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lacerto

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Everything posted by lacerto

  1. One can spend a lifetime clicking out-of-focus links. My point was that what I had in mind can be done very elegantly and effectively with Affinity apps so for doing that there is no point going any further [especially now that Designer v2 has capable tools for shape creation]. But it is another question whether what I had in mind is also what OP had in mind...
  2. I have previously posted complete instructions on using vector based jigsaw piece (free) and customizable templates along with fill tool and any bitmap background, that might be helpful in your project, but could not find that post any longer. Perhaps it is berried somewhere in the 1.x legacy archives. But that was a couple-of-mouse-clicks-task with Designer. Anyway, please find attached the 1.x .afdesign document that uses this concept and has the puzzle pieces already separated. Similar results could basically be achieved with any design that divides a specific area into arbitrary composing parts. The attached parts just use traditional jigsaw forms. jigsaw.afdesign
  3. That is perfectly understandable, and a route that I would probably prefer to take myself in any situation. It is always better to get a proper grasp of things oneself than feeling dependent. The production issues, however, can get absurdly complex within Affinity apps and long experience (both generally within the industry, and in using Affinity apps) can help to spot the actual issues in a snap, so save time. So if you get desperate, feel free to change your mind and contact, or just continue exchanging your experiences on more abstract level here on the forum. There are plenty of capable users willing to help you.
  4. Please note that many F/X effects are built on transparency so if you have e.g. shadow or related effects applied to images or other elements, this may result in unresolved transparencies in the exported PDF. If you can place a sample of your final PDF export on the forum (e.g. from a page that has caused problems) it is easy to determine whether there are such elements left in the document, or whether "rich blacks" are caused by inadvertent conversion of colors (possibly multiple conversions, as that, especially, is likely to cause color casts, bluish and brownish blacks). I have no personal experience of KDP Amazon and I am a bit confused by the kind of mixed/dual instructions that I have found when trying to get a grasp on this production service. On the other hand, they seem to recommend pure RGB workflows using apps like Word or Pages, and on the other hand, they give instructions aimed at workflows where documents are prepared with InDesign, all colors defined in CMYK (blacks using K100), and print PDFs produced using PDF/X-1a. The former production workflow cannot produce professionally controlled CMYK, so Amazon uses their in-house routines to convert these files to standard CMYK offset, and the latter has in-built industry-standard workflows that are guaranteed to produce problem-free CMYK PDFs using default settings, without the issue related to "rich blacks". Affinity apps kind of fall in between, requiring much more from the users than either of these workflows, and Amazon support, it seems, unfortunately cannot help. Anyway: you mention that you "initially" had your document in CMYK color mode -- what is the color mode now? You also mention the confusion with "Convert" and "Assign" options within File > Document Setup > Color. This is a constant issue with Affinity apps because it is easy to inadvertently cause conversion/recalculation of existing color values simply by accessing this tab and changing the color profile. This, and changing the color profile at export time, are probably the two major reasons why people end up having color casts in black, or neutral appearance but still four-color-blacks in their export files, even if initially having correct one-ink black production. So as you mention, transparency issue may actually be irrelevant to the problems you are witnessing, and the major cause for problems being that your "blacks" are a mixed conversion of initial black ink values inadvertently converted to four-color blacks, or gray values (which in Affinity apps are RGB based) exported in CMYK color mode. If you feel confused (and i would not wonder), you are welcome to contact me via personal message (clicking the "L" icon on top left) to get more detailed instructions...
  5. In addition what @thomaso mentions above, note that the appearance of HSL colors is dependent on your document color mode and profile. Below the same HSL value picked from the inherent "Colors" palette is shown in Adobe RGB, sRGB, CMYK ISO Coated v2 and CMYK ISONewspaper document color modes. In each instance the HSL value stays the same, but rendering of the color value changes from most saturated to least saturated. The Color Chooser shows the CMYK color values what would be used when converting the HSL value to CMYK mode in different profile environments (and when exporting using the current profile environment). [Note that the forum truncates the color space to sRGB but relative differences should still be discernible.] This means that you could basically use the internal "Colors" palette as a CMYK palette based on appearance (especially if you have a calibrated display) whenever you have your document in CMYK color mode with correct target profile. The picked color values would be HSL based but the approximated appearance simulated for the CMYK target, and the CMYK conversion values [that would be used whenever exporting to CMYK color spacing without changing the document CMYK target) shown in the Color Chooser.
