lacerto
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Posts posted by lacerto
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4 minutes ago, Karen_ said:
Interesting way of going about it. I have not tested this feature. It may definitely be easier.
It is pretty easy to create the source as it basically only needs to be a list where table names are marked with a paragraph style (the guests can just be left as "Normal" style or renamed as "Guest"). When imported, each paragraph will be tagged with a paragraph style, and you would modify the styles as you wish in Publisher (e.g., I changed the font size to 48 points and centered all paragraphs, made spacing tighter by using smaller paragraph leading, and made table names bold.
TableName paragraph style has a column break Flow setting defined so that text will automatically flow from table to table (four columns of table text frames) when the text is flown across the frames.
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In these kinds of situations it might be more flexible and versatile just using simple text flows with column breaks (and possibly tabs), using the text frame features of Publisher. This kind of workflow would allow easier editing after the initial flow has been done.
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54 minutes ago, Daniel Richards said:
Everything looks good in Adobe Acrobat - the only problem being that the white layer is inverted (what should be white fill is transparent, and visa versa)
Ok, please check if the updated files have this fixed.
55 minutes ago, Daniel Richards said:Could you elaborate on - 'I thresholded your gray and inverted the white bitmap and then reimported them' - I didn't quite follow that. The final PDF output format is (as far as I can see) 'U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2' - is this right?
I just mean that I modified these two files so that what was a shade of gray (K45 in a CMYK file) was changed to K100 (solid ink), and what was white (K0 in a CMYK file), was changed to K100 (solid ink), while the transparencies were left as they were. So the actual coloring is determined by the spot ink specification, not as shades of grays. In white ink it means that solid white will be 100 black in the source.
1 hour ago, Daniel Richards said:The final PDF output format is (as far as I can see) 'U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2' - is this right?
The document color profile was that, and I did not change it. But I did not embed any profiles. As this is a pure spot color job, the color profile does not matter. The spot plates are just grayscales and the source levels and transparencies are just passed through in the exported PDF.
1 hour ago, Daniel Richards said:By the way, is there any advantage here to working in afpub instead of afdes - where I tend to do most of my work? I haven't really used afpub yet, so I'm not that familiar with it.
In this case, I do not think there is any difference (except for the small convenience in Publisher of being able to convert pixel layers to image layers using a menu command -- but as mentioned, if you're on macOS, this is possible also in Designer and Photo; on Windows you would need to use Clipboard, or place a bitmap from a file).
Rockheim_Takboks_fixed_new.zip Rockheim_Takboks_fixed_new.pdf
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14 hours ago, Daniel Richards said:
Here's a copy one of my project files - if anyone wants to have a go at exporting it, be my guest! It is a test piece for printing with three different inks - black, grey and white.
Here is a version where the bitmap source of all three inks (black, gray and white) has been converted to grayscale -- which is not necessary but just does not need playing with the K Only button.
I might have understood something of your goal wrongly, but as long as you are really intending to print in three different inks, you should have your grayscales solid (that is, K100 where you want the ink to have 100% shade, and then less, or using transparency, where you want it to be lighter). The problem with your sources was that you had your gray and white as shades of gray, and 0% of black (aiming to produce solid white) naturally does not produce a pixel when exported (because it creates a 0% tint of any ink). So I thresholded your gray and inverted the white bitmap and then reimported them and finally exported to PDF (in format that supports transparencies).
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6 hours ago, thomaso said:
Unfortunately in this case the workaround appears not to work, in my test pdf / in V1: Although the images open with colour both have "no colour" assigned and "K Only" not pressed … while the K channel appears quite pale if pressed now (… and it gets more odd if I try to apply the initial spot colour with K Only pressed.)
Yes, it only seems to work with text and vector objects. Spot bitmaps will be converted to CMYK. Placed PDFs with spot color assigned to images will pass through their spot color state, though.
