Bobster2

I just discovered that in light UI, the active button is perfectly clear - it turns blue!

I just switched to light UI mode, and it's perfectly clear, as the active button turns blue. (TBH, I hadn't noticed (or paid attention to) the UI Preferences.)

In PDF Export > More, there's a field called "Embed profiles" in the Mac version (1.10.1). In Windows. it's called "Embed ICC profile". I saw this in a screen grab posted in a forum thread. I assume they're using 1.10.1, but I don't know. As a beginner, I find the Windows labeling clearer - assuming that the field functions the same on both platforms. (Why is "profiles" on the mac plural?) Thanks!

This is regarding the Document Setup dialog in Publisher with the dark UI style. in the "Color" tab, the assign and convert button UI is confusing, at least to this beginner: Whichever one you click on gets darker. I assume this means it's active. However, the same dark color is also used by the inactive tab (Layout, Color, or Bleed). Using the same color for both active and inactive elements in the same dialog makes no sense. Either the active button should be lighter or it should be changed to a pop-up menu like Color Format and Color Profile. A pop-up would be clearer, IMO. Thanks!

I think I left it set to "convert" during my tests, which no doubt contributed to the problems Note that the assign and convert button GUI is confusing. Whichever one you click on gets darker, which I assume means that it is enabled. However, the same dark color is also used by the inactive tab (Layout, Color, or Bleed). Using the same color for both active and inactive elements in the same dialog is poor design, IMO. Either the active button should be lighter or it should be changed to a pop-up menu like Color Format and Color Profile. A pop-up would be clearer. Also, there's inconsistent naming of a field in the Export dialog: in the Mac version, it says "Embed profiles" where in your Windows version it says "Embed ICC profile." This beginner finds the latter to be clearer. Why do you disable embedding of ICC profiles? At first I left it enabled because the Publisher documentation made disabling it sound risky: Thanks again, @Lagarto!

@Lagarto I wonder if you might tell me what I'm doing wrong. I exported a draft of my book and while the music scores are 100% black, the text I added in Publisher is 4-color black. The results were from Acrobat DC (I can afford the educator's rate until I finish this project). I'm not sure I'm using it correctly, however. The text in question includes front matter (which contains no images) and page numbers in the headers of the music pages. I assigned the color of my base text style to 100% K and checked that there are no overrides in the body and Heading 1 styles, which are the only other styles in use. Below are screen grabs of my Publisher preferences, the Document Setup color settings, and the export settings I used for this test - "PDF (Prepress)" with "Embed Profiles" un-checked. I'd really appreciate any help! EDIT: I exported again with the same settings as below except that in the Export dialog I changed Color Space from "CMYK" to "As document." Now everything checks out as pure black. I don't understand WHY this worked, but it did. If you'd be willing to post screen grabs of the Document Setup color settings and PDF Export settings you used for the sample project, I'd really appreciate it! Also, what exactly is "Color Profile"? I checked the Publisher documentation and did some searches, and it appears that in some contexts it refers to how colors are rendered onscreen. In any case, I did not have "Black & White" listed under "Grayscale Color Profile" until I opened a project containing that project today which was shared on the Dorico forum. After I opened it, "Black & White" appeared in the pop-up menu sometimes, and other times it was gone. (Another Dorico user reported similar behavior in Publisher.) Later, it seemed to "stick", so I went to Document Setup and chose Greyscale/8 as the Color Format and Black & White as the color profile. When I exported a PDF with Colorspace set to "As document", Color Profile set to "Use document Profile", and "Embed profile" checked, the text added in Publisher came out as 4-color (music remained as 100% K). I exported again and un-checked "embed profile" and now everything was 100% K (according to Acrobat), which is what I want. I guess I now know how to get exported PDFs as 100%K, but I don't understand how/why these settings work.

@Lagarto Thank you very much for the detailed explanation and the example project! I really appreciate it. And I think I understand now! I see - that would be a nightmare! Thankfully, my use case is much simpler.

After open a PDF in PDF Output Preview (command-P), it vanishes from its folder in iCloud Drive. Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution? I moved the file to the Documents folder on my System Drive. Now when I open it in POP, POP crashes, which is the problem I had before. (IIRC, when I reported crashes before, the file was in the Downloads folder of my System Drive.)

There are no color objects in this document. Totally black and white. I definitely do not want to keep the Dorico files editable. And the work-around I mentioned above for creating the TOC doesn't bother me as there are only 11 PDFs. Can you please give me an example of which methods would be available to me if I opened the PDFs that would not be available if I placed them? How is it inadequately implemented? What sort of conditions can cause it to be lost? I've tested at least two export methods - "Press ready", which I think is what I need to send to the print shop - and "PDF - digital (high quality)" and in both cases the dialog box says "nothing will be rasterized." Does Publisher sometimes rasterize even when it says this? I don't think I'll need to export in any PDF/X-based method. Thanks very much for this, @Lagarto! As I'm a beginner, I'm struggling to understand some of it, but I'll keep trying.

