Has anything changed in the export of a document to a PDF.

I have a problem exporting a document that contains a shadow on some text. In the final PDf it shows the shadow as a block. I'm sure i used to be able to convert the text to an editable shape / ungroup them and the problem would be resolved. But it still exports the text with a block behind it.

I found that if I convert the back image under the text to a bitmap it resolves the problem only this causes a color shift in the background, no good when I'm trying to keep constant colors throughout the document.

Maybe I' getting old but I'm sure something has changed here.

Any thoughts on the matter are appreciated.