Publisher separates 100% black after exporting to PDF for press

[Stes]

5 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

It is because of the profile conflict. See my posts above.

Thank you! Thank you very much. I thought that it was enough to set the colour profile in document settings only. 🤦‍♂️

[Stes]

13 minutes ago, Slammer said:

And if your "designer" sends you a CMKY file expecting miracles, slap that person and send them back to design school.

The files are prepared properly in my opinion. It was me who needed slap in the face I've overlooked settings in preferences (although I am sure I've set colour profiles to my needs after installing AP... 🤨)

[Slammer]

14 minutes ago, Stes said:

The files are prepared properly in my opinion. It was me who needed slap in the face I've overlooked settings in preferences (although I am sure I've set colour profiles to my needs after installing AP... 🤨)

Ooops! Sorry, I get so many printers calling with really bad "original" files wondering how to get them out without too much hassle. Only recently a printer installed a brand new KBA where I calibrated the workflow. Done in Kodak EVO with Colorflow it was as perfect a calibration as anybody could hope for. A few days later the customer called complaining very loudly that the prints have been rejected from their customer and I should swing my ass back and do my, Quote: "Goddam job properly" I went back and checked the prints, they were perfect in every aspect including a DeltaE of under 1, the prints showed the crappy original files exactly the way they were. I pointed this out that what you see is what you damn well got. And was asked to calibrate the new press exactly the way the old worn out and weary press was because they could not tell the customer, a well known design studio, to change the way they create their files.
I did it with a lot of head shaking on my part creating a set of calibrations for this customer´s customer only and the customer´s customer has been a happy camper ever since

So don´t feel bad.

[Petar Petrenko]

23 hours ago, Slammer said:

The best way to handle this is to work in the RGB colorspace and let the printer´s RIP handle the conversion to CMKY. 

It is OK for images, but vector art must by CMYK for print.

[Slammer]

44 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

It is OK for images, but vector art must by CMYK for print.

Why? I can´t see any advantage in making vector art in CMYK. Why would you want to limit yourself to such a confined colorspace?

[Petar Petrenko]

24 minutes ago, Slammer said:

Why? I can´t see any advantage in making vector art in CMYK. Why would you want to create art in such a limited colorspace?

On 10/24/2020 at 1:47 PM, Slammer said:

The best way to handle this is to work in the RGB colorspace and let the printer´s RIP handle the conversion to CMKY. 

Because R0 G0 B0 is not the same as C0 M0 Y0 K100. Same rule is valid for other colors. If you use RGB values which are not in CMYK gamut, your colours will differ.

[thomaso]

30 minutes ago, Slammer said:

Why? I can´t see any advantage in making vector art in CMYK. Why would you want to create art in such a limited colorspace?

To ensure certain ink plates being used exclusivly for certain objects (e.g. corporate colors, logo) a layout and/or export of purely RGB can't work, even not with your RIP. How should the RIP know that a certain RGB value shall be printed with for instance 100 M or 100 C only? How would you define them as RGB to ensure pure cyan / pure magenta print?

[Slammer]

1 minute ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Because R0 G0 B0 is not the same as C0 M0 Y0 K100. Same rule is valid for other colors. If you use RGB values which are not in CMYK gamut, your colours will differ.

That is why you have a Raster Image Processor (RIP) which takes care of this. I think everybody needs to get their heads around color management, I´ll see if I have my documentation on this topic.

[Petar Petrenko]

7 minutes ago, BofG said:

Spot colours.

Spot colours are used for different purposes:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/printing-spot-colors.html#:~:text=Spot colors are special premixed,a spot color%2C too.)

[Slammer]

6 minutes ago, thomaso said:

To ensure certain ink plates being used exclusivly for certain objects (e.g. corporate colors, logo) a layout and/or export of purely RGB can't work, even not with your RIP. How should the RIP know that a certain RGB value shall be printed with for instance 100 M or 100 C only? How would you define them as RGB to ensure pure cyan / pure magenta print?

Spots or pantone. But you are correct you do get cooperate logo´s that come to you as RGB, so where would you change to CMKY? To do this this is precisely why RIP´s exist.

[thomaso]

Just now, BofG said:

Spot colours.

They aren't RGB, too. Slammer's idea/suggestion was to maintain all in RGB until the RIP.

However, spot colors would require more than 4 print colors which may cause unwanted consequences (different machine, time, costs). Besides that (even if time / costs would be the same) I don't see an advantage to use an RGB document + add spot colors to circumvent an RGB lack.

[Slammer]

1 minute ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Spot colours are used for different purposes:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/printing-spot-colors.html#:~:text=Spot colors are special premixed,a spot color%2C too.)

Exactly, you can however combine a spot color to a plate, as in if your logo is 100% Cyan then you can have your rip or your workflow combine the otherwise two plates.

