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Black in Permanent Swatch


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It is my understanding that the Gray-Scale Swatch to the right of the drop-down menu is permanent. See the screenshot (red arrow). Although I find this swatch very useful, the black is not black. It is a dark shade of gray, as you can see from my screenshot. I cannot find a menu from which to change this. Is there a hidden preference menu from which I can change the colors in this permanent menu? 

Thanks in advance,

KC

 

Black-vs-True-Black.thumb.JPG.c7e6955c1280ade7ff6109a866987c6d.JPG

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The swatch you have pointed out with the red arrow is, as far as I know, permanent and can’t be changed.
What is the Colour Format of your document?
If you have set it to CMYK then you won’t get a ‘total black’ but something that I think is called a ‘rich black’ instead.
I’m not the best person to answer questions on CMYK (I don’t use it) but there are plenty of posts about it in the forums. Try searching for ‘cmyk black’, or this thread https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/100063-100-black-is-converted-to-cmyk/&tab=comments#comment-535646 contains a discussion on a similar subject.

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9 minutes ago, GarryP said:

If you have set it to CMYK then you won’t get a ‘total black’ but something that I think is called a ‘rich black’ instead.

That does not make this any clearer... 

Usually users want black in CMYK documents to be 100K. That is not as dark as CMYK can produce, which is why it is presented as dark grey.

Darker is rich black, which add CMY percentages to K to make colour darker. Unfortunately when doing colour space transformations black tends to convert according profile rules, which serve well for photographic images, resulting not 100K nor 100K+CMY%, but percentages of all CMYK colours.

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13 hours ago, KCP said:

It is my understanding that the Gray-Scale Swatch to the right of the drop-down menu is permanent.

No, at least in the Mac versions of the Affinity apps like any other palette it can be deleted or other values can be added to it. If you try to delete it, you must confirm that is what you want to do, but clicking "Yes" will delete it:

1931240067_Confirmdelete.jpg.78c4332cc283f0be4d787595d0c9701c.jpg

You could also add a C:0 M:0 Y:0 K:100 black to it & even rename the default  "Black" to "Black (rich)" or some such if you want, but I am not sure it makes any sense to do so. 

13 hours ago, KCP said:

I cannot find a menu from which to change this.

Deleting, importing, & exporting palettes and more can be done via the popup 'burger' menu in the Swatches panel.

1795737848_blacksmod.jpg.0c95b3fdbe1f12c0a9f7e58aa0f0136f.jpg

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6 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Unfortunately it is not a grayscale ramp, no matter what your document color mode is. It is an RGB based palette in all color modes (even in Gray/8), and when exporting a print PDF where assignments from the "Grays" palette are used, these colors are always rendered as rich black. 

Except one can change them to actual values of K only. Which is what I did when I first started using Affinity applications. 

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17 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Except one can change them to actual values of K only. Which is what I did when I first started using Affinity applications. 

Alternately, it is possible to create a new 'K only' palette in addition to the default Grey palette, or add various 'K only' colors to an existing palette (including the default Grey one).

In general, it is probably a good idea to export any default palettes one intends to change before changing them to a backup folder so they could be imported at some future time if desired. Typical .afpalette files are small, only a few KB at most, so they won't use much storage space.

Anyway, just for giggles I created this K only greys.afpalette (< 1KB). It only took a few minutes to create but I skipped all the 5% increments so there are just 11 values.

1310320259_Konly.jpg.9213d4b5d94ff74e48400f9ba7932457.jpg

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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3 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

What do you mean, can the inbuilt palette definitions somehow be modified?

On Macs, you just need to right-click on a value & choose "Edit Fill" from the popup menu. I assume it is the same for Windows.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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The reality that I once expressed a long time ago is that when I create a cmyk document, the gray palette should be defined in cmyk. It would be easy enough for Serif to have implemented this, but the suggestion was rejected and the way in which palettes are defined defended.

Lagarto, glad R C-R got you sorted out. Do note that once upon a time one needed to move the slider for the 100% K down, then back to 100% for it to actually change. Maybe all of them. I cannot remember. And perhaps I needed to update defaults, too. Again, it's been too long for me to remember.

