thadeusz

Please have a look at the first film again. This simply is a bug, as there is no rescaling involved. The resized text is in the other, overflowing textframe. This is clearly not a behavior which you would like to see. But as I pointed out before - the whole program has these strange things going on everywhere. It hurts every time you want to do something specific and detailed. And giving precise feedback doesn't help, it's just written somewhere between thousands of other little things not getting fixed. Sorry, I'm really frustrated, as I was working with Publisher for the last two days...

Hi there, I was sure, finally to have a working solution for spot color separations. All worked fine when using PDF 1.7 for output and overprinting with Multiply blend mode. Until today. I found, that when using different text boxes, sometimes it's separating as CMYK again. I attached a test document with two text boxes wth the same text styles/colors. One works, the other doesn't. Any ideas? As a workaround I duplicate the working text box and it's fine. But I'd like to know, if there is a hidden switch, that prevents my spot colored text to come out correctly. test-spot-color.afpub

I have to say, that I stumbled over this bug in the same way just today. @serif - please fix this. It's clearly a bug. Also, I have to say that the response here in this thread is not very helpful, as pointed out correctly by Angalanse. His first film shows the problem quite clearly and I don't get why there is this kind of reactions. Unfortunately there are a huge mass of bugs and small unfixed problems in Publisher. As much as I myselft still try to switch, I stopped recommending Publisher as a professional layout programm. And I guess, this stage will last for a while, as there are too many things just half-backed and not much progress in this area.

So maybe there is someone at Serif, who is mixing up left and right, hehe ...

Yes, thats the wrong way. Weird. I also have another "wrong way" problem. I've assigned a dashed line to a left aligned text paragraph, but the first full dash is right aligned. Which, of course, leads to problems when using this style to different sized columns. Please have a look at the video. Is there any way to solve that? Any idea would be very welcome! Edit: Oh, great, now I have the video three times and can't erase it. Hope the third one works.. line-decoration.mov line-decoration.mov line-decoration-2.mp4

At least when I've tried it, it didn't overprint, but seperated to CMYK again.

Thanks @tomaso for the hint! PDF 1.7 seems to work. I have to check back with the print shop, if they have problems with it. But in my case it looks like a good way to work. Your explanation, that multiply is allowed in PDF, was also very helpful. Maybe that is a reason, why I have to use multiply directly for images, not for images boxes. But then again it works for groups correctly. Very weired. Working with spot colors should be more reliable and documented. I know, that most jobs nowadays go online and only have CMYK colors. But it's still an important way to print in many cases.

Thanks. I’ll have a closer look at those files when I’m back on Monday. But it looks good. My question would be if this is also working with images (let’s say grey scale TIFF)?

Thanks for looking into that! - But what you show is exactly showing my problem. Maybe I was a bit unclear. In Affinity there is no preview of the result possible. What you see - when designing - is not how it will look at the end (when overprinting - here shown in Acrobat). Exporting spot colors in this case works for me as well. But how could you design without this preview? Imagine even several spot-colored photos on top of each other - hiding one another with their white backgound. Is there a way to preview overprinting live in Affinity? Because of that problem, I've tried to use layer blend modes (multiply), as I do working in CMYK color space. But this results in converted colors (spot colors show always as CMYK). I couldn't find a way to prevent that.

SInce I switched to Publisher for all my CMYK work, I thought it might be time to do the same with a project using two spot colors. But I can't find a useful way to work with it. When using overprint properties Indesign makes it possible to do that per object (line or fill). I think it would be ok, to do it upside down, like the user guide of Publisher is promoting. That would mean to make a copy of a color swatch (one overprintig, one knocking out) and to use these on all objects as one wishes. And it does even work when outputing a PDF. But there is one thing missing - a preview of how my layout actually looks when overprinting, simple WYSIWYG (I'm not even speaking about a separation preview). So that is not very useful. With CMYK colors it's quite easy - you can just use layer modes (multiply) - see, what you are doing and even get it exported in a controlled way, when using the right PDF export settings. But with spot colors I didn't get any of these exported, they always change to CMYK. I've tried all possible ways (my document is CMYK, FOGRA39 and exporting as X4, X3 or other variants didn't help; of course honour spot colors is on). Any ideas? Has anybody a real workflow for that? Thanks for any help!!

