Understanding recolouring in Affinity Publisher

[supajiggi]

Affinity is a great set of programs and I have a lot to learn. I am trying to change my current workflows to lend themselves to affinity publisher and I am struggling. There are lots of posts about colour but many are loosing me in the direction I should go. If someone could nudge me in the right direction, I would be most grateful. I am coming from MS publisher background and I am looking at AP as an upgrade with more commercial options.

Simple problem (or not).

I currently have a template file in MS publisher with a selection of simple mono (black) images for a business card. You select the style and print colour for your requirements as an end user.  I select your chosen style from the template file, recolour accordingly and print them off, job done.

I have set the same template system up in Affinity Publisher and discover that recolouring for the moment is a nightmare. Some images recolour if I use the "recolour" in fx, others recolour at the edge a little and others not at all and some recolour the whole image area so the original image is hidden. None recolour from the fill pallet top right, which is where I would expect it to work from. So having done a lot of reading, I discover that if you have a greyscale or black raster image, that the light grey and almost transparent pixels or artifacts at the edge can confuse the recolouring hence the edge only (think that was an Adobe PS problem).  So as a complete beginner (never even used inkscape before let alone illustrator), I go off to learn affinity designer and re draw one of the style images.

I now go to recolour and although i have clean lines, I still have no recolouring from the palette. I have success with "recolour" under fx but that is also making a simple job more complicated. By accident, working on the next image that I was having a problem with, I had exported the file in blue. Popped this into AP and it works fine straight from the palette! 

So I did an experiment and got the following:-

Exported the same image from Affinity designer as a png, transparent background twice. One fill (fill and line) set as black and the other set as blue.

Side by side, I go through the motions of using the colour pallet and fill colour to change the whole object colour. The black file does absolutely nothing and the blue file changes as I hoped for.

When I change the blue file to black fill, I get a grey and not black.

In my original template file I have bumped into "K Only", in the menu bar, this is not present in my test file, which I do not know why. So I set up the same side by side again and toggle the "K Only. I find the black image does nothing and the blue image (gold fill at the time) becomes much thicker as though double filled. I also noted if toggle the "K only" on the original not recoloured blue image, I get grey without doubling the thickness.

A direction to understanding how colour works in Affinity especially Publisher would be greatly appreciated as things are making no sense and so I am getting lost.

PDF of screenshots attached.

 

Many thanks for your time.

Ian

 

Blue_test_results.pdf

[GarryP]

You can recolour an Image layer by selecting a Fill Colour from the Swatches Panel or changing the Fill Colour in other ways (Colour Panel etc.)
You can recolour an image within a Picture Frame by selecting the image layer within the Pictrure Frame and selecting a Fill Colour from the Swatches Panel or changing the Fill Colour in other ways (Colour Panel etc.)
Pixel layers, as far as I know, can’t be recoloured in the same way as above and may need to have a Recolour Adjustment applied.
You can also recolour any layer by putting another coloured layer over it and giving it a colour and using a Blend Mode.
My attached sample image and file should give you some ideas but there will be a lot of different ways to do what you want.
Does any of this help?

recolour-examples.afpub

[supajiggi]

9 hours ago, GarryP said:

You can recolour an Image layer by selecting a Fill Colour from the Swatches Panel

 

Hi Garry and thank you for taking the time to reply and add a file to review, greatly appreciated. I would like to refer to your above opening few words. I cannot select and use a colour from the swatches panel which is where I would prefer to work from for this particular scenario. It would appear that I am not the only one, after my original post, I bumped in to an older post from 2016. I just do not understand!

Accepted, having cleaned up my images , I can us fx colour overlay as a for instance to get to where I want to be but I have not found anything in help that explains that you cannot recolour a black line drawing from the swatch panel which was my first port of call. I have attached the test file so you can see  ( or not if it is a setting at my end) what I mean, I have also added a third version as an additional test.

So accepting that there is more than one way to kill a car (sorry cat), here is my test:-

 

Three identical png files created in Designer and saved with transparent back grounds.

