1 bit TIFF/Bitmap support please

[gunbunny]

1 hour ago, MikeW said:

And without support at the document level, much less the proper output support, there isn't much hope this will ever be resolved. 

Publisher's PDF export is retaining the resolution of high-DPI bitmap PNGs. I have taken 1200dpi grayscales into HyperDither, then pulled the resultant file (which is only ever RGB coming out of HyperDither) into Photo and then made them grayscale again, then exported 1-bit PNGs. The placed file in Publisher will then export at full resolution, so long as "Downsample Images" is unchecked, and "Use DPI" is selected and set to 1200 (or whatever resolution you want.) I've successfully used this several times recently, and it works well.

The problem is, there is zero ability to set the PNG to a solid color in Publisher. I'm only dealing with art that is produced in black, so I have no issue. However, anything that's going to require line art that is set to solid colors unfortunately cannot be made in the Affinity suite at this time.

[Lorox]

2 minutes ago, gunbunny said:

The placed file in Publisher will then export at full resolution, so long as "Downsample Images" is unchecked, and "Use DPI" is selected and set to 1200 (or whatever resolution you want.)

I'm not sure if I understand this correctly – does "Use DPI" apply then to just that (or those) resolution PNGs or is this a global setting for rastering in that PDF? If the latter would apply then any other image of originally lower resolution would be (in terms of "dots", though not visually) output at 1200 dpi (or whatever) as well, wouldn't it?

[MikeW]

17 minutes ago, gunbunny said:

Publisher's PDF export is retaining the resolution of high-DPI bitmap PNGs. I have taken 1200dpi grayscales into HyperDither, then pulled the resultant file (which is only ever RGB coming out of HyperDither) into Photo and then made them grayscale again, then exported 1-bit PNGs. The placed file in Publisher will then export at full resolution, so long as "Downsample Images" is unchecked, and "Use DPI" is selected and set to 1200 (or whatever resolution you want.) I've successfully used this several times recently, and it works well.

The problem is, there is zero ability to set the PNG to a solid color in Publisher. I'm only dealing with art that is produced in black, so I have no issue. However, anything that's going to require line art that is set to solid colors unfortunately cannot be made in the Affinity suite at this time.

Yes, this was discussed in at least one other thread. 

But if one has a mix of full colored images and 1-bit images, one has to resample the color images down to be say 300 dpi at placed size else they will export at their high resolution. 

[loukash]

6 hours ago, Lluís said:

not possible to do it with Affinity Photo.

Yes it is. See my earlier posts.

[Lluís]

On 8/10/2021 at 7:55 PM, loukash said:

Yes it is. See my earlier posts.

Thank You, I've seen your posts.
But to do all that I almost prefer to use my old offline Photoshop. In the same way that I have to use it to easily copy and paste RGBA channels to create combined textures.

I really mean not being able to directly create a 1 bit document or export a 1 bit TIFF file directly from Affinity Photo.

[BennyD]

10 minutes ago, Lluís said:

Thank You, I've seen your posts.
But to do all that I almost prefer to use my old offline Photoshop. In the same way that I have to use it to easily copy and paste RGBA channels to create combined textures.

I really mean not being able to directly create a 1 bit document or export a 1 bit TIFF file directly from Affinity Photo.

I'd love to try an old offline Photoshop with a recent version of macOS. Impossible due to lagging Java 6 support. If it were possible I'd stay with CS5 or CS6 forever.

b

[loukash]

12 minutes ago, Lluís said:

But to do all that I almost prefer to use my old offline Photoshop. 

No problem with that. It's all just tools, not an ideology. (Although… hm, not so sure sometimes.)
Use whatever is comfortable enough to do the job.
My point was merely that your statement "not possible to do it with Affinity Photo" is false: It is possible, albeit slightly awkward. If all your available tools were just the Affinity suite, you can still accomplish the task.

That said, don't get me wrong: I'm still all for having a true 1-bit workflow implemented without having to resort to ugly workarounds.

[Lorox]

2 hours ago, BennyD said:

I'd love to try an old offline Photoshop with a recent version of macOS. Impossible due to lagging Java 6 support. If it were possible I'd stay with CS5 or CS6 forever.

