Color issues

[michaelreilly]

Hi all, 

The final print for my design in Affinity publisher is just not looking great.  I won't at all be surprised if there is some user error here, but I've done a ton of debugging, and I'm hoping you might have some insight. I have a really expensive printer that prints 1200 dpi, so I'd hope to get a clean print (and I get crisper prints from Word document exports).  I'm also needing to use smaller fonts, so crispness is really important.  

Summary of the main issues: 

1. There is a lack of crispness to my printed text. Grainy/hazy
2. Black text on top of color has almost a white haze around it

Setup summary:

1. $6000 office printer, Sharp MX 3640N with correctly installed driver.  I also ran registration adjustment and color calibration adjustments on the printer, to try and 'align' the CMYK printed dots
2. When printing, I select, 'fine' for print mode', and 'very sharp', for sharpness in the print dialogue 

Attachment summary: 

1. AFPUB design file (scrubbed of personal/firm identifiers)
2. PDF Export of design (using the PDF/X4 presets)
3. 600 dpi scan of the printed result while using 'colorimetric' in print dialogue (with annotations showing problem areas)
4. 600 dpi scan of the printed result while using 'standard' image type in print dialogue
5. Screenshots from print dialogue 
6. 600 dpi scan of a printed page from a word document exported to PDF. 

Comments

1. The text in the table is set up as a 'global' black, with CMY=0, K=100, with both spot and overprint.  Same with the disclosure sentence on the bottom.  However, I'm still seeing yellow in the printed output, so somehow in either the PDF export, or sending to the printer, this color has been changed. 
2. When printing with the 'standard' image type, the colors are just not right. and my blues end up being too light. Also, the white haze behind the printed table text is worse. 
3. When printing 'colorimetric' image type, the colors are closer to my design.   Both scans show the 'yellow' in text that should have zero CMY, and only K. 
4. I'm working in the CMYK color space, exporting PDF-X4, but it seems something is messing up with the CMYK defined values.
5. I tried using similar font size in a word document, exporting to PDF, and printing with the exact same settings.  It looks much more crisp, and no yellow. 

Any advice??  Any other things that might help you give advice or debug?? 

Thanks in advance. 

AFPUB_Model_Performance_2020_Q1_scrubbed.afpub PDF_Model_Performance_2020_Q1_scrubbed.pdf Scan_Standard_600dpi.pdf Scan_Colorimetric_600dpi.pdf Scan_PDFexport_WordDoc_Colorimetric_600dpi.pdf

[michaelreilly]

Exporting to PDF (I attached the PDF export). 

Then opening on Preview on my Mac, and printing from there. 

[lacerto]

(...)

[michaelreilly]

47 minutes ago, BofG said:

Hope that is of some help.

Thank you, I will take a look at these, I do see a 'trapping' option. 

39 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

The text in the table part is K100 and it overprints so the yellowishness and knockout artifacts (halos) seem to be resulting from the printing environment (appearing that whatever you have in your PDF will get converted to RGB when sent to the printer).  I do not know the capabilities of Preview but I'd try Adobe Acrobat Pro or something similar that should be able to send printer data in CMYK. 

Thanks. I'll mess around with the Adobe Acrobat Reader free version first to see if there's anything in there... I'd love to not need an adobe creative cloud subscription (but if all else fails I can certainly load a trial and experiment). 

41 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

The upper part has black in four-color CMYK, is there any specific reason for that, as that will certainly result in less crisp output. 

For the black color, I was mainly debugging with the table text and disclosure sentence at the bottom, since it was small font/italics and most sensitive to the issue. 

That brings up a question though... my understanding of 'black' colors is that layering CMY within the K will result in a deeper/richer black, and that K100 black alone is more pale.  Perhaps when printing font size 8, it's better to just use the K100 because any slight offset in the inks will result in those artifacts/fuzziness...  Is this just a tradeoff when doing non-commercial printing?  Sacrificing the richness of the blacks in order to have sharp output?  Is that just all dependent on the printer capability and calibration?   Should I make sure all of my blacks are K100 with overprint? 

[lacerto]

(...)

[michaelreilly]

54 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

But the main issue I think is whether you actually can output to your printer according to data you have in your PDF. Now it seems that you cannot, as colers get converted.

Agreed, this is certainly what I'm trying to nail down first. 

26 minutes ago, BofG said:

Did you try that "pure black print" slider all the way to the left?

Not yet unfortunately... I've been working from home, but I'll be stopping by the office this evening and will give that a shot.... I'm certainly hopeful for it, as well as your 'Trapping' suggestion

28 minutes ago, BofG said:

Are those two print screens the only driver options you have or is there a dedicated interface for setting up the driver?

No dedicated interface for setting up the driver, only a 'printer features' section that is added when installing the driver. Under 'Printer Features', there is only one thing related to color, referencing a 'RIP style' choice between RGB and CMYK (default was set to CMYK so I left it alone).  I'm not sure what this is, there is also a checkbox there for 'no offset' 

There is one other Color section (adding screenshot), which chooses between ColorSync, or In Printer.