Ralf_Maeder
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Posts posted by Ralf_Maeder
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9 hours ago, sfriedberg said:
It's a problem if you want it to be a problem. On a press, it's 100% black. On a monitor, it's 0% grey/value. There is certainly room for confusion, but less room if you keep the context (print/subtractive, monitor/additive) in mind.
I am sure the folks at Affinity would be entertain your suggestions for how this confusing labeling could be sorted out. How would you prefer this information be presented? (And do remember, there are lots of other users, many of whom will never go to press with their digital files.)
I have to acknowledge that normally I would not change the color mode to greyscale Grey/8.
I thought it would make sense in this case because the printed document contains only black and shades of black (grey). Maybe by doing so, I slided into the realms of photographers and raw processing? Hint is that apparently the way black and shades of black are defined is not comprehensive to me who is focused on normal CMYK and Spot color workflows.
To answer your question about what I would have expected: that black is 100% grey, white is 0% grey and 30% black equals 30% grey, since it should be obvious that there exist only shades of black (grey) in a color mode that identifies as Grey/8. Furthermore I would expect that the 8 stands for 8bits per pixel = 256 different shades of grey and Grey/16 with 16bit = 65000 shades.
Ralf Maeder
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Dear sfriedberg, in a sense this may make sense.
But... in the end, isn't there at least a problem with how Affinity's color picker displays the 100% black rectangle with 0% grey?
If this none of the less is correct then I throw the towel because I don't get it. And I worked 20 years in PrePress.
Ralf Maeder
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So it's intentionally that Affinity developers specify black as 0% grey, white as 100% grey and 30% black as 70% grey?
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Of course. Find attached a JPG screen copy (in normal View mode in order to show the red rectangle around the area in question) and the Affinity Designer document.
I converted the letter Z from the font "Parchment" into curves and devided it.
As an example of the issue, I drew a (red) rectangle around an area where the path is not selectable with the Node tool.Please change to Outline view mode and try to select the path by clicking on it inside the rectangle.
Ralf Maeder
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Apparently this inconsistency is still present in the most current version 1.8.4.693.
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I would like to point attention to an issue that is apparent when working in Outline view mode. In this mode, selecting paths with the node tool can be frustrating. Often times you click atop of a curve and the curve is not selected. You have to click nearby or farther away from the curve in order to be able to select it at some point. It's a frustrating hit or miss with no predictability. Changing the view mode away from Outline view mode restores the normal and logic behaviour where you select the curve by simply clicking directly over it (assuming you have set a useful stroke width and color to identify the curve in the viewport).
Ralf Maeder
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I have a simple text document with a greyscale logo and chose as Color Format "Grey/8". I noticed that in this color format, the colorpicker identifies black as 0% grey and white as 100% grey. Obviously all other greyscale values are also shown with inverted values. This applies to all three Affinity Applications.
Attached a simple example to show the wrong greyscale values.
Ralf Maeder
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I couldn't solve the issue with my extremely unstable Affinity Glyph Browser. Tried a few alternatives and found best the Character Map UWD in the Microsoft Store.
Sure, it requires some additional steps in order to get rid of any formatting (pasting the chosen glyph to notepad, selecting it in notepad, copying, pasting the glyph in Affinity) but Affinity won't lag or freeze, which is the main point. -
On 3/8/2020 at 4:34 PM, Hilltop said:
As far as your first point is concerned, I don't quite get what you mean by 'the glyph browser stays empty".
With regards to the glyph browser not showing the complete character when it is too large, I notice this as well. Indeed, trying to get the right glyph is quite a hit and miss in those cases.
When working with the Glyph browser, selecting a letter, changing it with the glyph browser, then deselecting it and selecting another letter, it happens to me often that the Glyph browser won't show any letters at all. When this happens, I have to close the application and start it once more. I suppose some issue either with the font, with Affinity, or some issue with my Windows 10 system. The font is a commercial one.
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I also have problems with glyphs and I would like to know if it is advisable to prefer a certain font type like Truetype versus Opentype font?
