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I made six similar and simple designs with a photo and text on top with a stroke. The stroke on the tilde looks fine in Illustrator, as shown in this screenshot:

Screenshot of tilde with stroke

I exported the several files as PNG to print on A1. Each export took 5-10 minutes and I sent them to the service bureau. I later realized that the tilde was cropped on all designs that had a stroke, as in these examples:

cropped stroke - example 1

cropped stroke - example 2

cropped stroke - example 3

cropped stroke - example 4

cropped stroke - example 5

and was fine on the design that did not have a stroke:

stroke not cropped

The stroke is from the font, I did not expand the appearance of the text. I suspect that this is a known glitch because the cropping is consistent across exports and does not happen with a font that has no stroke. I am using macOS Mojave 10.14.6 and Adobe Illustrator CS5.1 (very old, I know).

Can I avoid this cropping glitch when exporting to PNG?

Update: To answer the comments:

  • The tilde is the front-most element. The object at the top, which looks like a leaf, ends at the visible edge and has no invisible elements.

  • The file sizes seem huge to me: between 9 MB and 27 MB.

  • I preferred to export as PNG because I have a single design with a layer for each background and I turn them visible or invisible before exporting. With a PDF I would have to make 6 copies, then delete the 5 extra layers from each copy 6 times, which I found cumbersome, especially if I then notice a glitch that I need to fix on the designs already saved.

  • I dislike saving designs with raster images as PDF because I've had file-size problems (see PDF only with JPG photo is 7 times larger than original).

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  • Is it the frontmost element? Could that leaf above be interfering?
    – Tetsujin
    Jul 21, 2020 at 15:36
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    The fact that the PDF is taking 5 to 10 mins to save is worrying. Your export settings may be the culprit. Is the file size huge? Perhaps check this related question: What resolution should a large format artwork for print be?. A1 and other large format prints do not need 300dpi raster images in them.
    – Billy Kerr
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:25
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    You wouldn't normally export a PNG for print. Why not just make a PDF?
    – Wolff
    Jul 22, 2020 at 12:02
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    I’m voting to close this question because it would require either a complete, thorough, and detailed explanation of the entire workflow as well as possible sample files. In addition, Illustrator CS5 is very old and in use long before PNG was even supported well within web browsers. It is nearly impossible to state whether the issue if due to file set up or software incompatibility. After all, the CS5 installers won't work on the latest MacOS versions. I know I can't install CS5 on Mac OS 10.10... let alone 10.14.
    – Scott
    Jul 24, 2020 at 19:35
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    As an example.. I used to strongly prefer InDesign CS5.. Stuck with it for years.. after CS6 and CC were released.. but I found when I upgraded to MacOS 10.10, InDesign CS5 started having really odd issues exporting PDFs. Pages would be incomplete or missing. There was no rhyme or reason for it. The only change I had made was an OS upgrade. But, due to this, I had to dump InDesign CS5 and move to at least CS6 where those problems (with the same exact files) no longer existed.
    – Scott
    Jul 24, 2020 at 19:40

1 Answer 1

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Following the comments, this seems to be a one-off issue. My approach now is to export the file, inspect it for problems, then fix the glitches by expanding the relevant font. That has worked so far.

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