Image Transparency Issue While Exporting To PDF - ArcGIS Pro

That's my fault, I was just cleaning up some old issue paperwork as part of finishing this release.

But, I think you may have missed a detail :

After a lot of design/prototyping with our senior output and rasterizer developers, and extensive testing and tuning of the mitigation strategy, we have exposed an option to _work around_ the limitations of adobe acrobat in displaying adjacent transparent tiles of content, by attempting to export a SINGLE tile as long as we can allocate enough memory to do so up to a reasonable limit.

TL;DR: A new option mentioned is scheduled to be available in the next release of ArcGIS Pro (3.5) that mitigates the artifact for all repro cases (former bug reports and issues from Pro 1.x to now) that we found in our research on the background of this bug, as long sufficient free memory is available to do so. And unlike "Export As Image" it doesn't lose the layers in your map.

I received a bug update from ESRI via email this morning. The contents are pretty much the same as what's listed here.

DanielChittenden

update: It's not.

DanielChittenden

Is this fixed in 3.4.0 ?

BenAppleby

Another thought: Why not just give us a check box option to use/support alpha transparency in the export or not?

If ESRI is waiting for Adobe to fix this issue it isn't going to happen.

BenAppleby

This multi-year problem makes me wish I still had access to arcmap. Arcpro just traded one set of problems for another. I swear this company used to be run by engineers, but now it's run by the marketing department. Maybe they could use all their fancy AI to fix the bugs in their existing software?

We need to demand esri improve/fix the existing tools they have instead of focusing on making new extensions/products. I know the profit motive is to create a new extension that they can license to us, where patching existing tools doesn't bring in new revenue.

ZacharyHart

after 6 years it seems pretty clear that Esri isn't interested in solving this.

MikeBuscher

ArcGIS Pro 3.3.0 confirmed still having this issue unless I output as an image. I added the PDF export to a map using the new georeferenced PDF functionality and the georeferenced rasterized image layer that ArcGIS Pro created also had the line artifacts from the original PDF.

Workarounds are fine when a problem comes up and you have a deadline. But once we (the GIS community) identify a problem and notify ESRI about the issue it needs to be addressed in a timely manner. (this topic has now been up for 6-years)

I guess we should thank ESRI for having such a buggy product. If it "just worked" monkeys (or AI) could do it.

Many years ago, ESRI removed a tool from a new version of ArcMap and replaced it with another one (I think it was the interactive clip tool). The new tool didn't work the same way as the old one and it put a dent in my workflow. When I contacted support and demonstrated the issue, the ESRI employee showed me how to cover the line feature I was trying to clip with a white graphic polygon to cover the area I wanted to remove. It was shocking that the solution was to "cover it up" with a graphic. And it only worked if there was a white background. It turned out that the tool wasn't removed entirely, and you could go into the Advanced Setting GUI and turn it back on, but that wasn't well documented and only told to people when they threw a fit. I guess my point is that ESRI isn't that focused on customer service.

It's pretty embarrassing to have to ask clients to change the settings in their Acrobat to fix something that wasn't previously a problem. There are other things that change in appearance as well when that setting is changed. I would recommend the other two workarounds that have been provided over that one, in particular the combination of a white transparent polygon mask and the turning off of transparency on the tiled raster layer.

Thanks Wayne! I just love digging in to see how things work and brainstorming solutions!

As GIS professionals, we learn it is normal to have to develop our own internal workflows and workarounds to account for software limitations and bugs (and sometimes our extremely unique processes! ) But when efficiency and quality are taking a hit during essential core activities like these, we can certainly get quite frustrated. I really hope someone at Esri can give this issue the attention it deserves and restore the quality of this frequently used core functionality.

Another option, at the bottom of the General menu in a layer's properties there is a checkbox for "Rasterize layer in exported file". I have tested this and the result is similar/identical, zero-width tile borders visible in the export. The imagery shows in the exported PDF as a single layer with "(Rasterized)" appended to it's layer name, but when you start a PDF edit session in Acrobat I can see that the image layer is still preserved as separate tiles within the layer. Perhaps the code behind this checkbox for rasterizing could be upgraded to intercept and merge those tiles before inclusion in the output?

@JackDangermond hire this guy!

