Am I missing any workflow steps in Affinity Photo?

[AntiqueFlaneur]

I've been consistently having strange image irregularities when I go to use my edited photos in an Affinity Publisher document and export the finished product. I'm wondering if I'm missing something basic in my Affinity Photo process that's causing problems. 

My process is this:

1. I load the image into Affinity photo
2. I use the crop tool to straighten (ruler) and crop the image down to the right size. 
3. I use FFT denoise
4. I add a curves adjustment layer and modify as needed. 
5. I save the photo.
6. I import this into Publisher. 

• I have also tried adding the optional step of doing a "rasterize and trim," with no apparent difference.
• These are all black and white photos. Should I be making an adjustment to grayscale? if so, where do I do that?

Is there something I'm missing? Do I need to merge layers or something? When I've tried this the image does not look great. Suggestions?

I'm adding an example of what one of my normal-looking edited photos looks like after being exported from Publisher. 

 

 

 

[walt.farrell]

What does it look like after you save and before you import into Publisher? What is the "irregularity" that you're seeing?

Do your image and your Publisher file have the same color format and ICC profile?

What format are you using to Export from Publisher, and what Export settings (including those on the More... dialog) have you used?

[AntiqueFlaneur]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

What does it look like after you save and before you import into Publisher? What is the "irregularity" that you're seeing?

Do your image and your Publisher file have the same color format and ICC profile?

What format are you using to Export from Publisher, and what Export settings (including those on the More... dialog) have you used?

1) It looks great until the image is exported from Publisher. 

2) The document is set up for Gray/16 and Greyscale D50. I'm not sure where I would adjust the color profile in Affinity Photo. 

3) I'm exporting as PDF and using the "As document," and "use document profile" color setting, but as an experiment I tired using Gray/ GrayscaleD50 setting with no difference. 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, AntiqueFlaneur said:

1) It looks great until the image is exported from Publisher. 

Yes, but can you show us how it looks before you have the irregularities? And what are the irregularities you're seeing. We need to know what you're seeing, and ideally to see it ourselves.

Also, are you saying that it looks OK while you're looking at the document in Publisher, but looks wrong (in some way) in the exported PDF when you look at it with a PDF viewer?

[AntiqueFlaneur]

On 6/19/2020 at 4:17 PM, walt.farrell said:

Yes, but can you show us how it looks before you have the irregularities? And what are the irregularities you're seeing. We need to know what you're seeing, and ideally to see it ourselves.

Also, are you saying that it looks OK while you're looking at the document in Publisher, but looks wrong (in some way) in the exported PDF when you look at it with a PDF viewer?

@walt.farrell Yes, the photos looks good in publisher, but have strange tones once exported as a PDFs. Check out the two pics I'm attaching to this message. The first has a weird line down the middle of the left photo. Both Photos in the spread have a yellow hue to them (as they looked before greyscale is applied to them in Publisher). 

The second one is from publisher. No line, and proper greyscale. 

[Callum]

On 6/26/2020 at 2:50 AM, AntiqueFlaneur said:

@walt.farrell Yes, the photos looks good in publisher, but have strange tones once exported as a PDFs. Check out the two pics I'm attaching to this message. The first has a weird line down the middle of the left photo. Both Photos in the spread have a yellow hue to them (as they looked before greyscale is applied to them in Publisher). 

The second one is from publisher. No line, and proper greyscale. 

Hi AntiqueFlaneur

If possible could you embed your images and then provide the file so I can try and recreate this at my end?

[AntiqueFlaneur]

Thanks for your offer of help, but I was actually able to figure out the problems (actually two separate problems)

[AntiqueFlaneur]

On 6/19/2020 at 2:54 PM, AntiqueFlaneur said:

I've been consistently having strange image irregularities when I go to use my edited photos in an Affinity Publisher document and export the finished product. I'm wondering if I'm missing something basic in my Affinity Photo process that's causing problems. 

My process is this:

1. I load the image into Affinity photo
2. I use the crop tool to straighten (ruler) and crop the image down to the right size. 
3. I use FFT denoise
4. I add a curves adjustment layer and modify as needed. 
5. I save the photo.
6. I import this into Publisher. 

• I have also tried adding the optional step of doing a "rasterize and trim," with no apparent difference.
• These are all black and white photos. Should I be making an adjustment to grayscale? if so, where do I do that?

Is there something I'm missing? Do I need to merge layers or something? When I've tried this the image does not look great. Suggestions?

I'm adding an example of what one of my normal-looking edited photos looks like after being exported from Publisher. 

 

 

 

FYI, I found my solutions. First, I had to convert all my photos to greyscale in Affinity Photo before adding them to publisher. Second, I had to set my export to greyscale as well. Third, I had to make sure that my picture frames were located below my linked picture files in the hierarchy of Layers.