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As far as I know the boies always preserve the originals -- they work lie layer masks in PhotoShop and can always be changed and removed. Or am I missing something?

Take a look at www.softmaker.com -- they have two large packages of decent quality, even some classics in the selection.

I usually open PDFs in Acrobat (you can still buy Acrobat Pro 2017 as a one-off on amazon, good for this and for a lot of prepress tasks) and save them as high-res image -- that is not ideal, but saves me a lot of headaches. PDF pass-through (pushing the original PDF through rather than rendering), if not for Designer at least for Publisher, has been asked for a lot and I'm sure the developers are aware that it's needed for any professional workflow. Let's use workarounds and keep our fingers crossed that it's in the pipeline.

Sorry, didn't see it was Windows ...

There is no current beta.

*bump* Yes, update please. 🐵

I wouldn't call it overwhelming, but the windows could indeed be a lot clearer, I have two issues with this window: -- The selection between "My Presets", "Print", "Photo" is too confusing and barely visible (tiny font on top of the window, dark grey on darker grey, the selected one light grey on dark grey). When you select either "Print" or "Press Ready" the actual previews and page sizes below are of exactly the same size and scale, only differences are in the selection of advanced options like color profile, bleed and so on, so all page sizes exist twice and you have to be careful, not to accidentally select the one for the wrong purpose. -- Get rid of the wireframe previews -- when I select "Press Ready" I see 36(!) identical (!) wireframe previews to choose from. While a preview makes sense for templates with different content, these ones are mostly useless and invite to accidentally clicking the wrong one, when it's all same-size wireframes. Even in the "devices" section the wireframes are all identical -- the 4" Apple Watch has the same rectangular preview graphic as the 12" iPad -- Very confusing and very easy to select the wrong option. My suggestions: Make the purpose / size selection similar to the iPad one and put it on top of the ,advanced settings' (Layout, Pages, Colour...) -- one dropdown for the purpose (photo, device, print, web, ...) and a second one (context sensitive, list depends on the selected purpose) for the size that lists the name (Apple Watch 5, A4, Facebook Header ...) and the measurements (4", 210x297mm, 1280x300px ...).

Are you talking about cropping images or the export persona (which doesn't ,crop' but creates slides for easier export)? Edit: Saw the edit, seems you overcame what every it was you were wrangling with …

Even though many user asked for it and explained in detail the many uses of 1-bit images, the developers made it very clear that there are no plans whatsoever to implement it (search the forums, there's many topics on this). They might or might not change their minds in the future, but currently the answer has to be: No, there isn't -- If your work or workflow requires 1-bit images, Affinity is not for you! Take a peek at "PhotoLine" -- great software, super fair price!!!

I agree, that updating the style from the paragraph windows would be a "nice to have". Alternatively or additionally, the "update style" option could be put somewhere in the right-click context menu or the text editor.

I use a "generic CMYK profile" (part of Corel Draw, haven't used Corel for years, but this profile is my precious, I guard it with my life) for all printing and it works well -- all CMYK colours are outputted (put out?) exactly as set up and other colours are converted.

Sorry, just saw your reply. I'm not sure either, this is why I raised the issue. I'm not using any screen or resolution related apps at all, just plain, vanilla Catalina.

Yes, in the PDF export settings.

When you convert PDF to any image format (jpg, gif, tif, png ...), you loose the vectors and certain text or graphics might get pixelated when you increase the size. In short: Quality decreases. I'm not sure what flattening a PDF does in Inkscape, but that might just be another workaround to achieve the same result as convertig it with GhostScript (even though 'flattening' normally is different to converting everything into curves, this might be an Inkscape specific term?).

@BigStef 1.8 Beta, works as expected with a gaussian blur and a drop shadow applied with the PDF settings you asked for (1.5, FOGRA 39 profile). @thomaso Didn't upload screenshots for this, but when I select "generic CMYK" profile, I get the same, incorrect, result as you. Puzzling. *sigh* export_fogra.pdf test_new.afpub

Last week I helped a lady from a Facebook user group with her overprints (book cover) and we discovered, that 1.7 has some issues with overprinting, but 1.8 works much, much better -- that's why I started playing with a new file. 1) Not sure -- I can create ,normal' black swatches but no ,global' ones with just black. Gonna re-install the software, restart the computer and update this post / paragraph. -- EDIT: WORKS PROPERLY AFTER RE-INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE AND RESTARTING MY COMPUTER 2) Understand -- I usually use a generic profile for all my work and tell the printers to apply whatever profile they want for their machines and paper when they are ripping the file and creating their plates. Easier for me and I can be sure to send them the ,cleanest' files possible as well as do a last quick colour check on my calibrated screen.

I think, I have cornered the problem ... please find attached a Publisher file, a screenshot of my PDF options and a PDF file with correct overprinting (I checked it in a trial of Callas ToolChest ... very slow on macOS Catalina but I like it better than Acrobat, thinking about maybe buying it now ...). Good news first: Overprinting black works correctly in Publisher 1.8 beta. Bad news: It's not compatible to Publishser 1.7 files (which has its issues with black and overprinting). I believe, the problem is, that you (BigStef) are using an ,old' Publisher file that has been created with 1.7 -- the attached file is created with 1.8 and works properly. The idea to create and test with a new file came, when I noticed that I cannot create a "Black Global Colour" in version 1.8 (other colours work fine, but when I try creating a global colour / swatch from CMYK 100% black, nothing happens and the document swatch panel stays empty) and your test file contains one, so the global black swatch must be an old one from version 1.7 (tested this as well, in 1.7 I can create a simple black global swatch). test_new.pdf test_new.afpub

Yes, I know what you expect ... basically the blue sky behind the black text, not ... more black text ... I thought this was just a problem with Affinity Photo (again, I don't have Acrobat at the moment, so cannot do a proper separations preview). Sorry. I'll download an Acrobat Trial and play some more.

Thanks for the Publisher File.0 I made an export with the following PDF settings: honor spot colours disabled, so everything will convert to CMYK / overprint black / generic CMYK profile and got the attached PDF file -- when I open it in Photo (don't have Acrobat) and look at the color channels, black is overprinting A LOT (when I open your PDF file, test 4, I see that black is NOT overprinting, so I guess Photo works for this quick check). test.pdf

Actually, i have an idea ... is it possible that "Black as Global Colour" is not properly recognised as "Black"? Can you try, using a "normal" black (no spot, colour, just 100% black from the CMYK slider) and exporting with overprint again? Should that work, there's still a problem with overprinting black from spot colours and / or honorig spot colour overprinting, but we can at least pinpoint the issue a bit better.

Well ... we can certainly open it in Photo and review the channels ... yes, black is not overprinting here, but the entire page is just one CMYK image. Very strange ... which colour profile did you select for output? Would you mind posting the original Publisher file, so I can open it, play around and export myself?

@AdamW Thanks for the answer and the hard work ... it's a MASSIVE update.

Have you checked "overprint black" in the PDF export settings?

Don't get me wrong, there's lots of nice stuff in the 1.8 update and it's much more than most other companies provide with a paid upgrade ... I'm SUPER happy with the progress. The question was just for information to see how far the betas are ... and, off course, to maybe, possibly get a subtle hint on when and if the ONE feature I'm desperately waiting for is coming.

Thanks!! Are there any more new features coming for 1.8 or are we in the polishing phase?