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The issue might be that you have tried to apply a spot color fill on a Pixel layer. Both "K Only" and spot color fill can only be applied to an Image layer. ("K Only" additionally requires that your document is in CMYK color mode). In Publisher, you can convert a Pixel layer to an Image layer by using Layer > Convert to Image Resource. If you're on macOS, you can use the same command from within a context menu also in Designer and Photo (on Windows, you can copy a pixel object on Clipboard and then Edit > Paste Special and choose "Portable Document Format" to convert a Pixel layer to an Image layer (but the image may be resized so you might need to scale it to have its previous dimensions).
You should be able to verify spot color status of an object in an exported PDF also by opening the file in your Affinity app, selecting the object and using the Color panel to see if the selected object has a spot color assigned.
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4 hours ago, Graphical Chris said:
It is so easy in other applications, you just go to the pantone palette and select the PMS colour and it just adds it as a spot colourm showing the spot graphic. But with Affinity Publisher, you do the same thing and it adds a CMYK equivalent of the colour.
Welcome to the forums, @Graphical Chris. You might have inadvertently picked you PANTONE color from one of the libraries that are NOT spot colors but process-based, e.g. PANTONE Color Bridge Coated and Uncoated, PANTONE CMYK Coated and Uncoated are process-based. The most common PANTONE libraries containing spot color definitions are PANTONE Formula Guide Solid Coated and PANTONE Formula Guide Solid Uncoated.
Note that when you pick first spot color from these libraries, Affinity app will place the swatch in a new document color palette (if not already created), but will name the color something like "Global Color 58", which is the global color name. The swatch's Spot color name (that will be used when you export, and that will appear as spot plate names in PDF) is shown in the Color panel.
If you wish to have global color names to show spot color names, you can manually rename them (using the context menu of the Swatches panel), or you can use the following method to use spot color names directly as the swatches are created:
Note that you need to manually make the spot color swatches global (using the context menu of the Swatches panel) to give them properties of a global swatch. You might also need to make spot color assignment twice to make sure that the assignment really takes (as shown in the video clip).
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I am not sure if I got your point but I think that "K-Only" retains its effect even when document color mode is changed so the CMYK and RGB images are still handled as K-Only even when changing to Gray/8 with Black and White profile. The K-Only button is no longer available so you cannot change the handling unless switching back to CMYK mode. This can be beneficial even if the feature is not designed to be used this way.
I did not quite get the point of demonstrating use of a fill color (in this case K100) in context of color images (CMYK and RGB), and have not generally given much thought of using direct fill color with images other than grayscale (either genuine, or ones with K-Only mode applied) -- probably because the way the colors get mixed when not combining just gray values is not clear to me and the effect therefore feels kind of uncontrollable (more so than using direct fill assignments with or blend mode color fill layers on top of grayscales).
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1 hour ago, thomaso said:
I wonder if for text + line drawings only it would work to set the document to Black & White to force K only and possibly darker black.
Sorry, I could not follow. Do you mean by "Black and White" document a "Gray/8" document color mode? I could not see any adjustments here (to which I referred in my post).
The document was in CMYK color mode and had Generic CMYK document color profile applied, yet some of the linked images had e.g. ISO Coated and sRGB profiles applied, but were actually in grayscale color mode when opened in Photoshop, so quite confusing. On the other hand, as far as there are (CMYK) profile conflicts (between placed images with embedded profiles and the target profile), I would imagine that there will be export time conversions. The top three images did additionally have RGB 0, 0, 0 fill color applied to them which I think would cause export time conversion and four-color blacks, disregarding K-Only mode applied (when trying to export to CMYK), as I'd imagine that K-Only is applied first and the RGB fill second.
Also, I could not understand the color markings in the Farbkreis CMYK and Farbkreis RGB images (former being in Grayscale mode and latter in RGB mode); when K-Only is applied on these images, their color values are converted to varied gray values, as expected.
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The "K only" button shows if you select the image layer (Verdin.png) -- which is kind of buried as you are using a Picture frame. When you have "K only" button applied, you do not need adjustments to achieve black-only behavior.
