Businessfotos Posted December 13, 2019 Share Posted December 13, 2019 Hi there, I just ran into a problem with a design I'm currently working on: I work in Publisher and have placed a colored rectangle as a background. On top of that I placed an image I manipulated in AF Photo. That image contains transparency. When printing a test on my home printer there is a color offset around the placed image i.e. the background color does not match the surrounding color. I made sure all documents are in CMYK as the file will be printed professionally. All files are set to the same color profile. I've saved the image in the following formats to evaluate differences: afphoto, PDF, PNG, TIF and PSD. All have transparency applied, the resulting color offset is not be seen on screen (which is calibrated) but in my test print. Any idea what I can try to solve this? I've tried to recreate the design in AF Designer but it shows the same problem. The attached snapshot shows the result from my AF Designer attempt. I need to get the files over to the printer on mondän so I'm a bit in a hurry … any help welcome! Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dutchshader Posted December 13, 2019 Share Posted December 13, 2019 If possible, could you post the afphoto file? Quote intel core i5, 16GB 128Gb ssd win10 Pro Huion new 1060plus. philips 272p 2560x1440px on intel HD2500 onboard graphics Razer Tartarus Chroma Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 13, 2019 Share Posted December 13, 2019 (...) Businessfotos 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Businessfotos Posted December 14, 2019 Author Share Posted December 14, 2019 Hey, thanks a lot for the quick answers! I actually wasn't aware of the fact that my CMYK-file would get printed as RGB-data on my home printer but this sounds most likely to be the source of trouble. I tried to print a PDF exported as X1a-standard but to no avail. Still showing artifacts. I will talk to my commercial printer guy which settings I should use and hope their RIP will rasterize properly. I just wasn't sure if any parts of my workflow were incorrect. Have a nice weekend! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted December 14, 2019 Staff Share Posted December 14, 2019 Hi Businessfotos, Welcome to the forums When printing the file at home, please navigate to the Rasterisation tab and make sure that Rasterise Entire Page is checked - this should hopefully allow the print to work as expected when using your home printer! Businessfotos 1 Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Businessfotos Posted December 14, 2019 Author Share Posted December 14, 2019 Bingo! That trick did the job! What I did is rasterize the layer containing the transparency within AF Publisher. But I believe it might as well work when choosing to rasterize everything when exporting to PDF (in PDF settings). However I think this is only needed when printing on my office printer, isn't it? Official PDF X1 and X3 export does not suggest to rasterize everything … Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 14, 2019 Share Posted December 14, 2019 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Dan C Posted December 16, 2019 Staff Share Posted December 16, 2019 I'm glad to hear this helped! On 12/14/2019 at 12:55 PM, Businessfotos said: However I think this is only needed when printing on my office printer, isn't it? Most likely, yes - however this does depend on the Colour Format of your document, the image in question and the printer being used. I would always recommend rasterising layers before print wherever possible, but I do understand this is not always possible/ideal. Quote Please note - I am currently out of the office for a short while whilst recovering from surgery (nothing serious!), therefore will not be available on the Forums during this time. Should you require a response from the team in a thread I have previously replied in - please Create a New Thread and our team will be sure to reply as soon as possible. Many thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Businessfotos Posted December 17, 2019 Author Share Posted December 17, 2019 On 12/14/2019 at 6:10 PM, Lagarto said: It is interesting that this did not have any effect on the matter, as PDF X1a does flatten all transparencies (which are the likely cause for the problem in the first place). It does not, however, rasterize e.g. fonts, etc., which "Rasterize Everything" export setting and "Rasterize Entire Page" printer setting do. So did you try the mere printer setting to correct the problem, or did you just use the method to rasterize the actual layers in the project itself before printing? Yes, I rasterized the layer within Publisher then exported as PDF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Businessfotos Posted December 17, 2019 Author Share Posted December 17, 2019 Turned out I'm having sort of prolonged problems with my PDFs from Publisher. Sorry to bother again … After I understood that the transparency-problem was only on my local office printer, I