How can I print or generate a pdf with 100% black

[Jiorgos]

Hello,

I'm getting to know publisher and have worked with InDesign so far. How can I print a text 100% black with publisher or export it as a PDF? No matter how I set the font color, in Acrobat I am always told that the font is rasterized in CMYK.

Greetings

Jürgen

 

 

[wonderings]

4 hours ago, Jiorgos said:

Hello,

I'm getting to know publisher and have worked with InDesign so far. How can I print a text 100% black with publisher or export it as a PDF? No matter how I set the font color, in Acrobat I am always told that the font is rasterized in CMYK.

Greetings

Jürgen

 

 

I am guessing you are setting your documents up with RGB colour mode selected, this may be on by default and something you are just not looking at. There is no trick to getting 100% CMYK. Make sure your document colour mode is set to CMYK. In your file make sure the black is 100% K in the CMYK sliders. Export (make sure it is not converting to RGB). I used the PDF for print default, changed nothing else and exported. PDF came out as it should with black being 100% K. 

 

 

[Jiorgos]

Since I mostly work on books, I basically proceed as described. So I work with a CMYK color profile and export the whole thing as a print PDF. Unfortunately, the result is disappointing, as the screenshot below shows. No 100% black is produced, neither in the color field nor in the writing.

[Jiorgos]

Astonishingly, the same works perfectly with the previous PagePlus X9.

[Jiorgos]

Here is the screenshot.

[Dazmondo77]

34 minutes ago, Jiorgos said:

Since I mostly work on books, I basically proceed as described. So I work with a CMYK color profile and export the whole thing as a print PDF. Unfortunately, the result is disappointing, as the screenshot below shows. No 100% black is produced, neither in the color field nor in the writing.

The trick with Affinity is to have an end to end CMYK workflow to retain 100% K so just make sure if your documents colour profile (say iso300 coated v2)  follows every stage, so when creating a PDF prob best to go for PDF/X 1a 2003 or PDF/X 4 and make sure the profile is set to document profile which is the standard then hopefully your 100% k will show correct in Acrobat

The same goes for printing to a Postcript printer or a software RIP if you're printing to a modern inkjet - just make sure the colour profile in your print dialog is the same as the document 

[Jiorgos]

The profile settings for export correspond to those of the document. But it is curious that the correct PDF export with 100% black only works with PDF/X-1a:2003, PDF/X-3:2003 or PDF/X-4. When I use PDF 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 or 1.7 I get the wrong result. This is different with PagePlus, because the correct export also works with PDF 1.4 etc.

Thanks for the helpful response.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Jiorgos

[wonderings]

1 hour ago, Jiorgos said:

Since I mostly work on books, I basically proceed as described. So I work with a CMYK color profile and export the whole thing as a print PDF. Unfortunately, the result is disappointing, as the screenshot below shows. No 100% black is produced, neither in the color field nor in the writing.

What we are not seeing is your document colour mode setup. If it is set as RGB, which I am imagining it is, you are going to get this mix when viewing in Acrobat and anywhere. Also, Acrobat shows a CMYK value even if it is an RGB image. You can narrow down the colours and say show only what is RGB in the document. 

 

[Jiorgos]

Hello Wonderings,

I have already written that I am working with a CMYK profile and accordingly the option is also activated when creating a document, as on your screenshot.

[Jiorgos]

Just to add: With Affinity Photo I get the same results. If I export the file with PDF/X-1a:2003, PDF/X-3:2003 or PDF/X-4 I get 100% K. When I use PDF 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 or 1.7 black is rasterized in CMYK .

[thomaso]

15 hours ago, Jiorgos said:

No matter how I set the font color,

What ways did you try? There is actually only 1 way to set the font color for this approach: pure 100 K only.
Can you show a screenshot of your selected text + Colours + Swatches + Layers Panel?

[Jiorgos]

As you know, the font color can be set directly via the toolbar or via the format template. The screenshot shows my setting on the toolbar.

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[Dazmondo77]

7 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Affinity apps do not support sending the printer CMYK data

Yes it does but it's not great - simple pages should be fine and retain all CMYK values - but the trick is to manually select your documents colour profile in your print dialog, if you leave it to auto it sends RGB, even to a PS laser or software RIP,  but for a complex page with layer FX, gradients, it can mess up the CMYK values of a gradient of say a solid Cyan to white so the cyan may have a dot of magenta and yellow whereas other, non-gradient cyans on the page remain solid - Affinity can sometimes pre-rasterise vectors before it hits a Postscript rip so all your nice sharp vectors and fonts look all raggy - best option at the moment is to print from Acrobat

Below are magnified scans of print examples printed to a Xerox Phaser 6180DN which is pretty good at press proofing - the Pub SMG01 colour bar prints great on a page that just contains text and photos, all nice sharp vectors and fonts, but as soon as you add a graphic element to the page with a gradient the print output from Pub loses it's sharpness and looks pre-rasterised, although is still CMYK whereas the solid CMYK gradients loses its colour accuracy on the same page - yet output the same page to PDF/X and print from Acrobat and all elements print as they should

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[thomaso]

10 hours ago, Jiorgos said:

As you know, the font color can be set directly via the toolbar or via the format template.