[Slammer]

1 minute ago, thomaso said:

They aren't RGB, too. Slammer's idea/suggestion was to maintain all in RGB until the RIP.

However, spot colors would require more than 4 print colors which may cause unwanted consequences (different machine, time, costs). Besides that (even if time / costs would be the same) I don't see an advantage to use an RGB document + add spot colors to circumvent an RGB lack.

Disclaimer here, if you have spots in your artwork then you will have RGB and the spot until RIPping, technically you then get CMYK and the spots, this is standard in printshops all over. If your workflow is set up correctly and your have post RIP, say an image with 14%C, 5%M, 0%Y 5%K and Pantone 1225C, then you get CMK and a plate for the P.

[Petar Petrenko]

4 minutes ago, Slammer said:

Exactly, you can however combine a spot color to a plate, as in if your logo is 100% Cyan then you can have your rip or your workflow combine the otherwise two plates.

Yon can't expect to get a third one by mixing 2 spot colors. They are not transparent. Offset and spot colors (Pantone...) are completely different types of colors.

[Slammer]

1 minute ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Yon can't expect to get a third one by mixing 2 spot colors. They are not transparent. Offset and spot colors (Pantone...) are completely different types of colors.

No, read my post again, if your vector art is at 100%C then you can combine it with the C-plate, that way you don´t need an extra plate. I did not mention pantone, or am I not understanding what your statement is?

[Slammer]

1 minute ago, BofG said:

From a purely pragmatic standpoint, setting a spot colour for a single C|M|Y|K whilst maintaining an RGB document will do the job that was singled out as not possible (ie print a cmyk primary). A decent RIP would manage this even without a spot.

I'm in agreement @Slammer on this topic, design in RGB, give yourself the flexibility to output to whatever device and handle the colours through proper use of the colour management tools.

 

Thank you that is what amma talking about

[Gaunilo]

I had the same problem.
Affinity screws the color when exporting in PDFX4 or X3. It worked as soon as I exported in PDF 1.7

As soon as I used PDF X3 or X4 the adjustments are overwritten and you get all sort of problems.
Trappings don't work as well. 

It took me quite a bit to figure this out, my printer was not happy.

I am quite annoyed by it… I should write a separate topic now that I think of it.

[Slammer]

7 minutes ago, Gaunilo said:

I had the same problem.
Affinity screws the color when exporting in PDFX4 or X3. It worked as soon as I exported in PDF 1.7

As soon as I used PDF X3 or X4 the adjustments are overwritten and you get all sort of problems.
Trappings don't work as well. 

It took me quite a bit to figure this out, my printer was not happy.

I am quite annoyed by it… I should write a separate topic now that I think of it.

Color reproduction is governed by Rendering intent, ICC profile and the CMS configuration. What colorspace are you using and did you embed a profile?

[wonderings]

Not sure why you would want to work with a larger gamut when that larger gamut is not achievable in 4 colour printing. There are many times I have had files clients send in in RGB and shocked when they see the colour when converted (in the proof stage). If I had just taken their RGB file and printed it letting the RIP convert and took what I got I would have issues and most likely an argument trying to explain that because of the wider colour range of RGB it is not achievable in CMYK. I go towards being realistic with colour and how you are printing it. Now when I print on my 44" wide Epson with 12 colours I work exclusively with RGB because I am going to get the best print that way. Also not all RIP's are equal and not all print shops are running a single RIP to power everything. Many shops will have a RIP for their plates, RIP for their digital, RIP for wide format. Your results can vary in each RIP in how it handles RGB.

 

[lacerto]

(...)

[wonderings]

5 minutes ago, BofG said:

What if the artwork is to be using online, on a digital billboard and on your printer output? There would be a compromise to get things looking the best on each whilst maintaining a closeness of the colours which could be done in RGB but not CMYK. Sure, you can demand a cmyk file for your end point, but the source of that should be rgb with proper colour management used to generate the CMYK file for you.

This is exactly why using a full colour space for a source document makes sense. When you got your nice 12 colour machine, none of your existing client files could make use of it if they worked from a cmyk source.

If the artwork is to be used online than design with RGB. What I am saying is design for the intended use. If you are designing for print, traditional print on press or digital press design in CMYK, if you are printing on wide format and the printer is a multi colour like mine (many are simply CMYK) or developing for web then design with RGB. I can count on one hand the number of files that get used across a the spectrum of print products. The design you do for a billboard is not going to be the design you use for their brochure. Each job is unique in where it goes and rarely do they take something and use it elsewhere. You are also not going to be colour matching a billboard to printed materials, and if you are or need to then printing in the widest gamut possible is not going to keep things consistent across the board.

