thadeusz

Yeah, it's interesting, how different we look at this. I'd also not like to go this route with installing fonts, I think it's super risky. My understanding would be more like MikeW's - if I get an external file for print I don't wanna touch this file, just make sure, that it stays exactly as it's meant to be. Put it in place. Set and forget.

Thanks guys! Two solutions to handle this weird Publisher weakness. Unbelievable it is still like that, making it almost useless for so many use-cases in agencies, for publishers and print shops. I'll have a look into Ghostscript. But it might be no surprise that, at first look, for me as a Mac guy this is going to hurt. Reminds me very much of my endless sessions with RaspberryPi...

Exactly. That is what I would expect. I must admit that I did a test until now only with the latest version 1. And it didn't work. I'll try to test with version 2 as well, but from what I've read in the forum is, that it didn't change. For me it's rarely necessary in my work, but in the described case of placing ads and having a tight deadline I really have a bad feeling.

Because you are working on a project, like a catalogue or a program for a film festival and you get PDFs from clients (advertisements et cetera) last minute. Of course you've told everybody beforehand that you would like your PDFs with curves instead of embedded fonts, because Affinity can't handle it... But, 50% of those people delivering their advertisements – or whatever they put into your layout – still with embedded fonts, as we all normally do, when we deliver for print. There you have it, this could easily turn into a bit of a nightmare. Without a solution I would definitely like to have access to Acrobat or start the whole project in Indesign. But I'm still hoping to find a good workaround...

I was just correcting your quote. Who would think you could install fonts with Publisher? I dont get that. Please read my simple question again.

Affinity Publisher can't do that

Sorry, but that was not the question. As far as I know, If fonts are embedded in a PDF, Publisher can't handle them. I cannot simply import a PDF with embedded fonts into my Publisher layout and export it with the embedded fonts intact. So, there's the problem. Acrobat can convert those embedded fonts to paths. Indesign can preserve those embedded fonts on export - as one expects. Publisher can't do that. The question was - is there a little tool/app, which can convert embedded fonts in a PDF to paths? That would help me to have a secure workflow with Publisher and embedded fonts in PDFs. Would be great if someone has an idea!

Hi, thanks for pointing out the limits of Publisher working (or not working) with embedded fonts in PDFs. As this problem still exists, do you know any tool /app that could help out and could transform embedded fonts into paths - before importing the PDF into Publisher? And I'm not talking about Acrobat or Indesign. Normally I don't need this functionality, but I'm about to start a project where I either find a solution or have to switch to Indesign or Acrobat to make sure that embedded fonts can be converted. Many thanks for any ideas!

Thanks for clarifying! I've always done separation check in Packsview as an extra step, even with CMYK only. I start checking separations a bit before making final corrections in my workflow - so, that I'm ready when corrections are done and everything is final. Of course I'm doing a final check on my print file, but mostly without any last minute surprises...

Overprint simulation and color separation are kind of possible, even with spot colors. I also find Affinity programs to be very complicated to achieve a good and secure production workflow, but it's possible. It took me a while to get it sorted, but now I'm really confident and use it for all sorts of print productions. I'm checking separations with Packzview (https://www.packz.com/downloads-info/), which is free to download, but needs registration and new upload once a year. Overprint simulation is always visible in layout (when using Multiply on layers). You should check if you really have spot colors in color palette, especially have a look at consistent color profiles and use Multiply on layers to overprint. That's about it. It took me a lot of testing to make sure it works. It's easily messed up with different color profiles on export. I'd love to see a separation preview in the program (as with channels in Photo, but showing correct separations for spot colors as well). When you work only in CMYK you already have separation preview, but you need Publisher and Photo to be installed as well – and use channel palette for separations. Good luck!

Not if it's only black without any aliasing. But, as you wrote, it needs to be somewhere around 800dpi, depending on the graphics and use case.

I'm with you with advantages using 1bit. Would love to see it. But of course you can do most of the things with grey scale images too. They are much bigger in file size, but for printing it will be kind of the same result. If you have your pixel stuff in highres and without any aliasing it's basically a bitmap.

It's just another bug in Affinity, but here in forum for whatever reason it's always called a feature... I gave up on this. Thanks for pointing this out. Don't expect this to be changed by Serif, unfortunately.

Haha, I only see ”You've chosen to ignore content by walt.farrell.” every second line. What else can you do?

This looks really great! As far as I can see, it's not supporting Designer files directly, but SVG. But this works quite good as export from Designer. I'm using it to go from Designer to Pixelmator Pro (and from there sometimes directly to Motion as it exports Motion project files).

As much as I share the expressed anger towards serif - and I wrote mainly cynical comments about flaws in Publisher in the last year - why would someone use version 2 for production right now? I mean - you can't go back to V1 with your files. Nevertheless, it's good to test it out and post problems - thank you! I've also bought it, installed it and looked at it. And use V1 for now. Serif will need some time to make it's homework, often too long for my taste. But that's all known. It's like updating MacOS on day of release. Good luck with that! I'm always one year behind and have not many problems in productions. Good luck with Adobe by the way, with this behavior. But I just read about problems, never have them really. So it's only 2nd hand knowledge . I'd really recommend to hold back with updates during and for productions, even we're not getting those new shiny functions immediately.

Guys, there are dozens of threads for this topic. As long as Affinity is so unprofessional in this specific field, there are only workarounds. I hope, but don't belief a separation preview is coming soon, as many of us where demanding this from day 1. I'm using a little program called PACKZVIEW, which is free and does the job:(https://www.packz.com/downloads-info/ Especially when using spot colors there are problems keeping colors as spot and not converting to CMYK. Keep an eye on a consistent color profile and only using multiply, transfer or normal as layer blend mode. I've wrote about my way to this quite stable workflow in this forum. So please don't be shy and have a look... 😎

And? Waiting since April to get this fixed. This really can drive you crazy day by day. What takes so long to fix this?

It doesn't matter, how you call it. It's the same thing I'm trying to achieve, but one of them is rasterised without any reason. For me it's a bug.

Thank you! That works fine for me. So, it's better to forget the other way to create a clipping mask. For me that's clearly a bug, that needs to be fixed - beside having a different way that works.

Hm, that works. But how is it done? For clipping I'd normally take a vector element, fill it and then drag it onto a group or object and it becomes a vector clipping mask. I'd be interested to know, how you have done your clipping mask. Thanks!

I'm using PDF 1.5 (Acrobat 5), CMYK, FOGRA 39, color space converted, Rasteriziation only for unsupported features. This is my normal export preset for printing CMYK. As I wrote, when clipping mask is removed, the same document with the same preset is not rasterized.

When using a vector clipping mask on PDF export my image ist rasterized. When removed (and in my case I could just hide outside areas with a white object) everything works as expected and noting gets rasterized. Maytown-Button-1.afpub

Hi, when I'm copying text from another document (in this case some pixel logos), where I've been using only K channel, this property is lost. So it is set back and I have to re-apply using only K channel.

Thanks for sharing - Mark does a great job, as always. That looks indeed promising. And yes, it's not the worst idea to have PixelmatorPro as an export plugin for now. But for near future I think Serif should consider some smart decisions to make it more easy to use Affinity apps in certain workflows.