TIFF with Pantone color changes to CMYK in PDF

[lacerto]

(...)

[MikeW]

1 hour ago, Lagarto said:

Wow, so it can be done, after all! How on earth? I think I have tried every possible way, not just all grayscale formats with or without transparency, including Photoshop monotones in different DCS formats but no can do. All my image manipulations within Publisher have also resultied in everything converting to CMYK. So I had just given up the hope and thought this simply cannot be done in Affinity apps, without support for 1-bit monochromes.

Can this be done so that the inks are assignable in Publisher, or does the ink need to be smuggled in the file that is placed?

Here's the sample APub file I used with a just-now little tweak.

Remember the phrase in Wizard of OZ, Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain? Applied to this file, pay no attention to the coloring of the transparent areas filled with seemingly whit color. It is either an artifact of Affinity applications' "not quite there yet" birthing pains or a bug.

And even though this can be done, Serif really needs to support 1-bit images despite their adamant refusal to do so, add proper duo-tone support and fix this colored background lie.

Mike

spot-on-spot.afpub

[lacerto]

(...)

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, MikeW said:

Remember the phrase in Wizard of OZ, Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain? Applied to this file, pay no attention to the coloring of the transparent areas filled with seemingly whit color. It is either an artifact of Affinity applications' "not quite there yet" birthing pains or a bug.

Late to the topic & probably misunderstanding much of it, but isn't the white color because the two "1" Image layers do not have any transparent areas?

spot-on-spot with alpha.afpub

[MikeW]

5 hours ago, R C-R said:

Late to the topic & probably misunderstanding much of it, but isn't the white color because the two "1" Image layers do not have any transparent areas?

spot-on-spot with alpha.afpub

The only spot color in your file is the green background layer and the red doesn't knockout the background.

The images has transparency. It is just the act of adding the Pantone colors which gives the appearance of white color.

Properly rendered, those white areas should not be present. Properly output, the white is absent and the layers survive, which for many/most output providers is also needed.

I don't know if you also created a pdf from the sample or not. And I don't know if you have a proper pdf reader to view it. But it is correct.

[MikeW]

5 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Omg, it took me yet a while to get this. Old dog hardly learns even old tricks  I have not seen anyone using this before on the forum, even if there are many threads where the lack of monochromes is complained (though I joined the forum only in start of June and have not read much older writings) ...

I believe it is mentioned in the mega thread covering 1-bit image support. I think that if someone also has an application that can make 1-bit images, they likely have something to layout/include those images in layout, too. Just a hunch. But if I have those things, why do I need any Affinity applications at all?

1-bit images and the coloring of them is so common, for Serif to dismiss them buggers belief.

[R C-R]

41 minutes ago, MikeW said:

The only spot color in your file is the green background layer and the red doesn't knockout the background.

The images has transparency. It is just the act of adding the Pantone colors which gives the appearance of white color.

All I was trying to show is that the white could be eliminated in the .afpub file. I was not commenting on why the two original image layers did not have any transparency in your spot-on-spot .afpub file, but for whatever reason they did not. It was not hard to change that, or for that matter to make the other 2 layers spot colors, but I am in no way disputing that the Affinity apps need better support for 1 bit images, pdf exports, or anything else relevant to this topic.

[MikeW]

R C-R,

The image as imported is a transparent tiff file. It's just the act of coloring with a spot color that produces its white background. Why that happens is a mystery to me. But the white has no effect on the pdf.

[lacerto]

(...)

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, MikeW said:

The image as imported is a transparent tiff file. It's just the act of coloring with a spot color that produces its white background.

I have to admit that I am confused about all this. Part of it is my lack of experience using spot colors in Affinity apps, but another part of it is that in your spot-on-spot .afpub file whatever the source file for the image might be, they are "(Image)" layers in that document.

That means you either copied & pasted them or dragged & dropped them into the .afpub document, right? Either way, as "(Image)" layers, they are not showing any transparency, as you can see from this screenshot of the Varnish 1 layer with the other layers turned off & the document set to transparent background:

(It is the same except for the color for the Pantone Yellow C "1" layer if I turn off the other layers.)

I could accept that coloring with a spot color produces the white background except that I can't reproduce that if I paste or place another image file with transparency (whether a TIFF or PNG or whatever) into an .afpub document into another .afpub document as an "(Image)" layer & then set it to use a spot color -- whatever was transparent remains transparent 

This makes me think there must be something different about the tiff files you imported but I am unsure about what that might be. I have tested with a number of CMYK TIFFs that have the same U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 color profile, but none that I have are 1 bit, & I no longer have any app that can create them.

[lacerto]

(...)

[R C-R]

47 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

No, there is simply a bug in Publisher (and assumingly also in Designer) that causes a standard 8-bit TIF grayscale with transparent background to show the white background, if the non-transparent part is colored with a spot color.

From what I can tell, the bug is not limited to spot colors: if an imported 8-bit TIF grayscale with transparency is set to any color, the non-transparent part is shown with a white background.

Do you see the same thing?

[lacerto]

(...)

[lacerto]

(...)

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Lagarto said:

UPDATE: Here is a Publisher file containing an 8-bit TIFF with a transparent background, and an 8-bit PNG file with a transparent background.

FWIW, the .afpub file apparently was created in a 1.8 beta version of APub because it will not open in the current 1.7.3 retail one.

EDIT: the .afpub file also apparently does not include embedded versions of either the tiff or png file @Lagarto used, so it is a bit hard for me to find the links to them because (no big surprise) my Mac does not have a C:\Users\Arto\Desktop\PMS\ folder! 

But regardless, the same thing happens with similar ones I created on my Mac with the retail version -- the bug is apparently limited to imported 8-bit TIF grayscale files with transparency, & it does not matter if their color is changed to a spot or regular color or if one is using the Mac or Windows version.

Edited November 18, 2019 by R C-R

[lacerto]

(...)