  6. "Flattening" in this context means removing transparent elements so that all color values of the work are "baked" and do not require calculations at processing time. PDF (appiatto), in contrast, just means rasterizing everything (which does the transparency flattening as a "side effect" but would also rasterize e.g. text). If you choose PDF/X-1a (or PDF/X-3) as export method, transparency flattening happens automatically. PDF/X-1a:2003 that was asked by Amazon, additionally guarantees that all colors are converted to CMYK. Note that whether the black color appears as wished (one produced with black ink only, or as a composite of four process colors), depends on the way the colors have initially been defined, and also on settings used during PDF export. To have e.g. text that is produced in mere black ink (K), your text color should be defined using CMYK color model and color values C0 M0 Y0 K100. If you have RGB color definition (R0 G0 B0) or grayscale value (Gray 0), the black would be produced with four process colors (so called "rich black") and in practice might show as dark gray and somehow washed on paper, or have a slight color cast, depending on whether the job was actually printed in just black or using four process colors. When exporting, you should also use the document CMYK color profile rather than change it, since changing the color profile at export time causes recalculation of color values and the non-desired conversion of black-ink-only to four-color-black. UPDATE: There is one additional consideration that is important: what is said above assumes that your current document color mode (File > Document Setup > Color) is either RGB or CMYK. If it is Gray/8, your black color should instead be defined as Gray 0 and then you should export to PDF specifying explicitly Grayscale as the export color mode.
  7. I think they are autotranslated (and one might accordingly assume that function names could be written in any of the supported languages, but this is not so). As for the solution, it might be practical at least in situations where it is necessary to produce printed (variable width) characters to be attached to physical pieces that have the same width, to facilitate alignment. Additionally it is of course a useful method to have any common background repeated on all instances.
  8. That is possible. Personally I have always considered this a nuisance. There once was a Finnish professor who translated C language to Finnish (If = Jos in Finnish) 🙂
  9. Please check first that it is not just a question of different argument separator (; is used in Finnish Excel). You can work around it by using something like =MID($B2;COLUMN(A2);1), and copying it ad finitum (as far as there are columns, which is 16,384 in current versions of Excel and LibreOffice Calc, and 1,000 [conveniently "ALL" as the column address] in Numbers).
  10. I think @kenmcd above answered to that question. As for "thoughts" expressed in the referred link, it included the following wisdom, which basically states that form has no function: "The abandon of proportional typesetting is a long awaited and necessary reform of the Latin alphabet and only the bourgeois tastes of the general public, who adore the oudated "beauty" of proportional typesetting, hinder the inevitable progress." I have no words, but to me it seems that this writer only has characters and words, no thoughts. I am not sure under which rock they have lived but there are plenty of monospace types available in OpenType bourgeois misery (and earlier digital font technologies). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monospaced_typefaces
  11. If this is just for an effect, you could use a spreadsheet app to split a character string to individual characters, copy paste the formula results as values and then copy paste transposed to rows (records), and then import the resulting source document into a Data Merge Layout grid. The amount of cells horizontally and vertically would determine the spacing and leading. a) In Excel: b) In Publisher, using Data Merge Layout Tool in eight different ways (and orders the letters are fetched):
  12. Whether that is possible is much dependent on how the "form" that contains the text fields is organized, and whether the structure and order of data to be fetched in the receiving text boxes will be changed. It is possible to create irregularly laid out multipage forms with e.g. a mixed selection text boxes, images and tables that fetch data that is maintained e.g. in an Excel sheet and merge up-to-date data into a Publisher document, but record deletions and additions naturally have effect on such layouts as they assume fixed structure, even if data in record fields can be freely changed. InDesign is more advanced in data merge in the sense that once e.g. a pricelist is merged, it can be updated (and also records deleted and added) without rerunning the merge, simply just updating data from within merged InDesign document from a linked Excel (.csv, .tsv) file. This is not possible in Affinity Publisher but you can facilitate updating by automating the re-merge process (even if it is rather cumbersome). But I am not sure if I understand what you mean by dynamic text fields and population of them without data merge. That kind of thing would appear to require a web page field layout with scripting connection to a database, or within a DTP app, a script that would e.g. open an Excel sheet in the background and update its data using a connection to a web page, and then saving to a .csv or .tsv file, and opening an InDesign document that runs the data merge field update (an Excel sheet could of course be updated also without an external data connection, but the example assumed that the data entered in a web-based database is used in multiple contexts, e.g. for web and and printed).