I am not sure if you could achieve K-only effect (from an RGB 0, 0 , 0 value) by using adjustments, but just for information, I think it is one of the sales quirks of Affinity apps to require purchase of Photo to be able to use adjustment presets created in Publisher (by using the "Add preset" button on various adjustment panels), as the Adjustment panel is only available in Photo Persona, as shown in the screenshot below (the screenshot also shows availability of the "K only" button:
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If your placed PNG files are in RGB (24-bit or indexed 8-bit), make sure that you apply K-only button (only available on the context toolbar in a CMYK mode document) on all these images after you have placed them. This guarantees that they will be exported in pure black (K-only) as long as you export using CMYK color mode (e.g. using "PDF (press ready)"). If they are in grayscale mode, they will be exported K-only whether the K-only mode is applied or not.
If your drawings are in PNG 1-bit (monochrome) format, make sure that you do not allow downsampling, because for some odd reason Affinity apps will convert blacks of placed monochrome images to 4-color blacks whenever they are downsampled.
Note that if you have four-color (rich) blacks in your PDF delivered to KDP, and you have agreed on grayscale (K-only) printing, and they do not reject the file, the four-color blacks will be converted to grayscale and result in being printed in dark gray rather than 100% black.
- Petrichor, PaulEC and firstdefence
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1 hour ago, Twolane said:
I can't close Designer in Task manager, either. It's been showing in the Task Manager for an hour.
I have experienced something similar (but clearly different error), implying inability to terminate Affinity processes expectedly (similarly as any other process showing in Task Manager). Whenever one of the Affinity version 2 apps crashes (in the meaning of becoming unresponsive), any other v2 app that were running simultaneously becomes unresponsive, as well. It appears as if I could kill the processes using Task Manager (the apps do close), but I cannot start again any of the apps (they just do not start properly), so clearly the processes are not properly terminated. The only way to have the apps functional again is to restart the computer.
Not all crashes are similar however, but I have experienced this multiple times, and only with version 2 apps (and as long as they have been available, already in beta stage). I have a feeling that the kinds of crashes that result in this kind of behavior often happen when an Affinity app runs in the background (not being the active app) -- when returning (making the app active again), it has become unresponsive by itself, without any obvious cause. This makes it difficult to debug the error as I have not been able reproduce it deliberately.
I am using Microsoft Store version apps.
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On 8/23/2023 at 12:48 PM, homeyJay said:
Have I missed something?
At least in v2 Affinity apps the status of a spot color (as a special ink) when editing the representation color is only retained when the spot color to be edited has a "global" status. You can make a non-global spot color global by selecting the swatch and choosing from the context menu "Make Global".
Note that when you initially create a spot color either by choosing it from e.g. PANTONE Formula Guide Solid Coated v5, the status of a created swatch IS global (indicated by a triangle marker at the bottom left corner of the swatch), but if you add it by using the "Add current fill to palette" button of the Swatches panel (to get a properly named PANTONE color), the swatch does not have global status, even if the Color panel misleadingly implies so (showing "Edit Global Color" caption on the editing button) -- if the swatch really is global, its fill name would appear above the spot color name shown in parentheses):
Another thing to note is that even if there are multiple objects that have different representation colors defined, but still identical spot color name, when these objects are exported, they will all have the same (edited) representation color. So above the orange ellipse will have the yellow edited appearance in an exported PDF. Any objects with green appearance (created initially by editing the appearance of representation color of [non-global] PANTONE 3564 C), would appear as green, but lost their spot color status and be converted to process colors (as indicated in the Swatches panel as the swatch no longer has a spot color circle mark at the bottom right corner).
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There are several reasons why this may happen. The most common explanation is that Affinity passthrough compatibility rule for PDF placement has been violated. The internal Preflight tool should inform if this happens, but basically it happens (and rasterization follows) if the PDF version number of the placed PDF is greater than version number in which the PDF is exported. Also, if you export using PDF/X-based method, all PDF files placed to be passed through need to be created using a PDF/X method (but note that exporting PDFs created using PDF/X-1a method, may still be rasterized if exported using PDF/X-1a).