@JeremyWright since we have a good handle on what creates the impaired PDFs (the zero-width tile borders when transparency is applied to tiled layers) why hasn't the Export to PDF tool been updated to just have an option that handles situations like these similar to the way ArcMap export worked? (but on a layer level instead of flattening every layer with transparency into one)

Any tiled layers with transparency could be pre-merged into single images by the tool before output. Additionally, the tool could either respect the transparency setting from Pro, or flatten the transparency into the output image layer.

Tiles are performance features, it is not appropriate for their boundaries to be respected for the purposes of an exported image or PDF. One should not expect to find individual tile images within a single output image layer, as these tiles should rightfully be merged together by the export tool.

I see the artifacts in viewers other than Acrobat (we use PDF-XChange, but it also occurs viewing the pdfs in Chrome and Edge), so this is not an Adobe issue. There is a setting in PDF-XChange to "Enhance think lines" but having it checked or unchecked does not do anything to remove the white lines.
ESRIs work arounds are not solutions, exporting a map to an image format instead of a pdf, is like downgrading from a sports car to roller-skates.
Time to fix the problem and not point fingers.

(The real frustration is that this problem has existed since at least 2017 and it's not fixed)

@JoeBryant1 UPDATE: we have worked with Adobe and also determined that a specific setting in Acrobat causes the display artifacts. One workaround we know of at this time is to have the user uncheck this option. Please see https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/problem-grid-lines-display-in-pdfs-exported-from-arcgis-000022758

JoeBryant1

It's the end of 2023... any update on this from Adobe? Should we assume that exporting PDFs will always be an issue in ArcGIS Pro?

akochman

This workaround works...though it shouldn't be a workaround years later. Place the 0% transparency raster in a group with desired tranparency set.

This appears to be working for me too. I still/think Adobe and ESRI need to get this worked out because many other ArcGIS Pro users are likely to hit this wall and not know how to get over it ... unless they luck into finding these posts.

Anonymous User

Thank you so much. I have been struggling for more than 3 months without success. This solution has worked for me. Really impressive.

jpgrana

This solution worked well for me...thanks for posting!

AlexanderLynch2

Was able to figure workaround:

1) place targeted raster/basemap in a new group by right clicking layer, and reset transparency to 0% in appearance group.

2) click on new group in ToC

3) set group transparency to wanted percentage in appearance group

4) export

Problem solved.

I_AM_ERROR

Until this is resolved properly I've found the following working around useful:

place map layers in map frame with no basemap
white rectangle of same shape of dataframe set to desired transparency %
second map frame underneath with desired basemap set to 0% transparency

It seems like the issue is with tiling out the basemap for export when a transparency layer is set? I don't understand why ESRI doesn't just give us the option to not tile out the basemap on export until they can resolve their issue with Adobe.

StephenRead

This sounds similar to an issue I encountered a year or so ago. My solution was to take the raster imagery out of the group that it was in. Then export.

Thank you Jeremy for your efforts on this bug! I agree with A Zendel‌ that exporting to an image is not a work-around since the fonts will be 'rasterized'. We will continue to use ArcMap until this is resolved for exports which include a transparency until this is resolved . Thank you again and your team for keeping us informed of your status with Adobe.

Here's an FAQ I just wrote up for this issue:

WHY DO I NOT SEE THIS ARTIFACT IN ARCMAP?

ArcMap does not exhibit this behavior is because the output pipeline in ArcMap DOES NOT support alpha transparency. All the layers below a partially transparent layer are already flattened and composited together into a single layer called "Image" in the PDF - so you lose the layers.

WHY DOES PRO EXPORT HAVE THIS PROBLEM?

Pro exports can natively support transparency in any layer, and because of this they run afoul of this display artifact in PDF reader when a raster layer is output that contains transparency in multiple tiles.

I ONLY HAVE ONE RASTER LAYER IN MY MAP, WHY DO I SEE THIS PROBLEM?

Keep in mind that some layers "become" raster layers when some symbology is applied (an example would be the heatmap renderer for points) even if they're not raster layers in your ArcGIS Pro map. Even a single raster layer can become multiple _tiles_ of raster layer (placed like mosaic tiles together to form the larger image). We output raster layers in multiple tiles so that we can export higher resolutions without consuming inordinate amounts of resources.

WHY DOES OUTPUT AS IMAGE CAUSE THE GRIDLINES TO DISAPPEAR?

- Exporting using "Output As Image" gets around this because it performs flattening of the transparency BEFORE we write it to the PDF (very similar to what ArcMap output did).

