David Hieber

Fortunately, we are our own service provider and plate jobs directly with our own equipment. Using PDF/X-4 has recently become another standard we use, but most of our previous output settings were based on "flattening", although I think we could adapt all jobs to PDF/X-4 (a custom setting to keep raster resolution, etc.) but as I am self-trained and have not dealt with very many jobs using transparency overprinting. I also do not know definitively if there are any pitfalls I should be watching for using this setting across all of our output. It seems that using opacity and the occasional "double-object" placing a white one under the colored is indeed a suitable work-around. It is nice to have such good software available without having to deal with Adobe's subscription or Quark's annual upgrades, however it is easier to break the Illustrator dependency than Quark's. I did purchase Designer & Publisher last year, along with using the GIMP & Inkscape (for outlining raster mostly) I have a workflow that is exciting to move forward with, and the occasional hiccup is fine with good gentleman as yourselves to help us beginners move along. Thanks you and May the Force be with you!

Well I'm getting mixed results here. I have successfully output the art as intended at the expense of changing my preferred "Tint" to "Opacity", which will work for this project, but I am reluctant to think of my work-around on a project that I do not want the background "showing through". Also, I do not think the apparent density of "opacity" is as dark as "tint", but maybe I'm wrong since I seldom use opacity. @Dazmondo77, it seems that using "opacity" I am able to adjust the "midpoint" to other than 50% for what it's worth. If you were using "tint" to achieve the gradient, I would be interested in why I cannot seem to make that work over here.

Okay, thank you for the info all! @Dazmondo77 in your examples, the "midspot" I should not move is between each instance of a sent tint of a spot-color from what I can tell. Trying this now, anxious to see results and report back, thank you!

New to Affinity, long-time Illustrator user. Working in spot colors and trying to get accurate output of a vector gradient fill but cannot unless the art is rasterized on output, screenshots attached. The fill is 100% tint across more than half the item, then tapers down to 30%. Everytime I export as "Nothing will be rasterized" it makes a simple 100% to 30% gradient that is not true to the original AD file. But if I choose on output to "Rasterize all" it respects the different gradient I am expecting. Since my workflow is spot-color, this rasterized file will not work. I have searched but cannot find an answer. Does anyone have a suggestion? Is what I hope to accomplish outside of the abilities of Affinity Designer? Thank you in advance!