Monotone photo in specific spot colour

[David Allen]

Hello, can any of the Affinity applications make a monotone photo using a specific spot colour? The documents are always printed CMYK (offset or digital) or just viewed as PDF, but I would like to be able to make the original in the client's PMS colour. Since time began (when 2 colour printing was still a thing – ha, ha, am I that old?!) I've made these by converting the original pic to B&W in Photoshop then dropping into QXP and adding 100% of a colour to the image and whatever a percentage (depending on legibility requirements) as a background. I'm hoping one of, or a combination of Affinity apps can do the same. Thank you. PS. Example photo section attached

Monotone example.pdf

[MikeW]

Hi ya, David.

Using this button...regardless of the image color space...

Allows you to recolor the image using a Ptone color. I've attached both pdf exports with maintaining the Ptone and its cmyk counterpart.

Mike

Monotone example apub ptone.pdf

Monotone example apub cmyk.pdf

[David Allen]

Ah, Mike to the rescue! Hey this is great, and non-destructive too! That's a powerful tool. I do note that I can't add say a 30% tint of the spot colour (like I've done with QXP in the picture box) if I want to reduce the contrast to overlay white text. Although in a 5 min play just now, I added a second box on top filled with 100% of the blue spot colour and used transparency for the same effect.

Thank so much for that. Onwards an upwards!

[thomaso]

8 minutes ago, David Allen said:

I do note that I can't add say a 30% tint of the spot colour

It seems you didn't note the Tint slider in the Colour Panel.
It appears as soon you select an object with a spot color assigned:

Also for non-spot colours the Tint slider is accessible any time via the burger menu:

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[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Lagarto said:

I have also experienced problems in applying a tint of a PMS color. It works on screen, but I have not managed to have it work on an exported PDF. Might be related to way the job is exported but I have tried the default Press PDF (1.4 version) and all PDF/X methods, but tints just do not seem to have any effect.

I posted this in the mac bug forum.

There is another, possibly related bug with spot colors applied to images: They don't export as spot if they are cropped with the Vector Crop Tool:

 

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Lagarto said:

One other method to apply PMS tone with subdued effect (including a tone) would be creating a kind of a duotone effect:

Another way to create a duotone effect would be to place the image in a Picture Frame + a fill to the frame.
If the image has an overprinting color assigned it doesn't need to be set to Multiply blend mode. Though it won't be displayed in the documents window – it appears on export. Unfortunately Affinity doesn't have a show overprinting feature yet, that's why we need the workaround with multiply blend mode.

 

 

[David Allen]

Thank you, some very good tips there. My job is actually just monotone (the look of) either for CMYK digital printing, or (mostly) viewed as PDF. Combining various tips mentioned by you all, I've managed to replicate the previous style created in QXP. So I have a monotone PMS spot colour photo combined with an overlay in the same colour with transparency setting plus multiply to deepen the darker areas. I did the overlay to remove white and reduce the contrast for legibility of the document title and logo. Two page PDF attached to show first just the monotone, followed by the monotone plus box overlay. I really appreciate the swift response!

Monotone_example_1and2.pdf

[David Allen]

Hello, I've made a discovery which might be useful for some of you wanting to make duotone (effects) or for me in the case of this client, a monotone with 100% of a specific colour combined with a tint of the same colour to reduce contrast. I was using Lagarto's suggestion of an overlaid rectangle, and I applied transparency to mix with my image on the layer below. But I thought that extra layer was just a bit unnecessary so started having a poke around! Try: View -> Studio -> Effects -> Colour overlay. It means you can colour the image as well as fill the picture box without having a second box overlaid – Quark style! I do note that it's only for PDF documents and CMYK print jobs, because I just tried a duotone and I also could not achieve spot separations. So for me, an exciting discovery that suits my needs for this client, but would be better if it separated for those who want single or two colour print jobs. I hope this helps.

[Tom100]

Hi guys

I hope that you guys can help me with this.

I am trying to do this, like you can see in the attached pictures. It is a description with an old Photoshop version to change an image to Monotone and name it to a specific Spotcolor name. I am not able to do that. I am not a grafic guy, but a field engineer of this Kodak machine and I want to be able to create PDFs like this with affinity apps.
I need a description step by step, please.

Get started by creating a base image:
1. Create a new file, or open the photograph
you would like to dimensionalize
2. Convert to grayscale (Image/Mode/Grayscale)
3. Convert to duotone (Image/Mode/Duotone) > Type: Monotone
4. Change the color of Ink 1 to:
CMYK: 0 | 75 | 100 | 0
5. Name Ink 1 “NexPress DryInk raised clear”

 

So finally after exporting this image as a monotone and named with a spot color name I should be able to see this color "NexPress DryInk raised clear"
with Acrobat Full version in the "Output Preview"

Here you can find a description to this:

https://nexgengrafix.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/NexPress-DMCL-Guide.pdf

 

Thanks a lot

Tom