1st image is 100% black line drawing. I can fx overlay but I cannot change its colour from the swatches panel.

2nd image, same as above but saved in blue. Can recolour from the swatches panel till the cows come home but cannot recolour in black, only grey. 

3rd image, same as above but saved as a rich black rgb 0,25,25 i.e NOT black. This has the same outcome as the 100% black image.

 

I spent 2 nights on this because I started with a black image and so new no different and I came across colour acting totally different by accident.

My conclusion, only from newbie experience is that if it is not explained in help, has been mentioned before in a topic without a full resolution (as in did a workaround but not explained) then it must be a bug. there must be a tonal point that AP recognises that colour is present as in test 3.

My current workflow is now:-

Create the full set of images in colour, not black.

Use the swatch panel document palette to change those colours as required except for black.

If black is required, change the colour in fx using overlay to mask the colour underneath.

That is a work around and works fine but in my humble opinion cannot be right.

 

I thank you greatly for the file and am digesting how you did things. Your comments on above would be greatly appreciated.

 

Many thanks again.

 

Ian

 

 

 

Recoour_problem_2.afpub

[GarryP]

Thanks for the extra information.

I believe that you can’t recolour an Image Layer that contains only the colour black by selecting a Fill Colour from the Swatches Panel because that functionality only affects colours that don’t share the same RGB values (e.g. white (000000), greys (505050) and black (FFFFFF)).
I think this is expected behaviour but I don’t know why. Someone with more experience may be able to give more details.

The only way I can think of at the moment to recolour an image that contains only the colour black with a Swatch colour is to add a Colour Overlay Effect and choose the colour from a Swatch. However, someone else might be able to offer another method. (You can add a layer filled with a Swatch Colour over the Image layer and use a Blend Mode – as in one of my examples in my last post – but the colours don’t always look ‘right’ to me.)

I don’t have much experience of sophisticated colour use as my work is normally quite basic so I’m not the best person to get the best advice from in this case. Hopefully someone else will read this and give you a better answer (which I can also learn from).

[Ray S.]

Hi Guys,

just an idea, try using the "Gradient Map Adjustment" to recolor black lines.

[supajiggi]

@GarryP

hi Gary, again, thank you for taking the time to reply. Yes as mentioned I do have a work around and as Ray S has pointed out, there is almost certainly more than one. I am just suprised that there is no official straight explanation (that I have found) that explains that you cannot use the swatches panel for recolouring black.

Where you mention you only do basic things, that is my point too, I just have a simple set of line drawing that needs to be recoloured with five different solid pantone colours on a regular ongoing basis as it is an end product that is sold again and again.That to me is about as basic as you can get in Affinity capability terms. So my mission was to set up one AP file with the five designs (as master pages) and a simple method to recolour at will any of those designs at any point. I can now do it as per my previous post but would appreciate an explanation from those wonderful people from Serif so that I understand how it works to broaden by knowledge of Affinity and as this topic has been brought up before, it may help other newbies too.

Thank you again, you have been a great help.

 

Ian

[supajiggi]

@Ray S.

 

Hi Ray and thank you for your thoughts, will take a look at that a little later on.

 

Many thanks

 

Ian

[Ray S.]

I made a screenshot of what I figured out, maybe this will help you .

[supajiggi]

@Ray S.

Hi Ray,

Thank you for that, it certainly is a good work around and I am very grateful for your input.

Best regards

 

Ian

[buschbrand]

Does it work with spot colours, too?

[supajiggi]

2 hours ago, buschbrand said:

Does it work with spot colours, too?

@buschbrand

Hi

 

Buschband, I use pantone colours for my project above and set them as global and spot colours in the Document Palette. So yes Ray S Solution does work with spot colours. Just go to fx and recolour, in the recolour panel single click the colour block and then select "swatches" from the drop down (probably showing as tint), then your document palette will be available to you as well as other colour and pantone swatches.

Hope this helps.

Best regards

 

Ian