Why does the World Hillshade show tiles when exported to PDF? ArcGIS Pro 2.4

[RobbyRuef]

I have recently switched from ArcMap 10.7 to ArcGIS Pro 2.4. I use the World Hillshade service consistently and never had any issues exporting to pdf when I used ArcMap. Now, when I export a map in ArcGIS Pro 2.4 with the World Hillshade turned on, the pdf file shows the tiles. The tiles show up with an outline type of pattern or by lightening the layers it is on top of. This frequently happens in single tiles and not the surrounding areas, lightening all colors in that area but not in surrounding tiles. I have included an image attachment demonstrating this issue. I could not find any information on other people experiencing/resolving this issue.

The World Hillshade has a transparency applied to it so that the polygon layers below are visible.

[RajinderNagi]

Hi Robby, Can you share your Pro package along with steps to reproduce the issue?

Thanks

Rajinder

[RobbyRuef]

I'm having issues packaging my project as a result of "errors" pertaining to layers that are no longer in the project, I'll include one once I can get the "errors" worked out.

Thanks,

Robby

[RajinderNagi]

Robby, It seems to be Pro export issue and not service as it worked fine with ArcMap. Service rendering fine without an issue.

[MarcoBoeringa]

Rajinder Nagi,

Although not exactly the same bug descriptions, but I got these two issues logged a while ago through the Dutch branch of ESRI:

• BUG-000122033 Intermittently, exporting a layout to a pdf if the map is using a coordinate system other than Web Mercator, the Terrain: Tinted Hillshade living atlas layer will export blocky and won't draw the entire layer if it is exported with "Best" image quality with a dpi greater than 96 and a page size greater than 64 x 33.
• BUG-000122689 Exporting layout to pdf that contain Terrain: Elevation Tinted Hillshade layer and high dpi will not draw the entire layer and some grid visible for all image quality.

Since they may be related, could you potentially look up if any work has been done on these registered issues?

[RajinderNagi]

Terrain: Elevation Tinted Hillshade layer is a dynamic image service which has a export limit of 5000 x 5000 (rows x columns). When request to the service exceeds that pixel limit, the output could be blocky/empty. This is by design as its a dynamic image service and not a basemap (tiled layer) and meant to use for analysis for small aoi's or as a backdrop in webmaps.
I would recommend using World Hillshade instead of Terrain: Multi-Directional Hillshade as former is a tiled basemap layer and fast to render and less resource hungry.

The grid lines issue mentioned is caused by the PDF viewer bug, which Esri has previously reported to Adobe (https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2598542).

[MōnoSimeone]

I also encountered this issue. Aerial basemap from Esri set to 75% transparency. I imported an .mxd created in v10.6 into Pro 2.4. I removed the aerial basemap and re-added it in Pro, exported to PDF (300 dpi, Best, Adaptive) but that did not affect the output and the tile outlines still appeared. What I found, as a temporary workaround, was to reduce the image quality from Best to Normal, it didn't remove them all but enough that it didn't look like a checkers board.

[RobbyRuef]

Thank you Mōno, I will give this a try to see if it works. The map prints out fine with no issues, only viewing the map on my computer screen shows the checker board.

[MarcoBoeringa]

I have seen similar issues with PDFs exported from Pro and the World Hillshade layer set to transparent (about 80%). I actually use it in combination with the Multidirection Hillshade (also set to transparent).

To be honest, I am not sure if this is actually an issue with the way ESRI writes these PDFs with the raster basemaps and transparency from Pro, or a bug in Adobe Reader that Adobe should fix... The issue seems to "shift" when I scroll and pan through the map in Adobe Reader. An area that does not look good at one point, may look good later on when I pan back.

The quadcore Core i7 laptop I am viewing them on has the latest NVidia drivers and a dedicated graphics card with 4GB DDR5 RAM, so I don't think it is an issue with an under resourced laptop.

[RajinderNagi]

Marco Boeringa wrote:

I have seen similar issues with PDFs exported from Pro and the World Hillshade layer set to transparent (about 80%). I actually use it in combination with the Multidirection Hillshade (also set to transparent). 

Marco, World Hillshade (https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=1b243539f4514b6ba35e7d995890db1d ) actually is the tiled version of multi-directional hillshade dynamic service (http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=3cedfc19d7b941d89ee15b0e2f454070 ) and not sure why you are using both. World Hillshade tiled layer is created to use as a basemap layer for fast/performant rendering. Hope it helps!