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I designed a business card with some graphics that have gradients, but every time I export a PDF the gradients show up pixellated. I tried setting Print > Advanced > Transparency and Overprint > High Quality but that did not work. Does anyone know how I can export a PDF for print that has smooth gradients? I would appreciate any ideas you have.

Here's what it looks like in Illustrator. Illustrator screencap

And here's what it looks like in the PDF. PDF screencap

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    What zoom percentage are you looking at the PDF? All gradients in will be "pixelated" if you zoom in.
    – Scott
    Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 5:16
  • Can you attach the file?
    – Stegathesaurus
    Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 16:24
  • I have had this concern before with small sizes. You "fit to screen" and see the artwork in a much larger scale than you would with a poster and everything looks pixelated. It is probably fine. I think that a gradient mesh needs to be rasterized in a pdf, and you have used "High Quality" = 300 ppi. You could try adding a 300 ppi image next to the graphics and compare the pixel size in the pdf.
    – Wolff
    Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 16:27
  • Take a look at the compression settings in Save Adobe Pdf dialog.
    – LeoNas
    Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 16:31
  • Thanks Scott and Wolff, I think my issue was just that I was zooming in too far. If I zoom out, it looks okay.
    – mcography
    Commented Oct 18, 2017 at 2:03

1 Answer 1

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  1. go to Effects/ Document raster effects settings ...
  2. change your resolution to 300 (even more if you want better quality)

The reason for this is that mesh gradients are not rendered inside a PDF (or web browsers ) so they get rasterized before exporting

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