Logic Pro X PDF export shows a drop shadow?

When I export a score file from logic x to pdf, the pdf shows a drop shadow, as if it's a low resolution graphic. See attachment. Did not have this problem with logic 9. It used to be sharp in any size. Any suggestion what causes this problem?

screenshot of pdf

Not seeing this here?

How are you exporting? Using the Print command?

From the score I choose print and then save as pdf

I have the same phenomenon, have you solved the problem?

Many thanks for help!

Is there a solution for this problem . I Have the same problem with my PDF's from Logic . These PDF's do I need for professional printouts, and it seems to be useless with those shadows in the background.

Is every user of Logic X having this issue?

 

I've been thinking of upgrading from L9 but scoring is the biggest part of what I do with Logic and if PDF exporting has this problem the entire program will be sort of useless for me.

Nope. All good here. Could it be a retina thing?

 

Blink

Edited October 15, 2013 by blinkofani

If it was "a retina thing" then I wouldn't see the shadows in the OP's pic.

 

It has to be some sort of a font problem with Logic's music font having some sort of a text style erroneously applied to it when printing.

E.g. If you open Apple's Text Edit program and open the Show Fonts window from the Format Menu there is a large "T" in the top of the toolbar that applies a "Text Shadow" font style to any selected text.

This style, or something like it, must be getting activated on Logic's music font whenever "Print To PDF" is selected in the print driver from within Logic.

 

Logic's music font has always been internal to the program and is not found in any fonts folder on the System which makes troubleshooting something like this harder.

Do the shadows happen when an alternate music font (e.g. Sonata or Jazz Font) is selected in Logic's Score Preferences?

 

Do these shadows also show up on scores that are printed directly from Logic to paper via a real printer, w/o first saving as a PDF?

Do hard copy printouts of the affected PDFs have the shadows as well or is it just a screen display issue?

 

Have the people who are having this problem tried re-installing Logic X yet to see if that fixes the problem?

 

I'm interested in a few of the new features in Logic X but if the score printout is going to be munged up it's not worth it for me.

Not seeing this here either.

I have had a reply form apple, and they said that it is a bug, and will be solved in a next upgrade. Not all the logic users have this problem.

I think it's a problem in conversion from logic to pdf where the problem starts.(Quartz??), Also with other fonts, the same thing.

Only when I print straight from logic , there is no problem. So, for now. Scoring in logic X is : printout and scanning back to computer to have a better result then the pdf's at the moment. New scoring back in Logic 9.

Also, to make connection lines between notes is in logic X bad, bad, bad...

Any more info on this?

 

Is there any sense as to how many users have been affected by this and what the common denominator is?

FWIW

I bought Logic X yesterday and I don't see any of the shadows on screen with any PDF files I've generated via the Print dialogue or the Camera Tool.

I haven't printed anything off to my printer yet but I'm assuming it will look fine when I do.

Am I missing something or am I just lucky?

Do you have a rMBP to test with?

What's a "rMBP"?

Mac Book Pro?

FYI

I'm using a 2010 27" iMac.

If it was "a retina thing" then I wouldn't see the shadows in the OP's pic.

 

It has to be some sort of a font problem with Logic's music font having some sort of a text style erroneously applied to it when printing.

E.g. If you open Apple's Text Edit program and open the Show Fonts window from the Format Menu there is a large "T" in the top of the toolbar that applies a "Text Shadow" font style to any selected text.

This style, or something like it, must be getting activated on Logic's music font whenever "Print To PDF" is selected in the print driver from within Logic.

 

Logic's music font has always been internal to the program and is not found in any fonts folder on the System which makes troubleshooting something like this harder.

Do the shadows happen when an alternate music font (e.g. Sonata or Jazz Font) is selected in Logic's Score Preferences?

 

Do these shadows also show up on scores that are printed directly from Logic to paper via a real printer, w/o first saving as a PDF?

Do hard copy printouts of the affected PDFs have the shadows as well or is it just a screen display issue?

 

Have the people who are having this problem tried re-installing Logic X yet to see if that fixes the problem?

 

I'm interested in a few of the new features in Logic X but if the score printout is going to be munged up it's not worth it for me.

 

Just a guess here,but the folks who are having this issue should try opening up Font Book and resolve any issues like font doubles, etc. there and see if it fixes their problem.

rMBP = retina MacBook Pro

rMBP = retina MacBook Pro

 

Ah.

 

Is it the retina displays that are shaping up to be the common denominator here?

 

If so, then I wonder what the underlying cause could be.

Still seems like some sort of a font issue to me.

Has anybody with the issue tried using an alternate music font, like Sonata or Jazz Font?

Do the shadows also happen with these fonts or is it just with Logic's internal music font?

It affects all installed fonts, the problem arises from the use of Adobe Acrobat Pro!

I have already reported to Apple in September, but received no reply

I'm working long again with Logic 9.1.8 ... that was it: time and money for nothing!

the problem arises from the use of Adobe Acrobat Pro!

 

How so?

I have Acrobat Pro CS4 installed on my system and I don't have the PDF shadow problem.

Acrobat Pro is for editing PDF files.

Does this problem happen for you only after editing a Logic X generated PDF file in Acrobat Pro?

 

Or does this have something to do with the fonts that the Acrobat Pro installer installs?

Is it only Acrobat Pro users on retina display computers who are having the problem?

 

This is the first time I've seen Acrobat Pro mentioned in all of this.