The most compatible export method is using the default "PDF (press ready)", which should be able to pass through any placed PDF file (but note that it does not flatten transparencies). If you need to produce PDFs with flattened transparencies, you have to use PDF/X-1a, or PDF/X-3 to avoid rasterization. The latter is more compatible, but still requires placed PDFs to be produced using PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-3 to retain vectors as vectors.
If it seems that you are in dead end, try placing the PDFs using "Interpretation", as that will typically retain vectors, but then you should be careful to see that placed content is correctly interpreted, including colors and fonts.
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22 minutes ago, MikeW said:
Try unchecking the box for Use Advanced Features, or something like that. Working from memory so the box may be named differently.
It is "Allow advanced features" but I have not seen use of this option to cause errors mentioning corruption with apps other than CorelDRAW. But whenever having text and/or vectors within PDF, and using this option, all CorelDRAW versions I have tried (including the latest) fail Affinity created PDFs with this error message.
But I have not experienced this problem with Photoshop (any version) so it may be that the cause for the error is something else than using this export option.
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This is a long and well known bug in Affinity apps, related to standard 2.1 version of sRGB profile (and something that I have not experienced with other apps):
You can work around this by using an updated sRGB profile, which are available e.g. here:https://www.color.org/srgbprofiles.xalter
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It is also good to understand that what is described above by @MickRose is the technical method of converting a PANTONE special ink (e.g., those included in the Formula Guide Solid Coated V5 and Formula Guide Solid Uncoated V5 libraries) to CMYK values, and that this conversion is based on fixed sRGB values defined in the CSV files provided with Affinity apps (and then on the currently active document CMYK profile).
That means first that already the RGB values are constrained into a narrower gamut than necessary which may result in conversion values which produce clearly different colors on paper than definitions based on color profile independent Lab values.
PANTONE provided "official" CMYK conversion values, even when given in context of specific profile and illuminant (like when using the now legacy PANTONE Color Manager) would probably deviate slightly from Lab based color conversions performed by e.g. Adobe apps to specific ISO profiles, but they may nowadays also be given, e.g. in context of PANTONE Connect, as fixed values without such conditionals (and accordingly provide less accurate reproduction of special inks in specific CMYK production environments).
What is said above applies to PANTONE special inks, which I assume you meant by referring to "PMS colors". Colors of other PANTONE color libraries, e.g. those meant to be produced by using standard inks, may be defined in fixed color values in both sRGB and CMYK (generic), like those in the PANTONE Color Bridge Coated V5 and PANTONE Color Bridge Uncoated V5 libraries provided with Affinity apps, so when using these libraries, their CMYK values will not vary within Affinity apps depending on the target CMYK profile, so the CMYK values would be equal both when using e.g. PSO Coated v3 for glossy media, and when using ISO Newspaper for newsprint. In other apps colors of these libraries, too, are typically defined in Lab so their CMYK conversion values would vary depending on the target profile, similarly as when using special inks.
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At least on Windows there is additionally a bug (IMO) which by default shows as if swatches were sorted alphabetically while they actually appear unsorted in the original order. There does not seem to way to revert to original order once sorting order is switched (unless recreating the palette; or possibly some app-created file deleted or reset, or manually edited).
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9 hours ago, thomaso said:
• And/but what if app prefs, document and Info panel are set to the same profile? (as in the clip above)
• How do you specify a "secondary" profile in the Info panel ? Is this a new V2 feature? (And for what use / as kind of softproof?)
I tested this so that the document color mode was Lab/16 (with D50 profile). I consider "Lab" color mode then the "primary" color model within Color and Info panels, and all other models as latent or "secondary". The conversions within Color panel seem to happen more or less expectedly based on profiles and (with lock turned on), based on fixed definition that is retained (there are rounding inaccuracies and minor differences compared to conversions performed by Adobe Color Engine, but they are insignificant).
