Making 100% black? AD 1.8.1

[stevenh]

Been using the Affinity suite for about 6months, like many wanting to break the ties to all things Adobe - and overall have liked where this is going.

BUT - simple color space and swatches seem a bit harder that they need to be. I'm having to always triple check blacks before saving/output to eps files.

Easy to see the confusion:

• Make a CMYK doc for commercial printing.
• Fill a square from the GRAY swatches - swatch labeled  "Black 45%".  
• Double click and Affinity shows that in the color slider. 
• Read in the CMYK pallet = not 45K at all. Exporting to eps uses the rich black as well.

What am I missing? I feel quite dumb, and I've worked in pre-press and design many years.

When I open an Affinity doc, and work in 4/C Process, the 100% black swatch being 4c is quite frustrating. If I want a rich black, I'll build one as 60-40-40-100

Been reading up on workarounds in the forum, but the issue seems far from resolved.

[walt.farrell]

The Grays swatches are RGB, not CMYK. The 3 swatches on the right are CMYK:

[stevenh]

Thank you for the quick reply. You have been quite a help to many on this forum. (I had found those swatches, and going forward, will always make document specific pallet.)

To me, the issue is that clicking the RGB gray swatch indicates it is single color CMYK. Why would I assume anything other than that is how to is made?
There would be no question at all if the swatch popped up as a 4c gray.

Only the GRAY swatch pallet does this. The other pre-installed swatches (Apple, System Web etc) do not show a color mix when clicking. You must find the color mix from the FILL swatch at the top of the page, where you can pick your color space. I get that in the full color picker, I can see a swatch in all colorspaces, but the swatches pallet should show me the color as it is applied in my document.

 

[lepr]

@stevenh: I've attached a zipped CMYK palette of K percentages that you can import into your Affinity apps.

K %.afpalette.zip

[stevenh]

Exactly how the Gray swatches should be. Thanks for the time saver.

[Boldlinedesign]

Thanks @anon2 - that is helpful for when I design for screen print.

[walt.farrell]

How did you the CMYK Sliders showing at the bottom of the Swatches panel, @stevenh?

My Swatches panel doesn't seem to show them.

[lepr]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

How did you the CMYK Sliders showing at the bottom of the Swatches panel, @stevenh?

My Swatches panel doesn't seem to show them.

It's the swatch editor; double-click a swatch to open it.

[walt.farrell]

Thanks, @anon2.

My next question for @stevenh, then, is how he got the sliders to show 0/0/0/45?

When I double-click on the Black 45% swatch in the Grays palette, I get this:

[stevenh]

Interestingly enough - I did nothing! In fact I just did it again, thinking maybe I did something odd...

• Created new doc - CMYK/8 300pdi
• Opened Gray swatches.
• Applied. Thats it.
• Using AD 1.8.1
• Behavior is same in APhoto 1.8.1

Clicking the FILL swatch in the top tool bar shows the 4/C gray. Here is a QT movie... Seeing your slider, Walt just makes me all the more curious as to what we are doing differently. 

[lepr]

The place to see the true colour mode of a swatch or object's fill/stroke is the Colour panel in Sliders mode and with the mode padlock disengaged. Other panels can deceptively display values converted to the mode to which the panel was previously set (the same behaviour as the Colour panel when its padlock is engaged), regardless of the actual mode of a colour definition.

[stevenh]

Really enjoy and appreciate all the feedback from Dedicated Users like yourselves.

Thank you