decided to send a proper PDF/X-3 to the commercial printer yesterday. This is what I usually do when working with commercial printshops and so far I had no problem. This very printshop normally prints traffic-signs and is the only vendor we could find to produce our 12 prints on aluminium and ship solid metal-frames as well to put the signs up in public. So this is a bit delicate when it comes to choosing a different vendor. Short, my PDF made problems. It was a single file with 12 pages + back. I then rasterized the whole pages within Publisher and exported them as single PDF/X-3 files just to make sure. Still they say they get weird documents on opening. Turned out they open my PDFs in Corel19! I wasn't aware a commercial printer would use such a software (I only used CorelDraw around 25y ago during my apprenticeship in computer graphics and it was a pain in the butt). I do not know but would assume they rather should use Acrobat for opening and printing the file. As I do not own Acrobat at the moment (Apple Preview does the job pretty well) I can not use the Preflight-Mode. Any other way to check my files? I am still not sure wether this is a problem with my/Publishers files or within the printshop. Just in case you want to check my files, you find them here: Link removed for matters of privacy. I´ve added a single page exported as PDF/X-1, PSD and EPS for them to check, but haven't heard back. Would like get help Thanks, Till PS: I´m attaching screenshots I got from the commercial printer. This is how my PDF looks on their computer running Corel19 … Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Businessfotos Posted December 17, 2019 Author Share Posted December 17, 2019 Thank you so much for spending your time and checking my files! Good to hear my PDFs are o.k. which means Publisher is working correctly. I will talk to the printshop guy tomorrow and see wether he can open the .psd file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 The issue isn't about compression. The issue is not unchecking the Allow advanced features checkbox. The Affinity application pdfs should then load into CD: If this was my job, I would redo the pdfs. Only I wouldn't rasterize the pages. I would convert the text to curves during the pdf export. lacerto and Businessfotos 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 I have no issues printing with transparency in pdfs with any of my 3 printers. But without seeing how the original file is made I have no idea if the print establishment will. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 4 hours ago, Lagarto said: ... I tested with a few pdfs some of which had just embedded Arial (= installed font, and pdf created in the same system where it is opened), and if I chose to open the pdf with fonts converted to curves, I got no text at all, and in another instance got the text rendered in all wrong size! So I would not rely on CorelDRAW's ability to create outlines if embedded fonts are not installed, even if it many times works fine... Affinity applications' pdfs with characters beyond the Basic plane, even if they seem properly encoded, are (nearly) always improperly converted to curves improperly in CD. Here's a sample. On the left is an APub-generated pdf/x-4, on the right one made in Q. I disabled the font after creating the sample pdfs in both applications, started CD and opened them. There has only been a few applications which generate pdfs CD has issues with that I've run across. However, in even those cases, pdfToolbox has successfully converted type to curves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 22 minutes ago, Lagarto said: ...Could you try if pdfToolbox manages to render this Affinity Publisher created PDF, which in CorelDRAW produces nonsense, when imported text as curves (see below): ... Sure. Two pdfs in the attatched zip file attached. Even with older versions of Acrobat one can do it. With newer DC versions there is a better method. Gotta remember, it is callas (the makers of pdfToolbox) that license all the preflight and routines to Adobe. So the DC versions of Acrobat DC Pro do it as easily. From pdfToolbox: fonttest_fromapub-a.pdf From Acrobat 11 Pro: fonttest_fromapub-b.pdf It's 11:30 pm here. I'm shutting down for the night... fonttest_fromapub.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 (...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Businessfotos Posted December 18, 2019 Author Share Posted December 18, 2019 Thanks a lot for all your help! I‘ve now sent both .psd files and new PDFs with advanced options disabled. Hope they can print the PDFs for better quality. However, I have the same issue with the .psd export mentioned above: All layers are included but needs to be released from being clipping masks. That’s strange as it happens despite any changes made to the export options. I see this in Photoshop as well as in AF Designer/Photo. This seems to be a bug, doesn’t it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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