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PDF-Export problem: Black Text is not 100 % K in PDF


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3 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Agreed. The descricption (literally "Preserve Numbers") is accurate enough (or at least intuitive) though I might myself use the expression "Keep Color Values". 

Absolutely so – it took me quite a long time to finally grasp what "numbers" InDesign was referring to... To be perfectly clear "Keep Color Values of non-Image Objects" would be even better.

 

8 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

As when you switch a CMYK color profile from e.g. one that allows TAC of 330 (like ISO Coated) to something that allows less (like ISO Coated 300, or any profile for uncoated stock), color translation should really be performed (so that numbers should NOT be preserved)

I seem to differ from you here:
I actually think that any colour translation should be default be applied ONLY to images as "normal" colours which you'd generally apply manually to any object (vector – or possibly – black & white or greyscale images) wouldn't hardly be the plus 300% coverage kind and should be left as set (see my example of a logo with clearly defined CMYK values).

Maybe there could be an option(!) to convert these coulors as well, if one decidedly wants to.

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2 hours ago, Lorox said:

Choosing the settings from your screenshot doesn't make  a difference: 100 K black is converted to 70C/60M/58Y/84K when the profile used for PDF output differs from the document' s profile.

What app do you use to inspect the color values? – I get the following result for 3 variants, shown in Acrobat X Pro (v10), left to right:
a.) embed YES, convert NO (default preset)
b.) embed NO, convert YES
c.) embed NO, convert NO
Both b.) and c.) still show the 100 K black if the profile gets switched on view from the document profile "PSO Coated v3" into another cmyk profile, e.g. "eciCMYK":

v183 black text & doc col space_embYES-convNO.pdf
v183 black text & doc col space_embNO-convYES.pdf
v183 black text & doc col space_embNO-convNO.pdf

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Hi thomaso,

I'm using Acrobat Pro 9.5.5:

  • v183 black text & doc col space_embYES-convNO.pdf  >  all blacks are "rich" RGB black (and stay this way, regardless of what I set as the simulation profile in Acrobat Pro)  – when I change the profile I see subtle changes in colours of the pics (as you'd expect) – I don't have the PSO Coated v3 profile, though (as I don't ever use it)
  • v183 black text & doc col space_embNO-convYES.pdf  >  blacks behave as they should (100 K text stays that way, regardless of what I set as the simulation profile) – pics' colours change a bit (as expected)
  • v183 black text & doc col space_embNO-convNO.pdf  >  blacks behave as they should (100 K text stays that way, regardless of what I set as the simulation profile) – pics' colours change a bit (as expected)

This seems to correspond to your findings, doesn't it?

As soon as I have time for it, I'll double check the PDFs I've exported myself to see if I can replicate this.

But – be it as it may – it's certainly more than a bit unsettling that for the time being it seems so hard for Affinity Publisher to offer the easy and (most of the time) flawless PDF output which InDesign has been offering for years by now. With Publisher it still feels to me like you actually have to fight for your PDFs to come out right and that's definitely not good for an app used in a real life print production workflow...

With one of my last jobs there still were RGB-elements in my PDF although the file's colour space was CMYK (ISO coated v2 profile) and the profile set for PDF export was CMYK. It took quite a bit of trial and error before the PDFs were finally OK...

What I also miss dearly is the ability to actually convert RGB colours to CMYK within Publisher or (at least) to just globally replace an offending RGB colour with a specially created new CMYK swatch. Sometimes when you're using external elements (e.g. logos supplied by clients) these are not necessarily in CMYK colour mode and their RGB colours sort of "spam" your colour palette. Actually the whole colour swatches/palette thing is not actually convincing in the Affinity apps, I'd say... You cannot even – like in the Adobe apps – "add used" colours (or "colours in use"), can you? Meaning colours you mixed and just assigned to an object without creating a swatch – or colours from objects you pasted into your document. You can do this in InDesign easily and it's really annoying to me that you cannot in Publisher (unless I missed something here).

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  • 2 months later...

