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TIFF with Pantone color changes to CMYK in PDF


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I have a label design in Affinity Designer with a tiff image. Tiff image is colored with Pantone in AD. When I export to PDF, tiff color changes to CMYK. All vector objects with Pantone color export as expected, only tiff has the problem. Am I doing something wrong?

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Pantone colours are actually best thought of as Inks (physical pigments). A TIFF file is going to be pixels in CMYK (or RGB or Greyscale). The Pantone colour has to be translated into CMYK (or RGB to be accurate) for the computer, the (commercial) printer just uses the Pantone ink instead of the CMYK blend.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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@Old Bruce I'm not quite following. In Indesign/Illustrator the same process works without flaw. If tiff with Pantone color gets converted to CMYK, the colors get mixed up with underlying CMYK colors in PDF, which will not work for offset printing. Pantone colors need to be on separate color plates in PDF.

@Lagarto There are no effects on the image. And yes, it's a grayscale TIFF. I've tried checking the PDF export settings, but everything there seems fine too. I think default settings with PDF/X1a:2003 should work.

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18 minutes ago, Leijoona said:

I have a label design in Affinity Designer with a tiff image. Tiff image is colored with Pantone in AD. When I export to PDF, tiff color changes to CMYK. All vector objects with Pantone color export as expected, only tiff has the problem. Am I doing something wrong?

There is no duo-tone support in Affinity applications.

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Pantone colours are actually best thought of as Inks (physical pigments). A TIFF file is going to be pixels in CMYK (or RGB or Greyscale). The Pantone colour has to be translated into CMYK (or RGB to be accurate) for the computer, the (commercial) printer just uses the Pantone ink instead of the CMYK blend.

Your method will not produce valid results.

1 minute ago, Lagarto said:

...If it is grayscale TIFF there should be no problems.

Only if the duo-tone effect is faked. I know you do not like that word. But without real tone curve control no matter the pdf results, that is what it is. If you do not believe me, that's fine. Have your tri-tone from the other thread printed as-is without the print establishment's intervention.

Serif simply needs to include duo-tone support.

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@Lagarto Ok, now it seems I might have a wrong kind of tiff... I can't add fill color to the tiff that way. I've only been able to add color to tiff with masking a color element inside the tiff, or with color overlay effect. Neither of those seem to work. I've exported the tiff from Photoshop, with default settings. I tried flattened tiff, and transparent background (layered tiff).

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4 minutes ago, Leijoona said:

@MikeW I'm not sure I understood everything you wrote, but the tiff image I'm working with is monotone, no curve needed.

Monotone. Just follow Lagarto's instructions. 

Because of the nature of the type of ink difference, cmyk inks being translucent and spot colors being opaque, I almost always adjust the curves. But you can also do so, if needed in Affinity applications as well. It's just a process that isn't like done with say PS.

 

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Ok, half way there, maybe... I found that you can't just drag&drop an image to AD, you actually have to Place the tiff, for it to work correctly.

Now I can use the K-Only button, and I can color the image with a spot color. But the color seems like it's in overprint, the cmyk color from below is showing through the spot color. And the spot color is still not exporting in it's own color plate in PDF.

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Thanks @Lagarto for the file and for helping out. My goal is a bit different. I have a Pantone background color. On top of that color, I'm trying to put a bitmap logo, that will be done in gold foliage in the print. So the background Pantone should be covering everything, and top of that there should be a spot color logo. I've attached a file for reference. In the file you can see  the logo image has a white background in it.

Test.afdesign

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The knock out example was the one I was going for, so if AD is not supporting that, then that explains it. I went back to Indesign with this project, as the deadline is creeping in. This is a problem that I hope very seldom comes up, as normally I would just save each color plate on it's own PDF file anyway, but it was a bit problematic with this project. Unfotunately I can't upload the actual job online.

I can relate to struggling, reinventing, workarounds, and especially old routines :)

Anyway, I got my answer, and learned something new. Thanks a lot @Lagarto for taking the time to help me out :)

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Yes, no support for 1-bit images. A 1200 dpi monochrome bitmap (1200 dpi is what it should be) can be technically converted to gray, though. Then it could/should be able to be used.

There should also be discrete layers used for the various parts.

Or, just do what you did do, use ID or just about anything else. It's simpler.

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8 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

It has to be 1-bit to be able to knock out, also in InDesign. It does not help even if you have a clear-cut non-blurred grayscale.

In APub. Created as a 1-bit image. Converted to a gray image in my image editor.

Capture_000312.png.39e29f5acdff312375b94a3a394f052c.png

Capture_000310.png.e4fa72b7c70de85ac49389064641d9e8.png

Capture_000311.png.2b640f8c7e7b766f7c487ec35ed532ed.png

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33 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

That's process black knocking out. That may work if you do not have other parts in the job printing in black, or you can use it as a workaround for creating multiple plates and just hide unwanted parts. But here the point was using PMS color assignment and having it knock out the background color (also PMS). 

 

Untitled.pdf

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