I'm tempted to agree, if it were just for Photoshop... but the seemless integration of Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher is quite another thing for me as a designer creating all sorts of print products.

I've been sort of reluctant to really switch to the Affinity apps after decades with A**** CS, but meanwhile all new projects on a more recent Mac (with quasi-recent MacOS...) are done in Affinity – and it's really enjoyable most of the time! It just feels more „modern“ and effective in many ways than the PS/AI/ID workkflow I'd been used to for so long.

Quirks like this one with 1-bit bitmap TIFFs let me wish, though, the developers at Serif had listened a bit more to designers in the real world when deciding on certain features to include in their apps. I daresay there possibly are more users needing 1-bit bitmap TIFF support in their everyday work than there are who actually do the (albeit interesting) astrophotography stuff – although this is pure speculation on my part.

Similar things might be said for features/tools missing in Designer that were/are just standard in AI and which I do miss along with those PS things...

But then, there'll be Affinity v 2.0 sometime and I really hope my going back to the old Mac with CS5 will be even more rarely needed than these days.

[BennyD]

47 minutes ago, Lorox said:

Quirks like this one with 1-bit bitmap TIFFs let me wish, though, the developers at Serif had listened a bit more to designers in the real world when deciding on certain features to include in their apps. I daresay there possibly are more users needing 1-bit bitmap TIFF support in their everyday work than there are who doing the astrophotography stuff – although this is pure speculation on my part.

Similar things might be said for features/tools missing in Designer that were/are just standard in AI and which I do miss along with those PS things...

But then, there'll be Affinity v 2.0 sometime and I really hope my goings back to the old Mac with CS5 will be even more rarely needed than these days.

🙏

[Fixx]

As Serif has earlier mentioned, it might be possible to add 1-bit tiff export to Photo. That would help a long way. There should also be an option to use dither/no dither – which option should also be added to gif and png export settings.

Tougher question is if Publisher can support 1-bit – and yes, of course it should, but it may take making deep alterations to Affinity graphics engine. 

[jog]

On 3/2/2021 at 4:55 PM, DaKo said:

Going back to the original topic of this thread... I've just started with Publisher 1.9 after 20 years of InDesign, and this is a MAJOR disappointment. 1-bit tiff (bmp) is an extremely useful format for logos, autographs, drawings etc. that need to be colour-adjusted according to other design elements. If I change the text colour I don't want to open - say a logo - re-colour it in another program, save it as a new file, and re-link it. It's a ridiculous waste of time.

PLEASE ADD SUPPORT FOR 1-BIT TIFFS (with transparency and independent resolution)!!

This exactly. It's really important.

[emarillo]

24 minutes ago, jog said:

Going back to the original topic of this thread... I've just started with Publisher 1.9 after 20 years of InDesign, and this is a MAJOR disappointment. 1-bit tiff (bmp) is an extremely useful format for logos, autographs, drawings etc. that need to be colour-adjusted according to other design elements. If I change the text colour I don't want to open - say a logo - re-colour it in another program, save it as a new file, and re-link it. It's a ridiculous waste of time.

That's the way I had to go until I finally decided to re-install an old Photoshop CS6 copy on an old Mac mini, for this purpose only. Even switching Macs and copying files from one machine to another is faster than the above approach.

[DegasBrush]

10 hours ago, emarillo said:

That's the way I had to go until I finally decided to re-install an old Photoshop CS6 copy on an old Mac mini, for this purpose only. Even switching Macs and copying files from one machine to another is faster than the above approach.

Actually - I have found a way - that's almost as efficient as 1bit bitmap as it works in illustrator, as long as you're using a RGB or CMYK process color spaces (this doesn't work with spot color (Yet??)  

Prepare your texture, signature whatever as a black and white image

Place into Publisher or Designer document.. 

Go into Pixel Persona and make sure your black image is selected

Go to the effects button at the bottom of the layers panel and select color overlay

You can select from all the methods of color from the wheel to swatches

Boom done, go back to Vector/Publisher personas and continue to work.. 

I've tested this and it works.. like I said above doesn't in spot color like we'd want it to but otherwise - no real need to round trip to PS etc.. 