  13. It is done by using Wjndow > Attributes panel in Illustrator, but as the printer seems to open the production file in Illustrator, they probably apply overprinting wherever needed.
  14. I am not sure that I understand what you mean. As for vector formats, AI can open and save to pretty much any old AI versions (just consider that Affinity 2.x apps cannot save to 1.x Affinity versions), open and place PDF (open more complete feature set than Affinity apps do and fully support placed PDFs), and open and place standard (e.g. Corel exported) EPS (including spot colors, overprint attributes and embedded fonts), and SVG. It additionally opens older versions of CorelDRAW .cdr, and supports to some extent AutoCAD formats. Later versions might be even more compatible -- what is mentioned here is based on the CS6 version. I am not sure if native formats of other apps have been made public, so it is not surprising that AI cannot open e.g. Affinity or Xara formats. The same is true for native AI -- some apps (like Xara) support certain AI specific features to some extent, but most vector graphics apps only support the PDF stream parts of AI, and non-AI specific parts of Illustrator exported EPS files that have Illustrator editing capabilities included. There simply just does not exist a universal vector file format that is designed for transferring features and document structure as fully editable. SVG can be pretty compatible but then it is limited to RGB and basically aimed at digital production. Another thing is that many of the fancy effects that can be created in Affinity apps, cannot necessarily be exported without rasterization in any of the production file formats supported by Affinity apps, so to produce in high quality, you are often required to rasterize in high resolution. Direct printing capabilities of Affinity apps are pretty limited, as well, so even if print shops did have Affinity apps installed, they could not necessarily print Affinity created designs successfully to devices from within Affinity apps. Many kinds of productions are still relying on a workflow of opening PDF, AI and EPS files in Adobe Illustrator, and then printing from within there, and these file formats are sadly typically ones that are supposed to have been created from AI and contain all native AI specific editable features. AI is basically the only app that can include this information.
  15. Can you give an example of what you are trying to achieve? It would seem that using Excel sheets linked, and updating the data via Internet connection from within a e.g. MySQL database would allow you to create an automatically updatable custom formatted pricelist in InDesign, something in the line shown e.g. here: https://pagination.com/tutorials/price-list-with-place-command/. [Note that you do not need a commercial service to do these kinds of pricelists, so this is just an example where InDesign is used with automated updating of pricelists; the same functionality is available using just internal features already in CS6.] You might be able to produce something similar by trying to automate at least in limited scope a Publisher created data layout [e.g. updating always requires recreation of merge even if it could be automated], but setting it up might be pretty cumbersome. But an example would be useful.
  16. There was possibly a related question concerning import of spot colors designed obviously for the same purpose and using identical spot color name and CMYK representation color for cutting, asked by @felixbmurray, for which I posted a reply containing an AI based palette that was used in the original design, defined in Affinity app file format: Since Affinity apps define overprinting as part of swatch definition, rather than as per object (fill and/or stroke) attribute (like Adobe apps do), it may be necessary to define two swatches for each cut functionality, or if just one, add the overprint attribute for each that requires it from within the context menu of the Swatches Panel: Below CutContour has Overprint defined (gray circle at the top right corner of the swatch), while the remaining functionalities have just the spot and global color marks. Whenever importing PDF and AI jobs designed for cutting tasks, it is good to understand that Affinity apps do not import possible overprinting attributes that exist in these files so the functionality needs to be manually added.
  17. This is a difficult question to answer. Complex objects with lots of anchor points might fail to print but I do not think that there are absolute limits that can be stated that are common to all printers and jobs, so proof printing would be required. It seems that the your sample images (at least the latter one) have been traced with "High Fidelity Photo" or with an equivalent preset, which kind of reproduces photo-like appearance but with vector shapes, which might be useful in some situations, but on the other hand, the first image has been simplified by reducing the number of colors (producing clear tonal zones). Perhaps the antialiased stripes were actually results of manually "combining" adjacent shapes by making their colors identical, but without actually combining the shapes to single curves, since this is exactly the situation where such gaps are likely to occur. If so, the recommended method is to lower the number of colors already when tracing so that each tone comprises a separate shape.
