waltonmendelson

@Old Bruce Your reply came just as I was finishing mine. Again, thank you. Walton

@Old Bruce Sorry, you were right! Thank you. I did not understand that you meant Fill. I have been placing image in books, not quite since papyrus . . . thousands of images. None have done this. Walton

Thank you for the suggestion. But no combination of layers turns off the red. It is baked into the image . . . and as I said above, I re-placed it 5 times. Walton

Just for a better view, here's the PDF page: 50K 103123 Printing-Presses section .pdf

I am using Affinity Publisher 2.2.1 on Windows 10 system. I have an RGB JPG which is most B&W art with some red, attached below. When I place it in an Affinity Publisher file, the black becomes black and red. I have repeated this 5 times--updating, renaming, replacing, moving the file. I have remade and renamed the JPG. Rebooted Affinity Publisher. Rebooted my system. Moved the file to a new folder The screenshot below is the fourth try. I made a PDF from this page, and it too is red-black. Walton

Again, thank you! I did what you suggested, and it appears to work. Will it work for the next 20-30 sections? I don't know, but I'm feeling optimistic. Walton

Thank you. I will try what you suggest. I can certainly do a work around saving to PDF, then editing the PDFs, but that creates other problems. The issue with AffinityPublisher in this instance is this: Not all large projects are built on a step by step analysis and plan, sometimes projects evolve organically. This too might be fine, but in the instance I am describing, the file corrupted, so it is easier to, I think, to start over and break it up into smaller sections, and avoiding the corruption. But at this point, even breaking it up into smaller sections seems to be border-line hopeless. Walton

I'm working with AffintyPublisher, 2.1.1, Windows 10 system To keep this simple: I have an afpub file that is 60 pages long. There is text, threaded from page to page for all 60 pages. My goal is to keep only pages 11-20, with the content on those pages. I can delete pages 21-60 easy-peasy. How do I remove pages 1-10? Walton

There may be two problems. Me: I have relied mostly on the Info windows in Photoshop, AffinityPhoto, and Acrobat. My bad. With regard to Grayscale I was using Mode > Grayscale, or equivalent, to make the conversion. For K-only I used the process I listed above. After your first video, I realized I should have been double checking Channels. If for nothing else, thank you. Photoshop: For some years, and two computers, Photoshop has not been stable. I would like to blame everything (perhaps even Covid) on Adobe. In short, there may be problems with Photoshop and grayscale/k-only, maybe not (as me: something I'm doing wrong), or even a combination. The problem with KDP/Amazon is that it is incredibly and obsessively secretive. Before CreateSpace was absorbed into KDP, I had phone and email access to the Executive Team and Technical Support. They were still secretive, but this access opened the door a little. KDP's printing is in some ways better, and in others bordering on outright bad compared to CS. With KDP, no one has access beyond Customer Service, and they are woefully undertrained. I am trying to write out the best way to prepare grayscale images for print-on-demand printing . . . I got sidetracked with the grayscale/k-only/differing-info-window values thing. Walton

I am willing to accept that the Info window is giving some sort of simulation. But after looking at the video, I thought to look at the channels. The C, M, and Y channels appear to contain no image information. This strongly suggest that the K-only conversion is a true K-only conversion. I understand that it is in CMYK color space. Walton

@ Lacerto . . . It's going to take a bit of rewatching and rereading to follow the video. Thank you very much for attaching it. Meanwhile the image that I created in Photoshop: Color to Grayscale Grayscale to Monotone Monotone to CMYK where I had a custom CMYK with the GCR set to Maximum Black. I saved it as a PSD, JPG, and PDF. All three show CMY values of 00 and K 0-100. Opening it as a PDF in Acrobat, it was not listed as indexed. But at this point, I'm confused (maybe when I understand more of the video, I'll understand more in general). Up until the last few years, although I did play with Serif Photo, I used mostly Photoshop. My concern with K-only images is this: When being printed by KDP/Amazon, IngramSpark, etc., where we get virtually zero information, to get grayscale images with the best potential for "good," predictable results, I have found . . . Although KDP prints from RGB noticeably better than CMYK, the exception to that is grayscale images prepared for black ink books Grayscale images in CMYK are more reliable . . . . reliable in the sense that the printed images better match the print-ready PDF. K-only images in CMYK are more reliable still . . . . reliable in the sense that the printed images better match the print-ready PDF. But it sounds like I'm chasing a myth. Are you saying that K-only is only is a simulation or emulation of some sort and that it does not really exist? The Affinity Photo K-only test images, when either exported to JPG and opened in Photoshop or exported to PDF and opened in Acrobat, read with K-only values . . . but the Ouput Preview does say "simulate." In Acrobat the color space is device CMYK. It seems Photoshop thinks it's K-only!? Again, thank you for the video and the explanatory information. Walton

Interesting. Perhaps the difference here is that you created the K-only values, where I was converting a color image to K-only values. Also, your image is not a K-only image, although it contains K-only values. It is also possible the PS CS2 (ver. 9?) was a better program, at least more stable, than version Photoshop 24.1.1! walton

I am curious about K-only images. Yesterday, I asked about how to create K-only images in Affinity Photo. Thanks to Walt.Farrell, I found out was both surprisingly easy and quick. Things took an interesting turn when I started playing around with them. I have believed the Info windows. Move the cursor around a K-only image and you get K-only numbers no CMY. I’ve done the same in Acrobat with K-only PDFs, using Output Preview. Photoshop I made a K-only image in Photoshop: Mode > Grayscale (Discard color information? To control the conversion, use Image > Adjustments > Black & White. Discard/Cancel . . . Discard) Mode > Monotone (a “subset” of Dutotone), Mode CMYK (with Custom CMYK set to GCR, Black Generation set to Maximum). This produces a grayscale image with K-only values. Saved as a PDF, K-only values. Saved as a JPG, K-only values. But . . . When I open that JPG (produced in Photoshop) in Affinity Photo the grayscale has CMYK values! AffinityPhoto I converted the same image as I used above, to K-only: using the magic K-only button. It had K-only values in the exported JPG and PDF. When I opened the JPG in Photoshop, I got a warning: “This file contains file info data which cannot be read and has been ignored. OK” I clicked okay, and the image has K-only values. The Affinity Photo > PDF is also K-only. The Affinity Photo methods appears to be more reliable than Photoshop. Question How do CMYK values show up when the Photoshop K-only image is opened in Affinity Photo? Is it possible that Photoshop does not discard the color information?

A big thank you! I never saw the K-only button. In Photoshop, this is quite a bit more involved. Bravo to Affinity and, again, a big thanks to you, Walt. Walton

Thank you . . . yes, I set up a file in CMYK. I set the color to C00 M00 Y00 K50 and made a swatch of middle gray. Yes, when I check the result, the PDF is C00 M00 Y00 K50. But how to convert (I should have said convert, my bad) existing images to K-only values? Walton