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Recently I bought some beautiful commercial vintage fonts. The one that I like most has a lot of extra glyphs with many different versions of the same letters where the artist added beautiful swirls around the letters. When I started to make use of the font I used the Affinity Glyph Browser. I am observing several issues with Affinity (Designer and Publisher the same): After having changed a letter with the glyph browser and deselecting the text, then selecting it once more, the glyph browser stays empty, as if it is not updating or having another trouble with the font. Performance of the Affinity application suddenly may decrease and even freeze for more than 30 seconds.
Also another permanent issue is that the glyph browser does not display the whole character if, like in this case, the glyph is much larger than the normal letter, making the selection of the correct glyph a trial and error endevour.
I wonder if other users are noticing also bad performance issues or an empty glyph browser when changing glyphs or maybe just with some fonts or font types? Maybe one font type is preferable because it works better with Affinity applications, like Truetype versus Opentype font?
Maybe some of you who need to access glyphs have found third party Glyph browser applications to be more useful or stable (Windows 10) ?
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I would wish for more options related to Artistic Text. Right now the only thing it does is text along a curve, but if you would like the letters to be oriented vertically or any other creative way while rolling along the path, you have to manually edit each and every letter by hand in the character panel. In this example I edited the "Shear" angle of each letter by eye-balling quickly a pleasant angle, but it's just an example. This should really be a feature that ought to be available.
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Joachim, when I was struggling with the PDF at the beginning, I also tried to use a raster image instead, but I wasn't happy with loosing so much fidelity when zooming in (since the file is for the sales department, they don't care for tecnical limitations but want to zoom in towards an individual plot of land.)
Once I placed the PDF like it would be an image file, instead of opening it as a document (which would have forced Designer to process it), Designer generated an embedded PDF file. I was able to have the full resolution, vectorized floorplan right inside of Designer, even if it was not directly editeable, which was of not so big concern in this case.
In other words, I have found that embedding the PDF file has a big advantage towards rasterizing it.
Oh, and just for the record, Designer exports a perfectly usable PDF file, even in this case, with selectable layers just like I wanted. The only problem is that the software is unresponsive after every export and its process has to be terminated (I use Process Lasso for that purpose). Also it would be great if Designer could manage these complex files even better and maybe one day make them editeable without a lot of hickups.
Greetings,
Ralf Maeder
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Dear Joachim, thank you very much for your extensive testing. Concerning the file header of the PDF, you may be correct and that I exported it from Affinity Designer, which I couldn't remember. Here I attach the original PDF that was handed over to me, supposedly exported from AutoCad.
Since all my attempts to make the imported PDF data manegeable in Designer failed, I opted to embed the PDF file instead. It is a viable workaround in this case, but the hanging of Affinity Designer after the export is annoying.
Dear Sean P, I appreciate you looking into this matter.
Ralf Maeder
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Hello Joachim, following your observation, I created a new Affinity document where I deleted the embedded PDF. This way the document weighs just about 500 KB. The original PDF is about 6.4MB and was exported from Autocad. I have no access to create the Autocad export on my own.
Once having embedded the PDF into the document and scaled it to full size of the artboard size, the Affinity document size increases to 38 MB. This is the moment where exporting causes the above mentioned issue.Find attached the document and the PDF.
Looking forward to you input.
Ralf Maeder
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This issue was already present in versions prior to 1.8 and is still present in the newest version.
I have a self-created Designer document that seems to be rather complex.
It consists of an embedded PDF file placed in the background, which is a floorplan exported as PDF from AutoCad. I tried to import it directly into Designer and make it editable, but the software is painfully slow when doing so. So I decided it to embed it and this way I was able to make it manageable as a background in combination with the foreground layers that I created ontop of it.
These foreground elements are a dozen layers, each of them contains maybe 50 simple foursided poligons.Once I export de document, in this case as a PDF, Designer exports the document but afterwards it maintains unresponsive to any input or clicking on menues, just scrolling and scaling the artboard with the mouse is possible. I have to terminate the software in order to start it up once again and from then on it works normally until I decide to export the same file again.