I feel like I've come to this party a bit late, but hoping Lagato etc. will be able to suggest a thing or two, or just confirm what I'm doing looks OK. I've read through this entire subject which seems overly complicated compared with my previous years of InDesign and Quark. But I guess this is how it is in Publisher for now so I must deal with it! For the last 10 years I've only used two printers and I've never been asked for any specific PDF format or colour space so I'm completely unfamiliar with PDFX. I just make CMYK documents some with RGB images and I just save a generic press ready PDF, all spots and RGBs converted to CMYK. Some might call this a little basic, but I've always had nice looking books and reports. So despite my years, here's the noobie question, what exactly happens with PDFX3 compared with say a standard Quark "Press Ready" PDF and is it any better than PDFX4? Messing around with some settings I think I've found the right combination. Attached is what I've come to (based on some suggestions earlier) for my CMYK report. RGB images will convert to CMYK without the laborious task of editing the originals, and most importantly all the text will remain K only. I've checked "Convert image colour space" as I presume that covers the RGB to CMYK images? "Looking OK here?

Screen Shot 2020-09-11 at 18.38.09.png

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  • 2 months later...
On 7/3/2020 at 7:54 AM, thomaso said:

This was reported as unexpected annoyance quite a few times. It seems to be related to default presets (e.g. "for print"), in particular to their activated option "Embed profile" with non-active "Convert image colors".

As pointed out by Lagarto here, if you switch these checkbox activation then the exported PDF may appear correctly even if viewed from another profile.
Note: this does not add an "Output Intent" as with PDF/X export.

1009776092_exportprintpresetembedvsconvert.jpg.a872d6db8658b5bdf3331331e32dfb33.jpg

brand new user of Affinity.... been using Quark and InDesign for nearly 30 years.... this really is clunky from Affinity.... but THANKS Lagarto... these settings work...

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  • 4 weeks later...

As I used to have some issues with my PDFs for professional printing (mainly Black not being 100% K but some CMYK-mix) I just want to share my latest findings.
Ah, and this applies to Publisher (only) as I haven't yet created any PDFs for print with Designer (and – neither having done so with Illustrator in the past – I don't think I will).

Anyway, when fiddling around with Publisher (CMYK document) lately I noticed that some text I'd assigned „Black“ as the fill colour seemingly proved to be just 100% K (as intended) when looked up (double clicked) directly from the „Greys"  (in "Swatches") panel but – strangely – being a mix of CMYK when looked (double clicked) up from the ”Colour" panel. (see screenshots)

I couldn't make any sense of this and found myself completely confused after some clicking here or there just to find out what colour was actually assigned...

I then decided to get rid of the default ”Greys" swatches (including "Black“) altogether as I felt I just couldn't trust them to be what I thought they should be (in a CMYK document, at least...). Instead I created a new application palette comprising of K-only Greys (including a 100K Black).

Then I created the document attached here using the 100K Black from that palette and exported it to PDF with the export settings as seen in the screen shot. Checking the PDF with Acrobat Pro proved that everything was actually as it should be – on first try!

I'll keep an eye on this – maybe there'll be no second and third exports needed anymore... (fingers crossed)

Bildschirmfoto 2020-12-31 um 19.00.35.png

Bildschirmfoto 2020-12-31 um 19.00.53.png

ColourTest_AffinityPublisher_ISOcoatedv2_300_Export-Serttings.png

ColourTest_AffinityPublisher_ISOcoatedv2_300.pdf ColourTest_AffinityPublisher_ISOcoatedv2_300.afpub

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/3/2020 at 2:54 PM, thomaso said:

 

1009776092_exportprintpresetembedvsconvert.jpg.a872d6db8658b5bdf3331331e32dfb33.jpg

 

Thanks for this hint, it has brought me on the right path, so to speak.

I had troubles to export a simple K=100 vector logo as a plain PDF from Designer. Something that's been a no-brainer with Illfrustrator CS ever since.

Apart from Embed Profiles = NO, having "Use document profile" selected is also crucial: While you cannot actually unselect it yourself, the menu will be empty if you have just switched e.g. from Color Space RGB to Color Space CMYK while editing a preset. The RGB color space applies to the "PDF digital" presets. So if you don't switch to a full CMYK preset in advance, switching the color space in an RGB preset to CMYK will blank the Profile menu. That will ultimately result in a 4-color black export, no matter what.

And that's a bug, not a feature.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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