ARE YOU SURE THIS IS AN ISSUE IN THE DISPLAYING APPLICATION, NOT SOME PROBLEM WITH THE PDF?

- the gridlines remain the same width regardless of zoom level.

- you can print this from Acrobat and it looks fine (no gridlines).

- You can also use "Optimize PDF" and choose the flatten option (which removes transparency) and no gridlines.

- The gridlines are ONLY visible in the viewing application, and they appear to be an artifact of the way that transparency is applied to adjacent tiles in the viewing application.

- We can inspect the coordinates of each of the tiles internal to the PDF written and they are NOT overlapping.

WHAT ACTIONS ARE BEING TAKEN TO TRY TO INVESTIGATE OR MITIGATE THIS ISSUE?

After a long period of investigation, we contacted Adobe support about this some time ago. In that contact, Adobe employee Dov Isaacs had acknowledged that it the PDF is written to spec, and therefore should display without these artifacts. It is currently an open bug in the Adobe Acrobat queue.

WHAT IS THE STATUS OF THE BUG IN ADOBE'S QUEUE?

We now are waiting on some analysis or guidance from them.

We have also recently reached out through multiple channels to try and get some response on this issue, but so far have not heard any updates.

Thanks for the follow-up. In this particular case, graphic designers later place the map into larger kiosk layouts. They asked me to keep things vector as much as possible. Also, all of the colors in the map accord to the CMYK color scheme that they developed. If I export to PNG or JPEG, I can't set the destination colorspace to CMYK . The colors in the exported image are way off.

We'll just keep using ArcMap until this gets resolved, hopefully soon. I enjoy using Pro much more than ArcMap, especially since ArcMap doesn't use any type of anti-aliasing and I have to export to a PDF to see my layout it in a crisper view.

We are still waiting for a response from Adobe through multiple outreach channels. In the meantime you can use "export as image" to flatten the transparency and remove the grid lines.

Unfortunately, I just downloaded ArcGIS Pro 2.5 and the grids are still showing up in exported PDFs.

MatthewDriscoll

Pro seems to dislike anything newly added to it. If you created a new custom paper size and save it, you will need to save the project, close it, re-open it and choose the paper size you created earlier. This work for me, although printing to pdf is 10x slower then exporting, but is the work around we currently have.

RobertVerheggen1

I have recently had some success with this method (it gets rid of the grey lines anyway). I found that the DPI and Quality can be set to where ever (within reason as far as file size is concerned) as long as I have the "Output as Image" box checked. Maybe this only works on the deflate setting in the Export Options - truth be told, I'm afraid to change it now in case it goes back to making the lines again. The major downside to this is that the pdf output won't have editable text or be searchable.

Hope that helps.

I recently tried to "fake out" or circumvent this issue by creating a transparent DEM over a hillshade layer in ArcMap and then exporting them as a georeferenced jpg file. Then I dropped the jpeg into Pro, but I still saw lines/grid when I exported the PDF from Pro. I'm not sure if this unusual workflow created other issues with respect to the grids showing up. But this attempted approach was a dead-end for me.

ChristyHeaton

Hi Kory,

My group is not able to move to ArcGIS Pro because of this issue. I took a look at the link you posted and I tried to export PDFs below 200 dpi and it had no effect. Is there really nothing Esri can do?

Christy

Just to update the thread:

Our developer Rajeev Pahuja who was in contact with Adobe analyst Dov Isaacs did receive a reply from Dov - the delay was because he's out of the office right now.

In his reply Dov acknowledged that they were able to reproduce the issue and "the problem is actively being investigated". His reply also indicated that Dov is not certain on the timeline of an update or fix but indicated it will likely be closer to the end of this year.

We've additionally asked for an incident or error report number so we can refer to the issue in the future, I will update the thread when we hear back from them.

Regards,

Jeremy W.

MarcelSt-Germain

Adobe can be a pain in the ask but, transparency could be a problem but, without any transparency or picture, adobe can't read Arcgis pro directly (at least with win7 export)

Blair,

Let me ask my developer (who was the one in contact with Adobe) to inquire again.

Esri/Kory - I realize that this is marked as an Adobe bug but is there anything you (Esri) can do to nudge Adobe on this one? Based on the forum listed in the bug report there is little recent activity: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2598542 (It also seems to be a closed/invite forum). Sorry to be a pain - but this is the only blocker limiting our team from moving to Pro. Thank you!

Thank you Jeremy for the clarification!

