Yankeese

Isn't it about time that Serif dealt with this issue and fixed it? I work mostly in long formats, and Affinity is useless for me. Not only is it sluggish, it also won't maintain the proper left/right page settings if I need to add a page. I'd like to use Affinity, because I like many of its features, but this one is a deal breaker.

Chris, thanks.

This actually applies to all three programs in the Suite. The color picker in CMYK when used in click-and-drag mode, runs into a problem with its local readout when the first two elements (C,M,) are both 100. When that happens, the field length for the readout does not expand far enough, and the K value is truncated at one or two digits, depending on the number of digits in the Y value. When that happens, the only way to get the accurate K reading is to let go of the mouse, so the full set of readings appears in the palette on the side. But this is quite a nuisance when it happens. I've made the attached screen capture video to demonstrate. This is in Windows 8.1, using a 1920 x 1200 monitor. The video is in .MOV format. If it doesn't run properly, I'll upload another one in a different format. Let me know if it's necessary. AFPhoto.mov

Interesting. I just found that. I haven't been using AF Pub because of the larger issue of how it handles inserting pages in spreads, which I reported earlier. Until that is fixed, I can't use it for my purposes. It also doesn't have a "book" or "combine files for output" feature, which means I have huge cumbersome files for a large book, which take forever to load and to save, not to mention to navigate through. It looks as though it is on the right track, though, and hopefully they'll fix the problems.

I see you on the Quark group in FB all the time. I don't use a moniker there. Just posted about the Open Type aalt issue.

Hangman, good points. And I just plain missed the color picker click-and-drag method. But that kind of points up what I'm saying. In every similar program I've used, you simply drag the color picker/eyedropper over the image, and the info is there. Why is the extra step necessary? It may seem minor, but it is just more cumbersome than it needs to be. (Edit 12/2/2019): I have played with this some more, and now see the logic of the click-and-drag. I didn't realize that the circle provided local magnification so you can see which pixels are being measured, without having to zoom in on the entire image. Very useful. I am willing to reverse my opinion and say I like this. Obviously I have to be more careful in my explorations. Thanks to all of you for the help.

Mike, many thanks for checking this. Somehow we manage to keep getting work done while everyone is shopping.:) I must have done something terribly wrong the first time around. Something that even managed to corrupt the file. So I'll withdraw the bug issue and chalk it off to a learning curve problem. I guess there's no need to send this to a printer, since the first file was obviously the wrong black. It's nice to know I can use AF Photo after all. That said, I still think AF Photo is cumbersome in this regard (color management), and I would still like to see an improvement in on-the-fly color ID (the eyedropper). Anyhow, thanks for spending the time and effort to look into this. I'll tell the poster on the Facebook group that his problem is probably similar to mine. R

Mike, I tried again, as above. Quark does not just output what is brought into it. I output QX projects as PDF/X-1a for these purposes, and force the settings to use the appropriate profiles. I haven't been brazen enough to try converting RGB to CMYK within QX, however. I always do the conversion first. This one fooled me, as I explain in my latest post with the new uploads. I am using the retail version of AF Photo, and I bought the whole suite at the same time, and everything installed properly. I don't understand why there should be such a problem opening these files.

That "file type not supported" error is baffling. The file was converted from a camera jpeg straight to an AF Photo file, and was saved by AF Photo. Here's one more try before I go the zip/upload route. I went back to the beginning and made a new file. Procedure is explained in the uploaded PDF. I also made a CMYK file on my old Photoshop CC. That is Ix_Chel_1x.tiff, which I'm uploading as well. Maybe I was too quick to call this a bug. It seems that AF Photo just has a more cumbersome process for converting RGB to CMYK, and tweaking color settings, than the other programs. This may not be a bug, but it cerainly should be looked at. I also question why there is no way to view the color specs in the color picker as one passes the tool over the document. All the other programs have on-the-fly color info available. Having to take your eye off the target and look at a side palette is really not so great. As I say in the PDF, I can't check if this one works, because I would have to upload a new cover to the printer, which I can't do, because the project is finished. Does someone have a way of checking the print with a CMYK printer? If so, I would do a test cover and upload it. That said, I do believe that the problem cropped up in the original export, and I didn't catch it (because of not having on-the-fly color checking). All the other files check out with the black being 0,0,0,100, so I think the image-in-the-cover problem would go away. If the new AF Photo file will still not open, I'll provide a link for a zipped file. I don't use Dropbox, but have something similar. R Ix_Chel_05b.afphoto Ix_Chel_05b.tiff AF-Photo2Tiff.pdf

