CarolM97

Good idea... I'll do that! Thanks, Carol

HI -- I'm a first-time book publisher (and designer!) and need a bit of help regarding color and export settings. The book is a children's illustrated book. All illustrations have been provided to me in high res RGB files. I'll be exporting to PDF. The print company I'm using can accept either RGB or CMYK files. What document color format should I be using? It's currently set to CMYK/8, but honestly I set this up SO long ago that I don't remember why I made that decision. (I think it was based on *something*, perhaps that I initially planned to go w/ Ingram Spark, whereas I've decided to use a much higher quality print company.) What document color profile should I use? Do I need to ask the print company what is appropriate given the paper that will be used? For export, what's the appropriate preset? Not sure what the difference is between PDF for print and PDF press ready. Or if I should use one of the PDF/X settings? The company's prepress guidelines read: Export Settings Outputting from Adobe: Start with the Adobe PDF Preset “High Quality Print”. Under the Output section -  Color Conversion = No Color Conversion  Destination = N/A  Profile Inclusion Policy = Don't Include Profiles Thank you! Carol

Look forward to chatting with you... and yes, you're on the "pre-sale" list

@Hangman -- As always, GREAT information. I am now thoroughly convinced. PM me when you want to discuss the long and rewarding road of publishing your own children's book Thanks, Carol

Thanks @Hangman, thanks @Old Bruce FWIW, I did get confirmation that the printer is an inkjet. One more question about the RGB/CMYK issue: Will those same RGB files serve me well when I want to do an offset run? I know nothing about how colors or color conversion might be handled differently for digital vs offset. Also, as an aside, what would "happen" if I placed RGB tiff files into Publisher but then used CMYK format on export? (My understanding is that it wouldn't be good!) Or maybe I should just play with it to find out @Hangman, Great that you're considering your own book(s)! I'm happy to chat more about the project offline! Thanks, Carol

@Hangman Thanks! I'll try to respond to all the stuff you brought up The designer has provided me with several files (and file types) at this point. The psd's are individual illustrations. Why would I want both psd's and tiff's? I assume I'd want to stick with one type within the publisher document. And it sounds like tiff might be preferred re: image quality? Interesting thought about letting the printer do the conversion from RGB to CMYK. (What is the "RIP"?) I like that idea for multiple reasons. The first printing will be digital, so I can do a shorter run somewhat economically and see if a larger, offset run will make sense. (I hope it will!) Plus less money up front. Conversion to digital / ebook whenever I get to it! The printer's specs do include info about bleed, DPI and embedding vs linking, but they do NOT include anything about color format (they very clearly said "it doesn't matter") or ICC profile. I will take a look at the "More" settings -- thanks for that tip. The layout was largely done before the color was started so the designer is (so far) providing images at the size they'll be used. But I'm definitely keeping an eye on the placed DPI; thanks for the reminder! This print company has a great reputation for pre-press checking and they actually provide hard proofs at no cost, so that's all good! The book is about a Golden Retriever who wants her wings so she can fly and be friends with the geese! (And it's definitely for adults too.) No plans yet for a book signing (ha!) but if I can get my A. Publisher act together, the artwork keeps coming in from Italy, and the paper supply chain doesn't collapse, I hope to have something in hand by March or April. It's been QUITE the learning process! Can't thank you enough for all the help. Carol

So I've just spoken w/ the print company. The printer (the machine) they'll use supports CMYK, so that's that question answered. They do NOT have any particular PDF compatibility requirements. If you have suggestions, given that my illustrations will be tif or psd, I'm all ears! Regarding the PDF preset, because they don't have any experience with Affinity they don't know what to recommend; they just say to ensure that it won't downsize the file. Do you have suggestions? I'm assuming it will be either PDF (for print) or PDF (press ready) but have not yet had time to look into how those differ. Thanks! Carol

HI Hangman -- Great questions! Here are the answers: This is a children's book; I wrote the text, I have an illustrator who is doing watercolors and scanning those and providing them to the graphic designer for the color correction, background processing, etc. I'm doing the design/layout in Publisher (because I had a vision for it and enjoy this sort of visual creativity) and will produce the PDF to send to the printer, but of course have zero knowledge of all of the intricacies... hence my post! So yes, I'm creating a book from scratch with my text and the watercolor illustrations. The designer said she usually provides files to her clients as PDFs but that she's able to produce any format. I believe she is doing all of her work in Photoshop. I do not know the format (pdf, psd, etc) of the files that my illustrator is providing to the designer. GIven what you say, it sounds like I should ask for PSD or TIF. (Would YOU choose one over the other for any reason, such as quality of final product?) The printer has not yet communicated to me what PDF compatibility they require; going to try to get that question answered today. The compatibility is set as it is because I initially thought I'd use IngramSpark, and that's what they require. (Or did when I was looking.) I do actually need transparencies as I have several pages with multiple illustrations which, if the backgrounds are not transparent, will overlap/wipe out part of the adjacent illustrations. BUT -- I very much appreciate that tidbit about how it's typically not needed for CMYK printing. Many of the illustrations will use a simple white background where overlap is not an issue. Regarding CMYK vs RGB, I know CMYK is the standard for material to be printed, but I've read that some printers can support a broader color range and it may be advantageous to not limit myself to CMYK. I suppose that's a question for the printer. Eventually I'll have a digital version of the book and could get RGB images from the designer, but that's not the primary concern right now. I hope this makes things clearer. It may eliminate the need for me to provide PDFs to you; let's see and then I'll get them to you later if need be. Thank you SO much, Carol

