
I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I'm plain too dumb to check the right prefs: I'm unable to export bitmaps.
Here is what I am trying to do. It's actually quite simple — and that's what drives me nuts: I am creating a banner. It has • a background foto • a logo with a blurred drop shadow • a slogan
All three parts give me trouble — it's maddening! 1. the slogan: I had to create it in a different program and import into Inkscape because the required font doesn't appear in the font menu (see: [Inkscape-user] fonts on OS X). 2. the drop shadow of the logo doesn't appear blurred anymore after exporting to (Cairo-) PDF. 3. as a work-around for 2. I tried to a) export to PNG instead and b) create a PNG solely from the drop shadow to use instead of the blurred vector logo. Neither the bitmap background nor the blurred shape appear in the output. Making a Bitmap Copy (Alt-B) somewhat worked, but delivered a result which was cropped with the dimensions of the un-blurred shape — bummer!
Anyway, I've already spend hours on something that would take me only minutes in Illustrator — if that stupid piece of software only didn't think it had to increase file size and memory usage proportionally to the dimensions of the artwork (the banner is 70cm x 210cm)!
How frustrating. Sometimes I think they invented the computer (and the wheel for that matter) only to make our lives more complicated.
Well, maybe I'm just too dumb to hit the right switch after all… Somebody throw me a line!
Cheers, Sebastian

On 3/3/07, Sebastian Winkler <lists@...1967...> wrote:
- the drop shadow of the logo doesn't appear blurred anymore after
exporting to (Cairo-) PDF.
PDF does not support blurring natively. (Hey, what do you want from it, it's a format that only recently started supporting transparency!) The only way to do it is to rasterize the shadow and embed the raster into PDF. But then, why use PDF at all? Just rasterize the whole image and print the bitmap.
- as a work-around for 2. I tried to a) export to PNG instead and b)
create a PNG solely from the drop shadow to use instead of the blurred vector logo. Neither the bitmap background nor the blurred shape appear in the output.
Please send me your file where something that you see on screen does not appear in PNG export. If it's real, it's a bug that I'd like to have a look at.

Sebastian Winkler wrote:
... 3. as a work-around for 2. I tried to a) export to PNG instead and b) create a PNG solely from the drop shadow to use instead of the blurred vector logo. Neither the bitmap background nor the blurred shape appear in the output. Making a Bitmap Copy (Alt-B) somewhat worked, but delivered a result which was cropped with the dimensions of the un-blurred shape — bummer! ...
One quick thing to try that comes to mind is making sure the background of your document is opaque (set the alpha component of the background in document properties to 255) and then exporting again, or looking at the PNG file that was exported with Firefox (or some other program you know to handle transparent PNGs correctly). Some programs have problems with transparent PNGs (IrfanView for example, which is otherwise a great program).
participants (3)
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bulia byak
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Jasper van de Gronde
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Sebastian Winkler