hi john > To be clear I am asking for an internal way to merge layers down in > such a way that the overall appearance is not affected, as can be > done in Gimp. Scribus using pdf 1.3 output will today reduce layers, > but effects like blends are lost. >
there are two functionalities in gimp: - on exporting to jpg or png you can reduce the image to one layer - you can manually merge down one (or several?) layers. the first will not be implemented (always afaik) in scribus in the near future (but is plannned and difficult). the second can already be achieved by copy-pasting the items from one layer to another (and setting the correct blends for the elements pasted). the .sla won't export better to pdf 1.3, though: the problem is not that there are layers, but that you have transparencies which have to be flattened. so at the end, what you are looking for (if i understood correctly) is flattening of transparencies not merging of layers. have fun a.l.e