But there are inconsistences in the values between the Color and Info panels, which I cannot explain, especially when using secondary color models (and which do not exist e.g. in Photoshop where I can also assign the display color profile as the RGB working profile to get exactly matching color values with the system color picker (grabbing display color values) and conversions performed by the app color pickers. These issues might be related to problems that Affinity apps have when rendering Lab based colors since it seems that the gamut is limited and cannot benefit the full display gamut. And as you mentioned, the Info panel only supports 8-bit accuracy so that may also cause minor errors (e.g. when using Lab color mode and displaying Lab values in the Info panel).
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16 hours ago, pano said:
I use the LAB color 71,39,76 but the info is telling me that is RGB 252,143,11 while the Colour panel is telling me that the same color is 255,143,6
I am not sure but I think that the picker values in the Info panel are display RGB color readings converted to document color mode and profile (and then from this to "secondary" color profiles specified in the Info panel), which would explain differences in readings between the Color and Info panels. Color panel, when the lock is turned on, will retain the actual color definition and perform direct profile based calculations not affected by display/rendering color values.
Note too that when using Photo, the underlying RGB color profile to which the Lab values are converted to, are determined by the RGB color profile defined by Preferences > Color at the time the document was created (and is not affected by changes made afterwards in Color Preferences contrary to e.g. Photoshop). You also cannot change the underlying RGB color profile in Photo like you can in Affinity Publisher and Designer (by using File > Document Setup > Color, switching the color mode and specifying the profile, and then switching back to Lab color mode), so the RGB readings that you get in a Lab-based document in Photo are bound to the document profiles that were active at the time the document was created.
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7 hours ago, PaulEC said:
How do you do this? When I go to the Pantone site there is no free/basic option, the only options I see are these:
Sorry, it seems this specific color (Viva Magenta) is basically the ONLY color where full color data is shown in context of a free account, so it is just a PANTONE Connect demo.
It would still be possible to get an sRGB definition of any PANTONE color by using the method that I demonstrated in context of the post referred above, showing how e.g. PANTONE 2023 colors could be collected into an Affinity palette using a free PANTONE account.
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As far as I know the requested color is only part of PANTONE FHI (Fashion Home + Interiors) Libraries FHI Cotton TCX and FHI Paper TPG, which are not included in libraries provided with Affinity apps. But these libraries can be accessed by creating a free BASIC PANTONE account. In the current PANTONE Connect system color data of some libraries (including colors of the FHI libraries, but not e.g. those of the Formula Guides) can be accessed free of charge so not only the sRGB / Hex but also Lab definitions can be accessed free of charge just by using a browser (within Adobe apps a free plug-in is also available). Using this information it is easy to create custom palettes for Affinity apps to include any PANTONE colors (creating full libraries would of course be pretty tedious, but as far as information just for individual colors is needed, there are no problems).
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16 hours ago, NM_ said:
The only reason I experimented with mixing PNG and SVG objects was because the Shadow effect was inadequate for the SVGs.
Note that you can type in larger radius and offset px values than can be set with sliders (which stop at 100px).
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34 minutes ago, thomaso said:
Do you have an idea why "No color correction" is listed in "Effects" (and sorted between three B&W adjustments)?
Sorry, no clue. Much of the photography (especially RAW) based workflows are obscure to me so whenever I need something like this, I prefer to pay a bit of the recipe ("standards"). It is cheap, IMO, whenever consistency is required.
Affinity Publisher - Data Merge Issue
in Affinity on Desktop Questions (macOS and Windows)
Posted
Here is a demonstration of creating a column-based text flow in Publisher by placing a Word document containing table and guest names as paragraph styles.
I also attached a Publisher document I created earlier to replace your Publisher example file with data merge layout controls. It has document history saved so you can use the History panel to see gradual changes I made to create a column-based layout.
Wedding_textflow_with_column_breaks_with_history.afpub