ArcGIS Desktop did not natively support transparency in PDF exports - all of the layers that had alpha were flattened and rasterized together into a single image with no alpha included.

Pro now allows for native support of transparency for both raster and vector features, and that's why this issue is visible in Pro exports and not in Desktop exports.

We did not receive an ETA from Adobe on a fix, but they did give us an internal tracking number which we will use to follow up on the issue with them.

MarcelSt-Germain

Have you tried open it in another pdf reader than Adobe products? i.e. Sumatra PDF by example to see if the problem still there.

Or why It's occurring in Chrome as well. Apparently, Chrome uses its own PDF rendering engine.

Or why in the Adobe Forum post, an Adobe staffer said, "Credit the problem to improper PDF file creation." However, it sounds like some discussion happened offline and maybe the Adobe staff later concluded that it's a problem with their software.

Or if Adobe mentioned anything about fixing this problem? And on what time frame?

Or what they plan to do about the rendering problem in Chrome? Chrome is by far the most used browser these days.

Not being able to publish a map as a PDF file is a pretty big stumbling block.

Thank you Kory for the explanation. Can you and the engineering team elaborate on why this issue does not occur in Desktop but does in Pro? Thanks.

KoryKramer

The ArcGIS Pro development team investigated this issue and it looks like the underlying problem is not able to be addressed in our code: https://support.esri.com/en/bugs/nimbus/QlVHLTAwMDA5NTc2NQ==

HCCGISICT_

Still an issue in ArcGIS Pro 2.3.1. Not useful when supplying PDFs to the director. Exporting to PNG and then converting that to PDF works but that PDF was not georeferenced.

Workaround was to create a dummy feature class to use as a mask. That worked perfectly. Please fix ESRI.

Eric_JS

A couple thoughts come to mind.....

1) you can pry ArcMap from my cold dead hands..........or at least until ESRI provides a functioning version of ArcPro

2) Stubbornly remaining tone deaf to your customers is the fastest way to lose market share

3) NO ONE, no one wants to spend 20 minutes on a task that previously took 5 minutes, I don't care how many new bells and whistles you dangle before me.

4) What we really enjoy is the randomness of the problems, so any solution that we find won't work for another .aprx

And yes, we have the same printing problem with no resolution.

ArcPro just isn't a professional product for a production environment. Very frustrating. I can foresee organizations and educational institutions starting to "left swipe" on ESRI products if it can't get its their act together.

#DoYourJobESRI

ESRI Basemaps need a print resolution option

Apologies for the tardy response, I was on vacation and am getting settled in this week. So with regard to BUG-000095765, the Support Services mentions it's in the Product Plan to be fixed but I don't see what release that will be. As noted below, it has not been resolved for AGP 2.3. I'll monitor this thread.

SterlingLoetz5

Yes still a problem on my end too after updating to 2.3. This as well as the issue below have stopped us from moving to Pro.

RobertVerheggen

Just upgraded to 2.3... and it's still a problem.

Hi Robert - Any status updates on this bug for Pro 2.3? This is again a showstopper. Please let us know if there is a viable work around other than lower the DPI. Thank you.

AmberWittner

I work for the US Geological Survey and urgently await the implementation of this bug fix. I am running Pro v2.2.4. Problem still exists, am able to "Print to PDF" for some use cases, not for others, as described above. GeoPDF setting is easiest to manage with the "Export to PDF" function/button.

IngridMans

Printing to PDF with custom page sizes, I'll add, is also incredibly cumbersome. Unless it's a standard pre-determined paper size from Microsoft, this won't be a quick workaround.

PeterFerretti

Hi All, our team is running into the same issue. A "dirty" work around is to export the map to .jpg then use a PDF creator program like NitroPro to convert it to PDF. It should be noted that when I open a Pro created PDF in Photoshop, it looks fine. With pretty much any other viewer though, the grids are visible. We will continue to investigate this internally. I am hopefully Esri tech staff will be watching these threads for feedback and a solution will be found soon.

You bet Blair - happy to assist where I can. I receive many questions from students in my AGP Migration course so getting really good at researching the Support Pages for status updates on new functionality/bug fixes and the like. I do know 2.3 is under heavy testing currently so the developers are making great progress.

Thank you Robert for the quick reply. I look forward to 2.3. This is one last issue preventing us from migrating away from ArcGIS Desktop. I do realize there are work arounds to the issue but they diminish the quality of the work product (convert to TIF or Print to PDF). Thank you.