I just installed PDF Output Preview yesterday on Big Sur 11.6. You need to also install Ghost Script (at least I think that's the case, and it's what I did yesterday (version 9.50)). Current version for macOS is 1.0.0.10. Link is a few pages back. The page where you'll find the Ghost Script installer is also linked in this thread - try a search. Also see my two previous posts above (from yesterday and today) if the app crashes when trying to open a file. Moving the file to a different folder resolved it for me. Hope this helps.

As I mentioned in my previous post, it appears that Old Bruce's suggestion did not work. I'm assuming that he used it on the PDF he uploaded, and in the tests I ran, the blacks were 4-color instead of 100% K. Are there benefits to "Add pages from file", or nuances to the process? If so, then I'd appreciate the screen recording. Otherwise, I don't want to trouble you! Thanks!

I thought it already was in such a location, but I moved it to another folder, and now it works! Thanks very much!

I tried running version 1.0.0.10 of PDF Output Preview on macOS Big Sur 11.6 with Ghostscript 9.5 installed. Computer is the Hackintosh equivalent of an i9-9900k 2017 iMac. (I have no other issues with the computer; professional music production and notation software runs fine, as do all the Affinity apps, Final Cut Pro X, etc.) When I hit command-P and select a PDF, it crashes. I opened the application package and ran the executable from the Finder. Here are the first few lines of the Terminal output (happy to post the full output if it would help). Any suggestions? /Applications/PDF\ Output\ Preview.app/Contents/MacOS/PDF\ Output\ Preview ; exit; [username@computername] ~ % /Applications/PDF\ Output\ Preview.app/Contents/MacOS/PDF\ Output\ Preview ; exit; 2021-10-12 13:22:35.160 PDF Output Preview[55423:1062290] Unhandled Exception: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path "/Applications/PDF Output Preview.app/Contents/Resources/Music-notation_cmyk.pdf" is denied. at System.IO.FileStream..ctor (System.String path, System.IO.FileMode mode, System.IO.FileAccess access, System.IO.FileShare share, System.Int32 bufferSize, System.Boolean anonymous, System.IO.FileOptions options) [0x001b7] in <9fb864578e404c628e2e35175aa4b697>:0

@Old BruceI ran your PDF through an online color separation tool here, and it showed as 4-color black. I also ran it through the app PDF Output Preview created by forum member Lagarto (see this thread), and it too said the blacks are 4-color. So...whatever you did to the PDF didn't work. I also checked a PDF exported from Publisher using the "Press ready" preset. It was a page that used a music PDF from Dorico in Passthrough mode. Both the online checker and PDF Output Preview show the blacks as 100% K. EDIT: One of my students (who's a professional book designer) checked the Passed-through PDF in Acrobat Pro, and it did indeed separate to black only. So unless there are other mitigating factors I'm not yet aware of (and there well might be, as I'm a beginner), Passthrough seems the way to go.

Thanks very much, @Dan C! I really appreciate your offer of a screen recording. Before doing that, though, please note: 1. I thought of a work-around for making the TOC when using PDFs in Passthrough mode: add a text box, type in the title, and make it invisible. Since there are only 11 songs, the extra work is not a problem. I tried it on a couple of imported PDFs, and it worked. 2. Another consideration I forgot to mention is that I'm getting a Preflight warning “Placed PDF has objects of a color different to the document colorspace. The PDF will still pass through.” The PDFs were exported from Dorico as monochrome (grayscale) as described in the Dorico documentation here. For what it's worth, Resource Manager says the color space is Gray and the ICC Profile is Greyscale D50. When I export the final PDF from Publisher to send to the print shop, I need the blacks to pure black (100% K), not rich black. Does the choice of Passthrough vs. 'Add Pages from file' have any bearing on this, or is color a separate, unrelated issue? In other words, is there a way to ensure that Publisher uses 100% K for blacks, and if so, how? Is it possible with both methods of adding PDFs? I've attached a sample PDF from Dorico. It’s 9” x 12”, the same size as the book. (I’m in the USA, where this is a common size for song books. Unfortunately we’re behind most of the world when it comes to paper dimensions...) EDIT: The Publisher document setup is as follows: Color Format: CMYK/8 Color Profile: U.S. Sheetfed Uncoated v2 Thanks again! Music-notation-test-file.pdf