 

While I'm glad that I'm not having the problem I'd still like to know what the common denominator is here.

I waited for the update 10.05, hoping the drop-shadow-problem would be fixed.

But it is still there.

 

When I open a score in Preview, it looks perfect. When I export to pdf, it comes out blurry.

I work with Acrobat Pro as well, and do not have problems with other pdf-files.

 

To get my work properly finished, I am thinking about re-installing Logic 9... however....can I open Logic X- files in Logic 9??

Or do we really have to wait (and hope) for the next update??

Ah.

Finally I'm seeing what you guys are seeing.

If someone in one of these threads had mentioned earlier that the problem was specific to on-screen viewing within Acrobat Reader I may not have gone ahead and purchased Logic X.

But what's done is done.

At any rate this problem seems to be confined to on-screen viewing across all Adobe applications, including Acrobat Reader, Acrobat Pro and InDesign.

Apple applications such as Preview and Pages appear to be immune.

Hard copy printouts from any of the above mentioned applications look fine though.

The problem appears to me to be limited only to *on-screen* viewing from within Adobe applications.

So I suspect that the problem is really with Adobe and not Apple, even though PDF is Adobe's baby.

 

When I tried to open a Logic X generated PDF in Illustrator it couldn't find Logic's music font, AScore, even though an AScore subset is embedded in the PDF by Logic.

When I tried to open it in Photoshop I got a message saying that it couldn't display the PDF properly unless I turned off Font Smoothing of Fonts 8 points and lower in the System Preferences Appearances pane.

But that Preferences pane is no longer used in Mavericks and the replacement for that item is now in the General Preferences as LCD Font Smoothing with no way to specify the minimum size fonts that will be affected

So I suspect that this problem involves Adobe not yet compensating for the new Preference pane's features.

At any rate, since printout is not affected, for me, there is no real problem.

Still, it would be nice for someone somewhere to fix this sometime.

Logic 10.0.6 just released.

No PDF fix.

Not looking good at this point.

Logic 10.0.6 just released.

No PDF fix.

Not looking good at this point.

 

I am not having this issue. I wonder if it is printer driver related as it i in the print dialogue box that we save to pdf.

Logic 10.0.6 just released.

No PDF fix.

Not looking good at this point.

 

I am not having this issue. I wonder if it is printer driver related as it i in the print dialogue box that we save to pdf.

 

Are you sure?

 

Have you printed off a PDF file using one of Logic X's Print To PDF Command and viewed that PDF file within an Adobe application, like Reader or Acrobat with a high zoom level?

 

If not, then you won't be able to see what we're talking about.

 

I thought I didn't have the issue either.

 

Note:

If you view these PDF files in Apple's Preview application you won't see the issue.

If you use Logic X's Camera Tool to generate the PDF file you won't see it either.

If you print one of these PDF files from an Adobe application, the hard-copy printout will look OK but not as crisp as it should.

If you print a hard copy directly from Logic X it will look fine.

If you print one of these PDF files from Preview it will probably be as crisp as it should be, but I haven't actually tried this yet myself.

 

I.e. The problem only relates to the way that Adobe applications handle Logic X generated PDF files via the Print to PDF Commands.

 

When viewed from and/or printed to a printer from an Adobe application all the fonts in the PDF file are rendered as bitmap graphic images with a low resolution.

When viewed within Preview you will see vector graphics of the fonts, which is as it should be with a properly generated PDF file.

Vector representations of font characters look the same at any magnification and when printed to paper with a real printer can make use of that printer's highest resolutions.

Bitmap representations of font characters only look right at one magnification level.

And Adobe applications treat the fonts in LX generated PDF files as bitmap images using a low resolution, probably 72 dpi, which looks OK on screen but not on printout from a laser printer which usually expects 300dpi or higher resolution.

Joe, I just did the following:

1. I opened a Logic score.

2. I pressed command-P to open the print dialogue box and chose 'save as pdf."

3. I closed Logic.

4. I opened the pdf in Adobe Reader and printed it out on my HP Laserjet.

 

No shadows.

Joe, I just did the following:

1. I opened a Logic score.

2. I pressed command-P to open the print dialogue box and chose 'save as pdf."

3. I closed Logic.

4. I opened the pdf in Adobe Reader and printed it out on my HP Laserjet.

 

No shadows.

 

Again...

Did you zoom in on the file from within Adobe Reader?

 

At the Actual Size zoom level, which is also what your Laserjet will print, you probably won't notice the shadows per se.

But if you have any experience with how crisp these types of files *should look* you'll notice that the quality is sub standard.

Again, the issue is between low resolution bitmap graphics vs vector graphics which look just as good at any resolution.

 

PS

If you and I are going to keep this conversation going we only need to do it in one of the Logic forums.

I posted to several forums because I want to raise awareness of this issue within the Logic community as much and as quickly as possible.

But double posting in my back-and-forth with you is just not necessary.

Please pick one of the forums and stick with that.

Joe, I having been printing out scores for myself and other composers since Notator. I ONLY care about what it looks like when I print it out. What I just printed out looks the same to me as it always has AFAIR.

 

i have zero interset in "should."

Oiy.

Just ran up across this problem and thought I'd follow up. The problem is definitely with Adobe Reader. Here are two openings of the same file, on the left, with "Preview" on the right with "Adobe Reader"… you can see the difference. Printed I see a difference too, despite reports to the contrary.

Preview Left, Adobe Right