Ah, yes, you can set 100 K for text at different spots in the UI (I thought you meant different ways to define 100 K).

14 hours ago, Jiorgos said:

If I export the file with PDF/X-1a:2003, PDF/X-3:2003 or PDF/X-4 I get 100% K. When I use PDF 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 or 1.7 black is rasterized in CMYK .

In my experience it used to be impossible for PDF if exported in other versions than PDF/X but got improved in an app update.
For instance this PDF was exported with the default preset "for print", exported as PDF v.1.7., here all text results in 100 K:

v183 text as 100 K.pdf

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[thomaso]

2 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

I have not noticed any improvement here. As long as profile is embedded and the "wrong" profile is used in the viewer, you'll get incorrect readings.

Yes, that behavior was not improved yet. I referred to a different issue: in earlier APub versions a pure black always got exported as CMYK, both for text and grayscale images. Then, as far I remember, the additional 100 K 'button' in the Swatches Panel + the additional "K Only" button in the Toolbar were implemented which enabled at least with the initial PDF profile as viewing profile text remained as 100 K.

I agree, the issue you mention is quite disturbing, in particular for formerly users of InDesign, where you don't need to have to export with an "output intent" (PDF / X) but also get the resulting PDF appear correct for other exported PDF versions. (as if ID would, different to Affinity, make use of a specific spot inside the PDF to place an additional info but not being the "output intent" explicitly)

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[wonderings]

Really have no idea how you are not getting 100% K in a PDF file. I set up this file in 2 mins and exported to PDF. K is 100%. No CMYK makeup.

Again as I posted before I made a new document with CMYK colour mode. Typed my text, made my black box. Set to 100% K in the slider. Export to PDF with "PDF for print" default option. I did not change anything in the more section. PDF is 100% K. Am I missing something here?

100 K.pdf 100 K.zip

[Dazmondo77]

4 hours ago, Lagarto said:

"I should not expect Affinity apps to be able to output CMYK data to printer". I have not expected ever since.

I printed a proof from Pub this morning that looks pre-rasterised before hitting my PS printer, but CMYK is definitely correct, I always check the colour bars with a linen tester, CMYK all solid single pass - the background black of the artwork is also correct which is setup as my own preference for 160% density rich black = 20C 20M 20Y 100K - 

-"I should not expect Affinity apps to be able to output CMYK data to printer":-    This ability is a basic requirement for pro design apps, and even though theres a workaround for CMYK, Affinity apps print dialog need some work if it wants to compete with adobe, so I hope there'll be an improvement sometime in the future 

[wonderings]

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I printed a proof from Pub this morning that looks pre-rasterised before hitting my PS printer, but CMYK is definitely correct, I always check the colour bars with a linen tester, CMYK all solid single pass - the background black of the artwork is also correct which is setup as my own preference for 160% density rich black = 20C 20M 20Y 100K - 

-"I should not expect Affinity apps to be able to output CMYK data to printer":-    This ability is a basic requirement for pro design apps, and even though theres a workaround for CMYK, Affinity apps print dialog need some work if it wants to compete with adobe, so I hope there'll be an improvement sometime in the future 

Personally I do not find it all that important to be able to print in CMYK, but extremely important to export files that are CMYK and correct. Still should be something that should work, but I wonder if you will see less and less people in pro environments actually "printing" to the output device. Thankfully I stopped fighting with print drivers and things like that years ago when our RIPs all moved to PDF work flows. Export the PDF, drop it in, away we go. The basic tests I have done have not given me any problems with Publisher and it coming out something other then the CMYK makeup I had set in Publisher. 

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[Dazmondo77]

38 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Unless there is some recent development (which I doubt), it does not seem that CMYK print output is really possible with Affinity apps.

Maybe I should have included a pic of a printout showing the differences between using Affinitys Auto and the documents colour profile when printing so you can see the CMYK difference  - on my Xerox Phaser 6180DN, sending artwork to print and using auto profile (which looks as though its converted to RGB then back to CMYK) would give solid cyan around 90C 10M 8Y 0K  and similar for solid MYK but using the affinity artworks same document colour profile gives solid cyan 100C 0M 0Y 0K  which looks the same as sending from acrobat, although vectors and fonts are far better output from Acrobat - the Xerox Phaser 6180 is only 600dpi so you can see straight away if colours are printing wrong - I used to output old school proofs from film separations to 3M matchprints and cromalins 20 odd years ago so I've seen many many colour bars - one of the first Matchprint proofs I did was for Serif PagePlus must have been 1995, our whole company was mac based so someone from Serif used to have a walk over to us and drop off a Floppy disc containing a .PRN file (still never come across any other company using .PRN) we'd run it to film from an Hyphen image setter and perfect film seps for PagePlus, no bother supporting CMYK back then