slv987

I figured out how to do it with pdf under more options.

I'm not able to export spot colors to eps or pdf in Designer. Am I missing something?

I don't know if anyone has figured a way to do this. I was told to use the rasterize to mask feature with my bitmap textures, but it rasterizes the whole image and will not output to spot colors by exporting to eps or pdf. I use 1-bit tiffs in both Freehand and Illustrator to create exactly what you are showing. This is something my company uses in every design we create and have been doing it for almost 20 years. I have been trying to do exactly this in AD for quite some time now. Any help with accomplishing this would change my world.

Mike, Did you do the rework in AD?

I hope you guys figure this out. I've been trying to accomplish this for quite sometime using bitmap images. AD always converts them to CMYK. The only way I've been able to get spot colors to separate correctly is using all vector objects. I have not been able to switch to AD for just this reason. So for now I'm stuck using Freehand and Illustrator.

Just wanted to revisit this topic. It's been a while since I've used AD and I'd really like to get going with it again. This is really the only stumbling block for me at this time. Without support for this I'm stuck with Illustrator or Freehand. I realize you can't be everything to everyone but just thought I'd throw it out there again as I love using this program and would love to switch over to it completely and leave the other two behind.

Agreed. I'll never be able to switch to AD as my day to day program unless this is done. The rasterize to mask work around is not a great solution it takes a lot more time and it's pretty glitchy. It should either come in transparent like AI or a simple checkbox to make transparent like Freehand. I absolutely love this program and would like to switch my whole art department to it but this feature is holding us back at the moment.

It is interesting that if you open an illustrator file with a 1 bit tiff in it that it comes in transparent. Makes me think that it can be done. I've messed around with the work around they gave but it's super clunky. Not going to work for me. I'm still hoping they will implement it at some point but I'm not holding my breath. Still waiting for spot colors and advanced printing features also. I was hopeful we would see some of these features so we could ditch Illustrator but it looks like we're stuck with it for awhile.

Want to say great job on both of these apps. Super impressive. I'm ready to ditch Adobe as soon as there are a few more features implemented. I can't seem to find a roadmap for Photo. Maybe it's in here somewhere, but I couldn't find it. Just curious on your plans for it.

Thank you, I guess I'm not really sure that what I'm trying to accomplish is a mask. I just thought that the Rasterize to Mask was the solution for what I was trying to do. I think your attachment is what I'm looking for but I can't figure out how to do it.

I've attached a video link below. My black is not opaque. It turns transparent when the mask is made and the white takes on the color of the object below it. I guess I was under the impression that this was the solution for making a 1-bit tiff transparent and changing it's color. Let me know if I'm off base here. Both Freehand and Illustrator you can bring in a tiff and the white is made transparent and the black you can change to what ever color you like. When importing an ai file AD actually handles this correctly as shown in my video in the Questions forum. Sorry to be a pain. I really appreciate all that you guys are doing. https://www.dropbox.com/s/s9g5cyt4nty44sh/Tiff_Transparency.mov?dl=0

I'm now getting a negative when I rasterize to mask. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. The last beta seemed to work correct.

Thanks MEB, Found it. I saw that a few days ago but didn't know how to use it. I was expecting to see some sort of a check box to enable the alpha or transparency and then just select a fill color for it. Doesn't work exactly like I would have imagined but seems to do the job.

I didn't see this in the last beta. Maybe I'm missing it. Will it be coming soon?

Hi my name is Shawn, I’m a graphic designer and art department manager for a large screen printing company in the US. We’ve been using Freehand since version 9. We use Illustrator on occasion but prefer Freehand as the workflow is so much faster. Needless to say we have thousands upon thousands of Freehand files. We have gone to working with Freehand in virtual machines to keep it alive on our newer macs. I’ve been following alternative apps for the last few years desperate for something that could replace Freehand to run on the newest mac OS. I refuse to go to Adobe CC. I’ve been following Affinity Designer in beta for the past few months. I feel like this could be the app we all need to move forward. Still needs some features (Text on Path, Spot Colors) before it would be usable in our production environment but it’s off to a great start. I bought Affinity Designer the day it hit the app store and hope to get the rest of my art staff on it in the near future. Thanks to all who have worked on development of this great app and to all who support it.