This does not happen with other (simplier?) files, just with this document. Still, I need to create a new variant each month where I edit the colors of the foursided poligons. I don't make changes to the embedded Floorplan.
Ralf Maeder -
2 hours ago, v_kyr said:
Does PDF/X compatibility make any difference here (see: Overprinting)?
See also:
Following your post, I tried all PDF-X versions that Affinity Designer offers with no luck. Also coverting the letter to curves did nothing to the overprinting. Seems I am out of options. Black overprinting should be pretty basic standard for a serious graphic design software.
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On 2/18/2017 at 1:45 AM, Teo_ said:
Yes, strange, and is something similar to what happened in the project where I’ve got the overprint converting text to curves.
Creating a new file I get the right behaviour.
Looking back to the history of this work, I think it was an error starting from the last pages of attached file template to quickly get a folder.
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I am designing a simple flier in Affinity Designer and want to save a PDF for the PrePress. When I check the CMYK separations in Adobe Acrobat Professional, I am observing that Black text is not overprinting over a colored background, no matter if I use the default black color or a newly created global color C0 M0 Y0 K100 with Overprint activated. I suppose I have to trust Adobe Acrobat that the overprinting instruction is not translated into the PDF file. My document is correctly set up in CMYK. I suppose it's an issue with Affinity Designer.
I would like to know beforehand if the software can handle black overprinting accordingly. My only tool to check this is Adobe Acrobat Professional, unfortunately.
Opening the PDF in Affinity Photo and checking the CMYK channels, also shows that black is knocking out, though I suppose that AP is not capable of recognizing overprint in a PDF even though it was created by its brother Affinity Designer.
Any idea guys?
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I have a few question for those Designer artists who have to deal with prepress and printshops.
How do you prepare your artfiles in order to minimize problems with the printshop? I ask because with Affinity Designer I don't see any possibility to preview color separations and I especially miss spot color separations?
What workflow do you use or recommend assuming that we don't use any Adobe or other expensive third party software for this purpose?
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I would wish for a way to preview color separation without the need to use Adobe software or other commercial third party software. Another solution could be a new application from Affinity for this purpose.
Ralf Maeder
- alig, NADecal and Paul Bravery
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I would wish for a way to preview color separation without the need to use Adobe software or other commercial third party software. Another solution could be a new application from Affinity for this purpose.
Ralf Maeder
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I am a former graphics designer and worked 15 years ago in PrePress.
Nowerdays I still use Macromedia Freehand on Windows for occasional design work and recently purchased Affinity Photo and Designer.
I was looking at the options related to spot colors and noticed that once I created a random color, I can't change this color to be a spot color. In order to create a custom spot color, I have to mark the "spot" box in the color creation tab the moment I create the color. This makes it tedious if the decision to use spot colors is made later on in the design process.
Another issue is how to check or preview correct color separation in respect to spot colors? The reason I chose Affinity as my main tools is because I want to avoid the use of Adobe applications at all cost. Freehand can print separations, which can be saved as PDF and previewed without any third party software. What do you recommend as a workflow for Affinity Designer user in order to check separations of spot colors, but without the need to use costly third party software?
Ralf Maeder.
Affinity V2 Universal Licence - deactivate user or licence number?
in Customer Service, Accounts and Purchasing
Posted
I am a longtime user of Affinity products for many years now for my personal enjoyment.
Recently I convinced the IT department of our business to purchase the new version of Affinity V2 universal license for one employee. Now this person has just resigned after a month and I would like to be sure that the software package is not occupying the license once the person leaves the business. He is using a company Windows laptop but also uses an Apple computer of his own. So, my doubt is what can be done if he installed and activated the software on his Apple computer, but then resigns from the business?
For this purpose, these are my questions:
1. Can we deny/disable the use of the licensed software (A personal universal license was purchased by our General Manager).
2. If a personal universal license cannot be revoked, can we request a change of the license number instead?
3. If not, can we transform the personal license into a business license by upgrading or similar process?
Looking forward to some insight.
With regards, Ralf Maeder.