Here is an earlier version of the AF Photo file. I'll go back into Photo and check all the settings. That said, there were absolutely no problems exporting the Tiff from Photo Paint and getting the blacks to match the QX file colors. If settings turn out to be the issue, maybe AF Photo is being too fussy? I used to use Adobe Photoshop CC, but it is obsolete and on an old XP computer, so I don't use it in my workflow anymore, and I refuse to update with the subscription model, so I was hoping AF Photo would fill the gap. By the way, both these AF Photo files are huge, especially for such a small photo. I was wondering about that also. I wonder if the corruption happened as AF Photo saved the file. Ix_Chel_04a.afphoto

I have a similar problem to report, involving the 100K background color for sending to a printer. In my case, the combination was a photo with a 100k background being embedded in a larger book cover that also had a 100 k background. As I reported in the Facebook group: "I had this issue editing a photo in AF Photo, then importing the TIFF file into Quark. The black background was supposed to be CMYK 0,0,0,100, exported as TIFF to SWOP v2. The file I imported the image into also had the same settings. The photo was nestled in a larger document as an image on a book cover that also had a black background. On the screen everything looked right. But when the proof came back from the printer, the background of the photo was not right. It was more like RGB black, and ruined the cover. When I edited the same photo in Corel Photo Paint and saved it as CMYK SWOP v2 Tiff, the colors matched exactly on the new proof. I concluded that the color rendition of Affinity Photo is not correct, and I have quit using it because of that. I believe this is a bug in AF Photo, but I have not reported it to them." The OP of that thread asked me to report it, and I found this thread involving problems with 100K black, so I'm reporting it. There is a bug in the color rendering of AF Photo that needs to be addressed. I am uploading aiff files, the first Tiff file exported from aiff, and another Tiff file created in Corel Photo Paint (Ix Chel 4b), which rendered correctly in the printed copy. The errors did not show up on the PDF I exported from Quark, nor did they show up on screen. Only in the print job from Amazon. And here is a link to the discussion on the Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/417469585331452/744813072597100/?comment_id=745157502562657&reply_comment_id=745158452562562&notif_id=1574984191190696&notif_t=group_comment_mention&ref=notif I am using Windows PC, 8.1 Pro, 64 bit. Affinity Suite 1.7.3.481. 16gb memory. 13 TB storage space. I do not use Adobe Photoshop because of the subscription model. I have Adobe Photoshop Elements, but it won't handle CMYK at all. I was hoping AF Photo would fill the gap, but this is a deal breaker. I can't use it if the colors aren't accurate when exported to CMYK as Tiff files. Ix_Chel_04a.tiff Ix_Chel_04a2.afphoto Ix_Chel_04b.tif

Thanks for this. Very useful information. Unfortunately for Affinity, or for Serif, I am done experimenting with a program that is so cantankerous. I just went through three years of that with CorelDRAW. Although I was eventually able to get a decent format for my novel, it was a nightmare of crashes, slowdowns, missing functions -- just not usable for real production layout. It is, after all, a drawing program. Serif may still be selling PagePlus, but they are obviously not going to support it any more, and I don't wan't to walk across the stream on slippery rocks yet one more time. Now that I'm really getting used to Quark, I'm going to keep using it. It is difficult, and has many idiosyncrasies of its own, but it is blazing fast, and it is still an industry standard, and I'm finding that their support team is excellent.

Interesting context. Thanks for this. I've gone on to bite the bullet and learn Quark. You're right, Affinity is no use for long-form documents like novels. The inability to break the document into separate files, then recombine the parts when exporting to PDF, is another one. (Dividing a long document into sections does not help, because the program can't handle really long documents. It takes forever to do even the simplest tasks.)

I followed the instructions in their crash report. I deleted preferences and cleared the cache. Restarted. Did this multiple times. No help. Quark support has already been in touch with me, asking for files.

It won't export to PDF anymore, since their update of a few days ago. You get an error message. (see attached.) When I persisted, it crashed. Other users are experiencing the same issue.