Hi Hangman -- I'll show my complete ignorance here: do you need only the PDF of the illustration / graphic that I'm placing in Publisher, or is there any value in providing you w/ a PDF, generated from Publisher, that uses the graphic? And another question: can this issue w/ PDF compatibility and concerns w/ flattening transparencies be avoided if I DON'T place any PDFs in my Publisher doc, but rather use only psds or tifs for illustrations? In other words, if my graphic designer (who is color-adjusting/correcting the scanned watercolors) provides me with the images (many with transparency) as psd or or tif, does this problem go away? Thank you! Carol

Hi -- I've read only a bit about this error online. I want to make sure I do the right thing so that PDF graphics (illustrations) placed in my document will be handled properly on export. From what I've read, I gather that maybe I need to change the PDF Passthrough profile. My compatibility is currently set to PDF/X-1a:2003. Do I simply need to change that to PDF 1.4 (Acrobat 5)? What does the FIX option do? Does it make this change for me? I've read about the undesirability of PDFs being rasterized if the passthrough is not set properly. I'm honestly not sure what the implications of that are but it sounds like I want to avoid it! There are transparencies involved, FWIW. Thanks, Carol

Hi -- I'm very new to the world of design and Affinity Publisher. I'm self-publishing a children's picture book with watercolor illustrations by a professional illustrator. The images will be post-processed by a graphic designer (to ensure that colors are on-target and image backgrounds are either true-white or transparent -- whichever I deem necessary). I'm doing the layout and design in Publisher. I don't know if this is the proper place to ask this question, but I thought I'd start here as everyone on this forum is so helpful. I'm trying to determine if I need to have the graphic designer do fully transparent backgrounds or if white backgrounds will work. (Transparent is much more time consuming and expensive processing for those illustrations which are vignettes or don't bleed to all edges.) What she said to me is that "If the background of your work page is really white (hexadecimal value # 000000) then you can avoid having the image with the transparent background." She has sent me 2 examples of a vignette: one with transparent and one with white background. I can tell from the Color Picker tool that the white background in the PDF she sent me is exactly the same as the color of the Publisher page. But what I don't know is how this will translate in the printing process. (I simply haven't wrapped my brain around how it all plays out.) Will I see differences in the "white" where there's a white background on an image vs. where there's simply no image or text? I'll send the printer a PDF. I would think that "no color is no color" (and hence no ink) and that it would all look the same. But I DO NOT want any nasty surprises! I do know that I need to make sure that the image layers won't interfere with each other. Thoughts? Thank you!!! Carol

Great idea! I'll give it a go. Thanks, Carol

I should have added: Affinity Publisher!

Hi -- I'm doing the layout and design on a children's picture book and working remotely with the illustrator. For some of the draft artwork she has sent me, I would like to show her how it's laying out in Affinity. To that end, I would like to be able to create a PDF (or really, any file type) that shows the blue line representing the margins and the light grey line representing the bleed so that she can see where small adjustments may need to be made to how subjects are placed in the illustration. Is this possible or do I just need to take a screenshot of my Affinity workspace? (I did give her all of the page size/orientation/margin and bleed size specs before we started. This is my first time doing anything like this and she's an experienced illustrator, so I'm not sure how much of what I'm experiencing is normal, or not ... or due to language-based communication lapses. Regardless, I have infinite faith in her and want to be able to give her this critical visual information.) I've played with printing the bleed and displaying printer marks, but it doesn't give me what I'm looking for. Thanks! Carol

Thank you both SO much! Carol

Hi -- I'm as new to Publisher as I could possibly be, so please forgive the basic nature of my question. I've done some tutorials but inevitably I'm running into roadblocks. I'm playing with a new document, and in some artistic text objects where I'm using Papryus, I can't get it to display as bold. With the few other fonts I've tried, I can just select the text and Ctrl-B (or select Bold instead of Regular) but this doesn't work (and bold isn't an option) w/ Papyrus. Do I need to import a new font... or some such? Thanks! Carol