  18. i am not sure if I understood what you mean, and additionally my experience of AI autotracing is mostly limited to working with the old CS6 version. It is not clear what actually is causing those artifacts when you open an autotraced document in an Affinity app -- most typically these kinds of issues happen when there are adjacent objects with the same color, and they are pretty common in all vector graphics apps. AI can avoid them in certain situations, e.g. when using outside aligned strokes, and it can also do some "autotrapping" (repositioning and adding undercolor) to avoid the issue. These kinds of artifacts could also be a result of having used gradient meshes (as mentioned by @firstdefence) which fails because Affinity apps do not support the feature, but if the shapes have been created by using tracing, this does not seem to explain the cause.
  19. Normally the resolution is so much bigger when printing so the gap is kind of an exaggeration of the issue when viewing on screen (and typically shows at certain zoom rates and and vanishes in other) -- but if you want to be sure, there might be point in placing underlying objects with the same color under those stripes to make sure they vanish (this might require much manual work but may be the only way to avoid those gaps when producing vector designs that are viewed on screen, and viewed at close range).
  20. If it is all vectors and you intend to export to raster formats, you should be able to avoid those antialiasing stripes by selecting the violet shapes and turning off antialiasing by using the layer Blend Options (or by trying a different coverage map curve): This does not have effect on vector based exports, but in print context those white gaps normally will not show. If turning off / adjusting antialiasing results in too rough edges, one option is to supersample the exported raster output (first upsampling using nearest neighbor and then downsampling using e.g. Bicubic resampling).
  21. It is not necessarily a conflict since if e.g. PDF/X-4 based export method is used in context of Adobe environment, all elements and color definitions can be RGB based yet the document can be targeted to a CMYK device. This cannot necessarily be done in Affinity apps that would convert all native colors (texts and shapes) to target CMYK at export time, even when using PDF/X-3 or PDF/X-4 methods that would allow colors to be left in RGB color space. But if you only include placed RGB images in your document, these would be left in RGB color space and you could use this method. I have no idea how strict the Print API of Prodigi is (and whether their profiles are meant to be used in context of non-Prodigi based productions) but I would at least ask the printer to specify if they need to have the print PDF in a specific standard (like PDF/X-4), or if it could be produced in some other way, e.g. just in sRGB color space, without the printer target.
  22. Yes, they are basically the same, except that the AI file has the spot colors defined as global. But they have the same names and same CMYK rendering values. The printer probably looks for exact spot color names (rather than CMYK definitions), but both are identical. Below is a PDF file saved from AI CS6 that has the spot color versions on the left and their CMYK conversions on the right, and then an Affinity Designer file that was created by opening that PDF file and creating a document palette that has the same spot color swatches created that existed in the AI file, and the swatches made global, so the .afdesign file has exactly the same swatches as the .ai file (I added the registration color swatch, as well, to make an exactly matching document palette in the .afdesign file). RolandVersaWorks.pdf RolandVersaWorks.afdesign
  23. You can print a PDF file containing stamps (= normally curve objects), even from within a browser like Chrome, supporting printing (saving) to PDF, and then open the resulting printed PDF using any app that can open PDFs for editing, like below Affinity Designer:
  24. It would be possible to export an .ase file (Adobe Swatch Exchange file) from AI and then import it as a document or application palette in an Affinity app. You can also create spot color swatches from within any Affinity app by choosing "Add Global Color" from the context menu of the Swatches Panel and then specifying the name and rendering color, and selecting the Spot check box in the dialog where you define properties for the swatch. You can then add these swatches in any palette and export them as Affinity palettes to be imported within Affinity documents as document or app palettes. Here is zipped the defined spot colors with CMYK rendering color definitions in an Affinity .afpalette format, which you can use in all Affinity apps (both versions 1 and 2). RolandVersaWorks Spot.zip If you import it as an application palette, it will be available in all documents (disregarding color format). Custom_Spot.mp4 [Note that an application palette cannot include global swatches. You probably do not need to have global swatches in this palette, though; global swatches make it possible to have tints linked with parenting swatch and have all linked swatches changed in one go, keeping their tint values. If you do need them, you can include any swatch as part of a custom palette that you can force to load as "default" to be automatically available whenever you create a document using a specific color mode, e.g. CMYK.]
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