BofG

It's easy to do in Designer, just create an artboard for each page.

Firstly, you need your screen to be at least close to what your printer produces. How far off is it? When you print, what rendering intent are you selecting? I see on most of your soft proofs you have "Absolute Colourimetric" - that's not the best choice for photography. Use "perceptual" for both the proof and the print. For the out of gamut, it does seem that i1Studio produces profiles that are a bit low. I don't think you can do anything about that, but from my experience it's not such a big issue. Your photo is quite dark overall, you can look at adding adjustment layers, perhaps for "Exposure" or "Curves". I'm not skilled in photo manipulation so I can't guide you on the process (although I'd start with "Exposure" as it's simple to use).

Sadly there isn't a way. The PDF format supports embedding of fonts, but Designer won't read them. There are workarounds by using other applications to convert the text to curves first.

I've had a rough bash at something for this.. 1. Save the file as "SVG for export" 2. Open the SVG in FireFox (drag and drop) 3. Ctrl + Shift + K (opens the console) 4. Paste in the follwing at the command prompt: var types = {rect:0, text:0, ellipse:0, path:0, g:0}; function countChildren(all){ for( var i = 0; i < all.length; i++ ){ if(all.tagName == 'g'){ countChildren(all.childNodes); } if( all.tagName != undefined ){ types[ all.tagName ]++; } } } countChildren( document.getElementsByTagName('svg')[0].childNodes ); console.log( types ); 5. Hit enter, you'll then see a new line appear like " > Object { rect..... " - click the arrow to expand it and you'll see the list of elements and their counts... ... or there will be an error, which is probably more likely P.S if you have something important open in your browser probably best to try this when you are finished, as I don't want to be blamed if your browser crashes!

It's a bit odd that the gamut checks disagree so drastically... what colour mode are the documents in? For the printing, which rendering intent are you using? When you calibrated your monitor, did you adjust the brightness to match the ambient light conditions?

Just like me, you don't want to pay Adobe any more than you absolutely have to

Just untick the box for that layer in the layers panel. Alternatively simply delete the layer. You also have to ensure that your printer settings exactly match the ones you used from i1Studio when you created the profile.

I do use it for a living, and I'm currently about £900 better off due to switching to Affinity, and as evey month passes that increases. Sure, some people's needs aren't met by this software, but for me it works so I don't see why I'd want to give away my hard earned cash to a billion dollar corporate who have leveraged their near monopoly to be able to extract as much cash from their customers as possible.

Thanks for the detailed response If the colour falls within both gamuts, then is that then not entirely the print shops job to get them acceptably close? I also don't understand how a different profile for the customer here would help - is it just so they can see more accurately the colour difference or would it help with the colour match in some way? Maybe I'm missing something here, but isn't that the whole point of colour management? A soft-proof will match the printed output provided the profile in my soft proof matches that of the print process (and of course as long as my monitor and the printer are accurate). I know the two papers won't match on every colour, but I would have seen that with the soft proof in any case. Is there any real world different in resultant output between: RGB Source -> View via Fogra soft proof -> Export using sRGB -> [to the printers] -> Fogra profile -> press versus CMYK Source -> Export using Fogra -> [to the printers] -> Fogra profile (redundant?) -> press ? One last question, if you was preparing artwork for coated and uncoated stock, what specific colour space and profile would you work in? Also, how would you recommend to see how each would look whilst working on screen (soft-proof? change the actual document profile? something else?). I appreciate your input, it's an interesting topic and there's certainly a lot of different views on these things.

The soft proof adjustment layer (the one you was asking about the blend mode of) has to be hidden before you print the document. You can see what profile type you have in i1Studio: If it shows CMYK like above, then you will have to find a different application to print from as Affinity doesn't send CMYK data. If it's a photo style printer though I suspect you will see it's RGB.

Glad it helped if you have an ICC profile for your printer/paper combination there's a way to apply that which would help with the accuracy. Also, I saw you mentioned before about sometimes needing 100%K blacks - you can still get that with your rgb document. Just create a swatch, use the CMYK sliders to define it, then tick the "Spot colour" option. Use that swatch to then colour anything you want as k only black and it will print that way.

Are you turning off the soft proof layer first? Also, is the icc profile you are using RGB or CMYK?

What are you currently doing when you print it?

I can't think of any good reason to use a blend mode on a soft proof, I assume it's just there because the same UI frame is shared across all the adjustment layer types.

Hi @stokerg, here it is: I will try to resist pointing out it's from over a year ago... ah, dang, no I didn't manage to resist it..

The driver being PS is a good thing, should get slightly nicer output from that. Here's what I would suggest (and it's the method I use to print to my laser). 1. Set up your document in Designer as sRGB (the "print" templates will do this). 2. Save to pdf as PDF/X-4. Leave the settings as default. 3. Open the pdf in Reader. In the print window click 'Advanced' and check on 'printer handles color' (or words to that effect). 4. Select your printer, hit settings and then in the window I've quoted above, change "ICM Disabled" to "ICM Handled by host system" and the ICM intent to "match". 5. Hit print. Fingers crossed for you.

I get this exact same thing from Designer, three different printers - pop up shows the progress bar but nothing goes onto the print queue. Can print to all the printers from any other app and they work first time without fail. It's been reported in the bug section before by another user, and I added my feedback there. Whether it's actually being looked into I don't know.

But then Affinity is Fiat money and Adobe is Ferrari money.

Given that you've said you are printing from Adobe Reader, have you tried printing one of your old files that worked before? If that doesn't print right then you know it's a driver/printer issue.

Well I wouldn't want to at all I just couldn't figure out how @Lagarto was suggesting the OP has a role to play in getting their coated/uncoated colours to be closer. The only thing I could think that could be done on the user end was to design in the smaller of the two gamuts, so therefore nothing in the coated version would be outside of what the uncoated delivers! Seemed like a bad idea to me. Personally I'd use an RGB document and soft proof both uncoated/coated on there, maybe throw in an adjustment layer here and there if I wanted to modify to get a compromise middle ground on some colours, then just export still in RGB and let the printer handle the rest. p.s. I spent far too long looking at that colour profile visualiser, such a neat tool. Pity it doesn't support v4 profiles - would like to see what my printer's space looks like.

In Designer, you need to set it to force pixel alignment and move by whole pixels. If you set your units to pixels and look in the transform panel for those elements you'll see their x,y values are not whole numbers, probably the w/h too. When this is the case you will get anti-aliasing and hence some degree of blur.

Which app are you exporting from?

I'm always looking to learn more, could you explain how the customer in this instance could be involved in getting that consistency between coated/uncoated stock? I genuinely thought that would be down to the printer. Would you advocate that they set their document up in the smaller gamut of the uncoated profile to acheive this? I can't quite wrap my head around it. Colour management seems to be one of those topics where the more I learn the less I understand

I just double checked, and in fairness the "print" templates do default to RBG, it's the "press ready" ones that default to SWOP coated. I must have used one of those, at least my paper was coated @Slammer Out of curiosity, what was the software you used to pinpoint the colour relative to the colour space in the other thread?

I would argue that this is the printer's job, not yours. They are running the machinery, they selected the brand of stock they use, they run their calibrations, they should be the ones ensuring their output is as consistent across paper types (and as close to your artwork) as possible.