[Slammer]

4 hours ago, wonderings said:

If the artwork is to be used online than design with RGB. What I am saying is design for the intended use. If you are designing for print, traditional print on press or digital press design in CMYK, if you are printing on wide format and the printer is a multi colour like mine (many are simply CMYK) or developing for web then design with RGB. I can count on one hand the number of files that get used across a the spectrum of print products. The design you do for a billboard is not going to be the design you use for their brochure. Each job is unique in where it goes and rarely do they take something and use it elsewhere. You are also not going to be colour matching a billboard to printed materials, and if you are or need to then printing in the widest gamut possible is not going to keep things consistent across the board.

That is the whole reason for color management systems, for ICC profiles and rendering intents.

As a quick and dirty visualization this shows what happens, the larger part of the picture is your visual range describes as a value in x/y/Y, whereas x and y are the coordinates for a particular color on a flat 2 dimensional plane, Y is the coordinate for how light or dark the colour is, in 3 dimensional space. What happens in color management is that these values are reduced to the next possible colour as describes in your ICC, in this case it goes from RGB visual, to RGB wide gamut, then RGB to CMKY, each and every step along the way is a reduction in total achievable gamut.

Now let´s imagine you have created a file in CMYK and embedded a generic CMYK profile, Euroscale for instance.  And your printer has calibrated his system to PSO for glossy and Fogra 51 which includes OBA´s  (optical brightener agents) first thing he is going to do is strip your Euroscale out of the file because there is nothing worse than to convert CMYK to CMYK. It simply makes no sense.

Color and color management is a fascinating topic and a huge one and a topic that is rarely understood and really needs it´s own segment for in depth discussion in my humble opinion.

[Slammer]

1 hour ago, BofG said:

Agreed, I have a book in my Amazon wishlist but I know I don't have time to read it right now. Having looked through the preview I know that a) my knowledge barely scrapes the surface and b) it's going to keep me engaged and quite possibly go over my head

It´s not so bad once you understand the basics, if things get too scary you just need to remember everything we do, everything we imagine, everything we conceive, in the end it´s all eight bit...!

Any questions and I´ll be happy to explain to the best of my ability.

I don´t know if any mods are monitoring this thread but methinks this thread shows a need and we should ask if a subsection of this website could be dedicated to print and prespress and color and color management.

Especially in light that the printing world is a monopoly in the hands of the Adobe-Empire and I would wager that most of the Affinity Rebels are designers and creators with only a basic idea, if any, as to what goes on when they send their work to the printers. In order for a bridgehead in the printing world more information is needed for these people.

Don´t forget printing is not only what comes out of the Epson, it´s digital production printing, it´s offset, it´s flexo and it´s silk screen printing, there is tampon printing and wet on wet and hybrid printing and nanographic.

There is a whole galaxy of worlds opening when you, the designer, pushes the "Save" button.

[Slammer]

1 hour ago, BofG said:

Well that's reassuring, I have a background in programming

I like to know the inner workings of things, the data formats and conversion processes will interest me. Standard nerd is the correct term I believe

How would you stop everyone there from insisting everyone use CMYK? 

Joking aside, even the Affinity apps get things wrong on this. All of the "print" presets default to CMYK and I believe SWOP coated? This was one thing that tripped me up when I was trying to hit certain colours from my printer - there was an orange that I couldn't get close to, and assumed it was just beyond the printer's capabilities. Turns out that the printer could actually get a fair bit closer to it, but the "default" CMYK profile was already clipping it at the document level.

On top of that the apps cannot send cmyk data to a physical printer, so if you apply a cmyk printer profile it gets applied and then your colours get silently converted back to RGB (who knows what profile) before being sent to the printer.

Hmm, maybe if I have time to write long and largely pointless posts I do actually have time to read that book after all...

Swop is rarely used in Europe as most densitometer readings are set to status E and not status T, and most profiles found in print use ISO profiles, but from time to time you do find it embedded in documents, it´s a CMYK profile but depending on what flavor you can have it with a 250% cover with a maxK of 96% or a 300% cover @ maxK98% and a GCR of middle to heavy.
If you want a nose bleed by taking a closer look, SWOP is a ICC profile for coated stock and it annoys the hell out of printers when designers embed such a profile and want to print on uncoated stock. That is why a prepress guy worth his ink will strip a designers ICC by default and replace it with his own.

And it´s from 2007 so it´s classed as an antique.

[Slammer]

5 minutes ago, BofG said:

I just double checked, and in fairness the "print" templates do default to RBG, it's the "press ready" ones that default to SWOP coated. I must have used one of those, at least my paper was coated

@Slammer Out of curiosity, what was the software you used to pinpoint the colour relative to the colour space in the other thread?

https://www.iccview.de/ It´s a online and free for all to use. Not as many features as I would like but it`s a good way to compare profiles or profiles to artwork.