So what REALLY needs to happen is that Serif need to make Spot colors able to available and useable within Color overlay which might be an easier path that trying to recode the graphics engine to deal with the one bit format itself.. 

Does that help anyone?? I can upload a file if needed. Cheers

[emarillo]

6 hours ago, DegasBrush said:

Does that help anyone?? I can upload a file if needed. Cheers

Hi, thanks for your hint. My problem - and the one of many, here - is that you can't click-colour a bitmap TIFF in Adobe InDesign (or QuarkXpress), no matter the way you prepare/export it from the Affinity apps. I've switched to AfPhoto and AfDesigner, I've even have a couple of licenses of Publisher. But I'm tied to InDesign, since this is the reference app of my clients... So I still have to manage those kind of images in Adobe PS. Thank heavens, I've several old licenses (and some old Macs) from the pre-cloud Adobe CC apps.

[Wosven]

You can also use an app like XnView MP to convert/export to bitmap

[DegasBrush]

1 hour ago, emarillo said:

Hi, thanks for your hint. My problem - and the one of many, here - is that you can't click-colour a bitmap TIFF in Adobe InDesign (or QuarkXpress), no matter the way you prepare/export it from the Affinity apps. I've switched to AfPhoto and AfDesigner, I've even have a couple of licenses of Publisher. But I'm tied to InDesign, since this is the reference app of my clients... So I still have to manage those kind of images in Adobe PS. Thank heavens, I've several old licenses (and some old Macs) from the pre-cloud Adobe CC apps.

Ahh sorry - I missed that you're trying to get a 1bit image out of Affinity into adobe apps.. obviously your use case differs to that I was trying to describe. It's a hard spot to be in when you're tied to that adobe software for the reasons you've previously given. But within an entirely Affinity workflow - it works. as long as you don't need to use PMS colors then you're a bit stuck... 

[nicolasbulb]

Okay, again I'm raising up the request to support 1-bit bitmap into Affinity Photo channels in order to create artworks for screenprint like we can do it in Photoshop 2.0. I'm supporting Affinity since day one when I've bought the very first beta of Affinity Designer and I was eager to see the full potential. But seriously after almost 7 years, I've used it professionally only once. I still support it and advise it as an alternative to the entire Adobe mess but I need 1-bitmap support and a better way to assign spot colour to channel.

[telemax]

And yet the goal was achieved in AD. Posterise + White background layer + PNG export settings. 1-bit.afdesign

[telemax]

 

[nicolasbulb]

After teaching this morning with some students talking about color management and technical stuff, I've decided to test bitmap 1-bit 800dpi image with Affinity Publisher with spot colour the way I do it with Photoshop and/or InDesign and the images import just fine but when I'm trying to tint the bitmap image, I'm stumpling into a weird bug.

Here's the results with 2 spots colours with grayscale 800dpi images:

and the results with the same 2 spots colours but with the same bitmap images at 1-Bit 800dpi:

 

As you can see, Affinity is not able to render properly the simple 1-bit bitmap image. So strange. Please Affinity, this is the last thing I need to ditch Adobe for good. Thanks. 

[loukash]

On 11/9/2021 at 4:17 PM, nicolasbulb said:

Affinity is not able to render properly the simple 1-bit bitmap image.

Context Toolbar > activate the K Only button

[BennyD]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

Context Toolbar > activate the K Only button

but »K Only« here still means the result is an 8 Bit channel, not 1 Bit

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, BennyD said:

the result is an 8 Bit channel, not 1 Bit

???

Please upload a sample .afpub document to show us what you want to achieve.

[BennyD]

2 minutes ago, loukash said:

???

Please upload a sample .afpub document to show us what you want to achieve.

I mean, If you place an 1 Bit image into Publisher, no matter what you do, it will be converted to a 8 Bit greyscale image. All necessary files attached.

 

1Bit-Indesign.pdf 1Bit-InDesign.idml 1Bit-Affinity.pdf 1Bit-Affinity.afpub 1Bit.tif

[BennyD]

By the way, that same issue has been discussed here for a really long time now, but I wanted to make the point clear with that very short example.