made the size a bit smaller.  Can we bring that back up without reintroducing the ragged edge.  I think we can.

There you go.  Size increased from 43 to 70. We have increased the border while maintaining the AA without a feathered edge.

I have always thought that Outer Glow was not an intuitive effect to use, and I can certainly remember floundering unable to make it do what I wanted.  So I hope this helps.

[Trevor.Dennis]

I've just thought that our Adobe Community Experts Senior Manager @Sil.C would like this design.  It's a clever adaption of a rainbow design, and it's not easy to be original with a graphic that already has a zillion variations already.

[Sil.C]

Ooooh! Love it! Thanks for the tag, @Trevor.Dennis 

Amazing work, @felisha5C1C !

[felisha5C1C]

@Sil.C  Thank you so much!  

[felisha5C1C]

Thank you so much for helping me Trevor!  What you suggested worked!  I pulled Range all the way down to max 1% and lowered Spread to 80%.  I flattened the image and when converted to pdf, it looks perfect!  I'm so glad I posted on here.  I honestly didnt think anybody would respond to me.  Thank you!

[Mark26891178xwhk]

If so try Have you tried making a stamped layer first? Select all the active layers Hold ⌘+option+Shift (Mac) Control+Alt+Shift(PC) and hit the e key. Rasterize all smart layers first. I would first duplicate the file to play with. Make sure no layers are locked. If it won't stamp or it doesn't work start going in and merging layers down that look ok when merged. Select the layers and try to stamp them again.

It looks like a vector art problem to me. Those jagged edges are sharp, not pixelated. Is the white background lettering vector art? If so, I would convert it to raster at a high resolution like 300dpi. Good Luck

[Mark26891178xwhk]

If you are really in a pinch, what you could do that's a for sure bet is to flatten the image with all the imperfections, create a blank layer above, sample the white so you have a perfect match, take the pen tool and draw over those imperfections, right click with the pen tool and "fill Path" with the sampled color. A selection won't work, it has to be kept as a path. Flatten that and export. Good Luck

[Ryan.Cioffi09]

For anybody else having issues with outer glow when exporting, my issue was that the exported images were not as shown in design panel. I used export for screens and it seemed to have worked.