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Thank you all for the information. It never occurred to me that it was only in CMYK, which, indeed, it is. The CMYK black turns to pure black when I change the color space to RGB. I feel foolish for not thinking that through before opening a forum. I've spent most of my career working in Photoshop. I've prepared numerous PS files for CMYK printing, and always refer to the Proof-Colors, function, although the blacks always look the same. Not recognizing this in AD appears to be a newbie mistake. 

One of the threads (100% Black is converted to CMYK) opened by HerrSchulz presented what appears to be an issue with AD in this regard. There was quite a bit discussed in that thread, although his comment about making a living and not having available time to pursue a time-consuming learning curve of what he seemed to mean as hacks or workarounds resonates with me. I need to be able to use this software as efficiently as AI or begrudgingly bite the bullet and return to Adobe's subscription-based model. 

AD has some amazing attributes, although every time I try to work in it efficiently, I come across another lack of a time-saving function that is available in AI. The lack of a shapebuilder is one glaring example. I'd be okay with using the divide function in the boolean panel if it worked, although it doesn't. It divides the large parts along with numerous slivers along the dividing lines, which leave visible gaps along those lines. And then the program will crash if you try to do anything with them. Anyway, as a new user who approached this software as a working alternative to Adobe, it does not feel ready for prime time. I would be willing to pay twice as much or more for the software if those issues were resolved and it rivaled Adobe pound-for-pound.

Thanks again for the help,

KC

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8 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

The same on PC, I just have not understood that this is something that stays (contrary to doc and app palettes), so never have bothered to edit these values!

Changes made to Application palettes are permanent, stored in the per user fills.propcol file (which is why I suggested exporting the defaults before changing them). Document palettes are not saved anywhere except in the document.

The Swatches panel burger menu has choices for creating any of the supported palette types & for importing exported ones to any of them.

Note: I only mention the following because you may see references to them or screenshots showing them, so if you are a Windows user may wonder why they are not there. On Macs only there is a third type of palette called "System" palettes. They are not stored in Affinity or any other apps, but they can be created using the Apple Color Picker or in Mac apps like Affinity that support using & creating them. Any preexisting System color palettes are automatically added to the Palettes category dropdown choices in Affinity & marked with an Apple logo.

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1 minute ago, Lagarto said:

Yet I cannot do either. Can this really be done, and if this does not work, what would could I do to fix this?

All I can tell you is this can be done in the Mac versions, & from what @MikeW said that at least changing the default values can be done in the Windows ones. Beyond that, I don't know enough about Windows or the Windows Affinity apps to suggest what you could do so it all works for you. :(

Hopefully, another Windows user or a staff member will reply & help you with that.

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As I mentioned briefly in an earlier reply, I am reasonably sure that application palettes for both Macs & PCs are stored in the per user fills.propcol file. A forum search on that filename will offer you several topics explaining where that file lives in the various versions, which varies depending on which store you bought the app from as well as which OS (Mac or Windows) you use.

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First, I have to say that I am not sure which Affinity app(s) the topic is about, or if that makes a difference, but I have done a few tests with the Mac retail version of Designer & the current Mac Publisher beta, & from that it seems that there are considerable differences vs. the Windows versions.

For one thing, I have no "Default" Swatches palette & I do not think I ever did. I tried renaming the fills.propcol files with an added ".old" suffix so on restart the apps ignored them created new ones, & still no "Default."

For another, there is only one change in my swatches palette choices after the restart with a newly created fills.propcol file, that being the removal of the custom "Natural Color System" application palette I had created myself:

1618894220_PubBetaSwatchesMac.jpg.2ad47666bd4388c51691abaaa87e6b15.jpg 950253767_PubBetaSwatchesMacreset.jpg.9108c669768eda543b21600fe9ba2669.jpg

I am reasonably sure all the others are either factory defaults or the System ones with the Apple badges automatically added to Affinity & every other Mac app I have that supports system color palettes. EZDraw Windows 16 & (I think) Web Safe Colors are add ons left over from old apps, Affinity Swatches 1 is one I created i the Apple Color Picker app, & the other 3 are standard Mac OS ones.

EDIT: I forgot to add what might be the most relevant detail, that being that none of the Apple badged ones permit renaming, editing, or deleting either individual swatches or the palette itself. I can delete any of them via the Finder, but not in any app that supports Mac system palettes.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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