Fix PDF export process to remove lines

[RTPL_AU]

This is also a current bug but maybe it needs more attention as it is a show stopper for me.

Rebuild the PDF output tool to create pdfs that do not have lines in them when viewed on screen.

They are visible due to the way transparent rasters are processed into the pdf and do not show when a pdf is printed (usually) or converted into a jpg, etc.
There is a workaround to reduce rendering quality of fine features in Adobe Reader. This is not feasible for engineering clients as they have this setting enabled/on to view complex CAD drawings properly.

However, a lot of clients view things in non-Adobe tools that do not have this capability therefore showing these lines.

Other workarounds include using a vector layer on top of the raster to 'fake' transparency but that doesn't work for doing the hillshade over colour over image things for example.

This was not a thing in ArcMap and I don't care for the excuse "Pro does so much more now" . My clients don't want lines in a PDF they show their stakeholders and I don't want to create messy maps to try a workaround for every single map I make.

[Melissa_B]

Have you tried putting the raster layer in a group and then applying the transparency at the group level instead of directly to the basemap/raster layer?  That's what I usual do to be able to reduce the intensity of imagery while hiding the lines on the tiles in the PDF export.

Granted, if the goal is to integrate hillshade and a color image, you'd be better off applying a layer blend mode of multiply to the hillshade so it looks more integrated with the aerial imagery instead of just transparency.

[RTPL_AU]

@Melissa_B Thank you. I'll try basemaps & group layers and see what happens.

We have a wide variety and age of input data & ArcMap mxd's so have not had a chance to fully work out all the dos & don'ts of this. 

It's been an issue for a long time and at some point Esri tried to make it an Adobe problem.... 👋
I'd rather they just create their own fix as Adobe is not in the loop in many cases.

[RTPL_AU]

Updates to Esri BUG-000165247

Updates have been made to the following defect which you are associated with:
BUG-000165247 - Receiving gridlines over the imagery layer in PDF layouts exported from ArcGIS Pro 3.2.x.

Status: In Review
Alternate Solution:  

use "Export as Image" and for image compression choose "JPEG" (which removes the transparency) to mitigate this effect.

In my opinion, this is not a valid workaround.
"which removes the transparency" - if we didn't want transparency we wouldn't have this conversation.

[JeremyWright]

I've marked this idea as In Product Plan and it'll change to Implemented when we ship Pro 3.5.

NOTE: The defect being reported here is a result of the anti-aliasing applied by the viewing application to partially transparent raster tiles in the PDF.  There are tiles in PDFs in ArcMap too (to allow allocating smaller chunks of memory to write the raster content into, and to allow the loading application to allocate memory in smaller chunks while reading it), but ARcMap didn't support transparency in raster content - it all got flattened together into opaque raster tiles.  So you can only SEE this artifact with raster content with alpha channel transparency, which you can only write from Pro.    

We've gone back and forth with Adobe about this for years, and there are even settings in the Page Display options dialog for Adobe Acrobat that can help - BUT, you can't set these from the document in the PDF spec as it stands currently, and since PDF is now an ISO spec we can't ask Adobe to change it without the ISO spec needing to be bumped too.

We know this is a huge impediment for our users.  As such, we've engineered a workaround for this problem, adding an option for users to export their raster content as a single tile in the PDF in ArcGIS Pro 3.5. 

This will remove the tile boundary lines in displaying the PDFs and still allow you to keep the layers in your PDFs. 

However, it can cause larger exports to fail if you're using higher anti-aliasing options or if the resolution and page size requested is very large, because it has to allocate a large block of contiguous memory to complete during the export process. 

Adobe Acrobat or other viewing applications might also have problems allocating larger blocks of contiguous memory to display these PDFs.

Please give this new option a try in ArcGIS Pro 3.5 - it has already been tested with positive results by our early adopter program participants at a few different large/national mapping agencies.

[RTPL_AU]

Thanks for that @JeremyWright 

Using standards in  a standard way with workarounds is always fun!

My go-to workaround is to just group the raster on its own and apply the transparency to the group.
How does Pro handle that in the background compared to applying the transparency to the raster direct and setting the export to not being tiled? 

Can I ask that you and others at Esri (maybe raise it at the various group meetings you have) refrain from using terms & phrases like 'large', higher', 'page size requested is very large', etc. without quantitively defining what 'large' is? 
These fluffy words seem to have become all pervasive in any discussion where Pro issues are addressed by Esri staff.

I have 256GB of RAM on my main machine.  I feel that something that requires a 'large' amount will need more than that. Someone with a 16GB laptop may think the same of a 32GB task; so you are creating further confusion and room for misinterpretation by not sticking with hard numbers.