Chris_Pearson

Hi Mark we're getting somewhere, the .icc vs .icm problem appears to have been fixed in the latest release. So in 'Photo' I can now File > Import ICC profile... and navigate to anywhere on the network, so I can access custom profiles that way; they're then available for printing. Although all that does is copy the profile into Affinity\Photo\1.0\profiles. In a dynamic environment where colour profiles are updated or replaced regularly, that's useless. Symbolic links to a network folder don't work. Even if they did work, there's no common folder so I'd have to go through the routine 3 times. None of the apps will look into subfolders within %APPDATA%\Affinity\[Photo/Designer/Publisher]\1.0\profiles, any profiles have to be at the top level. I suspect that if this was sorted out, it would probably be enough just to paste shortcuts there instead of symbolic links. If you're wondering why any of this matters, I'm in an environment where there are 12 printing devices, mostly wide-format inkjets and digital production presses, through which a very wide range of materials are printed, and we produce custom profiles for every combination; if these profiles need to fine-tuned, they over-write the original. And we need everybody to be using the same assets in order to achieve accuracy and consistency.

This applies to Designer, Photo and Publisher. The way ICC profiles are accessed is a shambles. It looks like the .icm extension is not recognised in many, if not all dialogues, and given that this is the Windows default, it's a big problem. In our studio environment there are multiple workstations which have to access a huge number of colour profiles on a server - and none of the Affinity apps let us access them. Copying them all into the OS's default location, or any other location, on each workstation is not a realistic option. Can someone from Serif please respond and let me know: how to get Affinity apps to recognise the .icm extension how to get Affinity apps to access colour profiles located on a network These problems do not exist - and as far as I'm aware, have never existed - when using Adobe apps.

Please let Affinity apps recognise profiles with the .icm extension (which is the default on the Windows platform), working around the .icc only thing is time consuming, boring and annoying. For those of us working in a studio environment where hundreds of colour profiles are stored on a server, and who don't want to stick them all in the OS's default location on each workstation, what do you suggest? It should be a simple matter to connect to a shared folder containing such assets, but none of the Affinity apps want to know.

I've made several attempts over the weekend to reproduce this problem and failed - images came in at the right size - so it looks like some kind of glitch. If the problem recurs I'll save the document.

I think that approach would be too clunky for the scenario I outlined, I'd have thought that simply letting us browse to a folder of our choice would be more straightforward.

Many production environments will have dozens, if not hundreds, of custom colour profiles which will typically not be stored in the OS's default location. In my own environment I have 10 printers of various kinds, each of which might have 20 or more paper types available, and we'd produce at least one ICC profile for each printer / ink combination (that's 200 already). As these profiles have to be available to 4 production staff, working on PCs and Macs, they're in a folder structure on a server - anyone can get at them. There seems to be no way to navigate to such folders from within the A Pub print dialogue, which renders the app unusable. Any 'workaround' involving copying profiles to local folders will not do, profiles are updated regularly and need to be seamlessly available to all users. Please have a think about this, if you don't make this straightforward, print shops / departments won't dick around, they'll simply tell their clients that they can't accept Affinity files.

Dragging and dropping, or placing, image files into a Publisher document treats the images as if they were 72ppi - in an ideal world the actual ppi would be honoured. If images have already been sized in Photo or whatever, it's pain in the neck rescaling everything or drawing boxes of the correct size. For example, if I have a TIFF file that has been sized to 20cm x 30cm, I'd expect it to come into publisher at exactly that size whether it's 72ppi, 300ppi or 471ppi.

I've just checked out the latest version of Designer and I'm disappointed to note that it's still not possible to have visible bleed GUIDES. As this app might reasonably be expected to be used for artwork destined for print, the lack of a properly implemented bleed facility after over 4 years suggests that Affinity just don't get it. You keep promising that it'll be fixed in a future update. The workarounds you keep suggesting should not be necessary.

Why wasn't it ready? Why is it still not 'ready' in Designer after more than 4 years? Does nobody at Serif have a clue why bleed is really important, especially in a page layout programme?

I'm assured in another thread that bleed will be done properly in the next beta release. They may even get it sorted in Designer (after a piffling four years). Which is all well and good, but it makes you wonder what Serif are playing at: bleed should not be an afterthought when you're aiming your products at professionals.

I just downloaded and installed the beta and the first thing I checked for was bleed, as it's kind of important in a page layout app, and was very disheartened to see that it's not implemented properly. I'm almost afraid to look at other features for fear of finding an utter shambles. As a prospective purchaser, tell me why I should have confidence in your ability to get bleed right in Publisher when it still isn't right in Designer after over four years?

Thanks for all the workaround suggestions for this issue. However the fact remains that this is supposed to be a professional design programme, it's been on the market for several years and a simple, but fundamental feature isn't implemented properly. Bleed is even more important in a page layout app. I've just downloaded the beta of Affinity Publisher and we have the same situation: I can set bleed but I can't see it. Is this some kind of blind spot for Affinity? It's almost as if they don't know what it's for or how it's used. "Bear with us while we get there" certainly won't be good enough for a page layout app.

So it does. But only if it's in the 'system' location. Put the same profile in either of the other two locations and it's not recognised... unless the extension is changed to .icc. It looks like Affinity Photo looks for available profiles when it launches, all the restarting the programme while testing is tedious and time consuming. The Import ICC Profile facility - when that's used the programme moves the 'new' profile to its folder within the user's app data but also recognises it as 'available' - as long as it's has the .icc extension. We're still left with the problem that only some profiles are recognised by Affinity, though those same profiles work with at least a dozen other programmes. I think I know why, but testing the theory will take hours: if I'm right it would only deepen my conviction that Affinity haven't got things right, if I'm wrong the mystery remains. I'm going to have to abandon this topic and, I think, Affinity software generally. I'm still boggling at the way issues with Design are being handled (e.g. you can specify bleed for a document but can't see it on screen - and they haven't fixed it after a year?) which doesn't inspire confidence in the soon (?) to be released Publisher. A great shame as the whole Affinity suite had the potential to genuinely challenge Adobe's near-monopoly, but their inability to get (some of) the basics right is a deal-breaker for me.

Thanks for that, are you aware that the book scanner profile is .ICM ? Changing the extension to ICC makes it recognisable to Affinity and it works, as does the Epson profile. Both of these look like ICC v2 whereas all of mine are v4, But I quickly made a couple of v2 input profiles and still no joy. I've been through about a dozen ICC-savvy programmes and not one of these failed to recognise my scanner profiles. This and the ICM issue means the only conclusion I can come to is that Affinity have screwed something up quite badly.

There are 3 locations from which Affinity Photo will pick up profiles: The OS default folder (C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color) A folder in the same general location as the main app (C:\Program Files\Affinity\Affinity Photo\Resources\icc) And C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\profiles I've just discovered the last one and it appears that File > Import ICC Profile lets you navigate anywhere on your system, find a profile - as long as it has the .icc extension - and when you press 'Open' it copies it to that last location, so at least that's cleared up. Walt, are you OK with letting me see one of your scanner profiles so I can analyse it and figure out which flags or tags on mine might be causing the issue?