When selecting an element you should be able to see the color name in the color palette. Of corse depending if it's applied to fill or outline - color platte is showing the active color and it's name.

As I wrote before, it shouldn't be a problem, as long as you can use higher resolution with your print shop. I just tried with Publisher to replicate your problem and it is all rasterized, but with higher resolution it is no problem to have the same print quality as with vectors. Its just making bigger PDFs. But of course - vectors would be better. Find attached two versions of the same export - one with 300dpi, one with 1200dpi. It's easy to see an improvement. export300dpi.pdf export1200dpi.pdf

Maybe one last idea from me. There was a discussion in forums about a difference, when things get rasterized in Publisher or in Indesign. Are your text/graphic elements still vector based in your PDF? If not, there might be something like a layer effect, which forces rasterization on export.

Hm, sorry, no idea for making PDFs smaller. I guess you didn't export your text as vector curves which would be a reason for big PDFs. With project files I'm mostly fine with it as well, but when having several versions or when sharing with iPad than it's just to easy to have a 400MB file in the way...

Have you had a look at advanced features, like layers, maybe font embedding? It can be also worth it to change color space to RGB on export settings when exporting for web. I also had the feeling of having to big PDFs, but it works for me at the moment. But Affinity file sizes (for project files) are incredible and far to big too!

Just tried it and it printed out on my laser printer (Samsung). But the logo was not embeded, so I left it out. Since you have Acrobat maybe you could have a preflight check of your PDF to see, what went wrong? I just did it with the one I created and it says, there are layers. Maybe that could be a problem on your printer as well. Maybe you have to create a PDF version without included layers. Just guessing..

I could imagine two places, where you could change the resolution. One is in document setup. There is a resolution to be chosen (normally 300dpi) and then there is export settings - more (button at the bottom) - there is a resolution to be chosen as well. Maybe for testing you crank up these to see if it's getting better. I'd say for printing it should be around 400dpi in original size to look perfect, even it looks not perfect, when you zoom close. There are several threads in Designer forum discussing rasterization of layer effects/rasterization of outlines. It's not perfectly handled, but as long as a print shop is taking and using your higher resolution files, there shouldn't be a problem.

Would be nice to have the possibility to build your own guides or stencils with vector tools - to be used for drawing with vector/pixel brushes. I'm also missing rulers to be positioned freely with my hands when drawing with a pencil (as in other applications).

Yes, I know. Thanks to point this out. And of course you can use the transform parameters for having a precise duplication, which makes it usable. But still, looking back at a dedicated panel (like in Indesign), with a preview of duplicated elements, that's much better. But yes, maybe not the most urgent thing to be developed in Publisher...

+1 Should be added soon! Also there is no "reveal in finder" in ressource manager to find assets manually. Yes, there is a path, but this is awfull slow to work with.

+1 You are right. Totally missing this. Of course there are ways of doing repeated duplications, but would prefer an easier way too.

It takes a moment - and maybe a little reading in the user guide - but it's very good implemented, even in styles. Great that you can define by letter, how much a letter is moved over the (left/right) border. Very good!

Wow, perfect! Works for me. Many thanks!

Having a text block and some headlines I found it difficult to have them aligned properly. Is there a hidden adjustment which causes this weird distance? Even worse I could not add a space and reduce kerning as it stopped at a certain point (-280%). So the only chance was adding a distance to my body text. He? It's on the Mac, using DIN fonts. But it's also visible with other font. I'd be happy for any idea or help!

It happens on my computer as well, but to both text frames, which is a bit more logical. You could also check, if there is any distance applied for the paragraph. It's done here without my knowledge, but it's not helping to turn it off.