It's definitely a show stopper for our production of parks and trail maps that use hillshade behind some transparent polygons. I'm glad I caught it early on since you can't convert Pro back to ArcMap! I'm hopefully for 2.3 as well. This is one of the last Pro 'gotchas' that prevent us from adopting Pro for nearly all of our workflows

I've pulled up BUG-000095765 in the Support site and the status is still "In the Development Plan." Hopeful for AGP 2.3 will resolve this.

Any status update on this problem? This seems like a showstopper. Thank you.

SterlingLoetz5

I am experiencing the same issue in Pro (2.2.1) with transparency set to basemap imagery. This issue occurs with ESRI basemaps as well as georeferenced imagery added to the layout.

I have tried adjusting DPI, export quality (Normal, Better, Best, etc.), and even uninstalling and reinstalling Pro. Printing to PDF is not a viable option as I have found the quality is decreased, and takes longer. Albeit, only 30 seconds longer but when exporting to PDF 30-40 times a day...

95% of our GIS products require export to PDF from layouts. This issue is keeping us from moving to Pro.

Any ideas or when this issue will be addressed?

Michael - I reviewed BUG-000095765 in the Support site and the only update I saw was "In the Product Plan." To me this means the next major release (2.3) but just my guess at the moment. If you have not associated your customer ID with the BUG number, I recommend you do so.

mvolz47

Robert - Is there a tentative Pro release where this issue would be fixed (I understand this would not be set in stone but just an estimate)?

I just downloaded and installed Pro 2.2.0. Unfortunately, this issue is still occurring.

I don't have the ability to add it the bug report as this is more of a Technical Support side of Esri. I'd recommend calling the Esri Tech Support number, provide the Bug number to the analyst, add your Customer ID to the bug report and provide your observations so they may continue to troubleshoot and hopefully resolve. Thx for the information - it should help them!

Update, our parks coordinator could see the lines on her personal Mac and her iPhone!

I have some very interesting observations about this bug. Some background. I'm producing maps of some local parks and exporting them as PDFs. A local graphics design firm, presumably using Adobe products on Macs, is then placing the map in larger publications, mostly large Kiosks that are placed in the parks. When I sent a preliminary PDF to one of the designers, I asked her if she can remove them using Adobe Products. She said that she didn't see the lines and that they "don't exist". That made me think that we can proceed with using the maps exported by Pro because the lines won't be visible in subsequent products that they produce using Adobe. Well, they just sent back a PDF proof of a map that was placed in an Adobe document and the lines are showing up when:

I open the PDF on my Windows 10 machine using Chrome and Acrobat Reader
I "previewed" the PDF on my Android phone using the Gmail app
My co-worker opened the PDF on his Windows 10 computer using Chrome

They are not showing up on

Any of the PDFs that are opened on the designers' Mac computers
My co-workers iPhone (the same co-worker that saw the grid lines when he opened the PDF on his Win 10 machine).

Robert, I think this will help the Pro development team troubleshoot this problem. Do you have the ability to add this information to that bug report?

StevenKincaid

I'm having the same issues, I've tried tweaking the dpi settings but no luck.

mvolz47

At Pro 2.1.2 I did an export to pdf with the default 96 dpi using Image Quality Best and Image Quality Normal. The pdf generated with Best had the mystery lines while the pdf generated with Normal did not have the mystery lines.

Printing to pdf at all tested dpis did not generate any mystery lines

ZacharyHart

I've got the same issue here!

In reviewing the bug - I've seen it's been escalated internally so am hopeful it is resolved in ArcGIS Pro 2.2.

I'm experiencing this issue with the latest available release (2.1.2). The link to the bug report above states that this problem can be circumvented by specifying a resolution lower than 200 DPI. I tried 150 DPI, but the lines still appear, as shown below. The "Microsoft Print to PDF" option is not a feasible workaround for me because:

1) We need to print at high resolution. Based on the small file size created by this "printer", I'm guessing it's not a high resolution.

2) The CMYK color model that I've specified seems to be ignored when printing to the PDF

3) Custom sizes are a pain when using Microsoft Print to PDF. I found a hack for creating a custom page size here: Custom Page Sizes for Microsoft Print to PDF « Franklin Heath Ltd . But you have to go through those steps for every custom page size that you need.

I'm trying to adopt Pro, but I run into snags fairly frequently. This is another one.....