Exporting SVG with transparent embedded PNG causes excessive blurriness

[Jevon Wright]

Attached is a SVG created by GMF which contains two types of embedded PNGs: non-transparent and transparent. If I try to export the SVG to PS or EPS, I simply cannot get it to export without excessive blurriness around the embedded images. Changing DPI settings makes absolutely no difference (even up to a ridiculous 97000 dpi). If I export it to PNG at a high enough DPI, it works fine.

Note how the non-transparent embedded bitmap (the 'A') is not blurry at all.

Printing to a PDF writer at 600 dpi also causes blurriness, but not nearly as badly as exporting directly to PS.

May be related to bug #389130.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Can you attach the exported EPS/PS file as well?

[Jevon Wright (jevon)]

Of course. This is the PS generated when setting the DPI to 600, even though the DPI setting makes no difference.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

The DPI setting in the export dialog for EPS/PS/PDF is used for fallback bitmaps of rasterized filter effects, not for embedded bitmaps.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

reproduced with Inkscape 0.47 and 0.47+devel r9448 on OS X 10.5.8

Embedded bitmaps with transparency appear rasterized at a very low resolution in EPS/PS export (doesn't support transparency).

Exported to PDF (supports transparency) the embedded images seem rendered in the same resolution as in the SVG file.

[Jevon Wright (jevon)]

Is there any progress on resolving this bug? This is a very major bug for me. I would love to fix it myself but I don't have the resources to learn the Inkscape codebase, is there another developer that would be available?

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Sample test case (created with Inkscape 0.48, using the bitmaps from your SVG file) which does not reproduce the error (none of the embedded bitmaps has clips or masks).

The problem with EPS export seems to be related to the structure of the specific SVG file (created with "Batik Graphics2D SVG Generator"), possibly due to style attribute(s) or -- more likely -- clipping.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

exported to EPS using Language level 3 (but the file is level 2 -- unrelated, see bug #491590)

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Or - maybe it is the same issue as bug #491590? Attaching EPS export of your file, exported with PostScript language level 2 in Inkscape 0.48 (on OS X 10.5.8), which creates a level 3 file, and does not expose the same issues with excessive blurriness, afaict.

[Jevon Wright (jevon)]

Hi ~suv, yes I can reproduce the same results: no blurriness when exporting to PostScript language level 2 in Inkscape 0.48. Fantastic!

There's only one problem now - you can't specify the PostScript level via the command line; it looks like it always defaults to level 3. But this would be better in a separate bug, yes?

On a side note, if you replace the libcairo-2.dll to the newest version (0.10.1), then the output on PS level 2 becomes clipped correctly (to the transparency in the images), but the images are still rasterized (blurry).

Thanks :)

[Jevon Wright (jevon)]

Ignore the previous problem - turned out I was using the wrong command line switch. If you change the language level in the Inkscape GUI, then this setting is used for all subsequent EPS exports. Still, there should be a command line switch for the option.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

>> you can't specify the PostScript level via the command line (…)
>> But this would be better in a separate bug, yes?

Yes, please file a separate report for this feature request. This could include a command line option for PDF export as well: with Cairo >= 1.10, export can be PDF 1.4 or 1.5 (see bug #664335).

[Jevon Wright (jevon)]

>> Yes, please file a separate report for this feature request.

Reported as bug #669748. I assume you can now mark this bug as a duplicate of bug #491590. Thanks :)

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Linking as duplicate to bug #491590. Please add a comment and revert the duplicate status if you don't agree or find out additional factors which would indicate these are different issues after all.