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Is this discoloration an Affinity Publisher issue, or an Amazon KDP bug?


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The book cover I'm trying to use for a print on demand book thorough Amazon KDP looks great in Publisher and when I view the exported PDF on my computer, but when I upload it to Amazon it appears discolored. 

Check out the back cover portion of "AmazonScreenshot.png" — it looks grey. But I made it black in Publisher, and it's still black when I view it as a PDF after export. This is shown in "PublisherScreenshot.png and PDFscreenshot.png".

Should I assume this is an amazon bug rather than an issue with Publisher?

 

AmazonScreenshot.png

PDFScreenshot.png

PublisherScreenshot.png

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I believe this is an Affinity issue. I recently published my first book done in Affinity (after losing my old CS2 product key) and have been having basically the same issue. My covers come out duller and more muted after uploading to KDP.

After spending weeks trying iterations of embedding ICC profiles, switching to CMYK, honoring spot colors, etc. I finally thought to try re-exporting an old CS2 file that had no prior issues with this via Affinity. Sure enough, the colors didn't come through correctly once I uploaded to KDP.

Affinity must be doing something different with color management, but it's way over my head to figure out what.

Examples from my book are attached for reference. I've been tearing my hair out trying to solve this one, so would love to hear what you come up with!

KDP Cover Preview.png

COVER_1_-_Press_Ready_-_8.5x11_bw_90.pdf

Edited by Spraypaintsensei
Added missing word
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  • Staff

Hi AntiqueFlaneur,

If you view the PDF in a different PDF viewer does this issue occur? If this problem was caused by Affinity I would expect to see it occur in the exported file.

Thanks

C

Please tag me using @ in your reply so I can be sure to respond ASAP.

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On 11/11/2020 at 6:18 PM, AntiqueFlaneur said:

The book cover I'm trying to use for a print on demand book thorough Amazon KDP looks great in Publisher and when I view the exported PDF on my computer, but when I upload it to Amazon it appears discolored. 

19 hours ago, AntiqueFlaneur said:

It doesn't seem to show up in Preview, or Adobe Acrobat Reader. 

To me the colors in all 3 pictures of your post look the same in my browser window, and if I download them they don't have a color profile (they may have been stripped by the forums software). This let me assume if you see different colors in your browser window vs. PDF and APub it might be caused by your browser when displaying the KDP website but doesn't show the 'true' KDP colors.

To detect whether your browser's color management is influencing the colors in your specific case you could open 3 browser windows + move each of the 2 screenshots (PDF / APub) onto a browser window + compare them with the KDP website.

Another test shows the profile support and color differences for your browsers, just view this site on different browsers:
https://cameratico.com/tools/web-browser-color-management-test/

EDIT: Sorry, I was focused before on the photo colours only, haven't noticed the hint "Check out the back cover portion". I also see the two different blacks in the background, they are not related to browser color management of cause.

Edited by thomaso

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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11 hours ago, Lagarto said:

The back cover of the Amazon screenshot certainly looks different from the spine and front cover so it is likely that the delivered PDF has the blacks defined diffrently, as well. Can you post the PDF of the cover that was used in production?

Here is the back part of the cover in PDF. 

BackCoverForum.pdf

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36 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

Sorry, could not figure out based on just the back cover what could have happened. Basically there are two scenarios:

1) The back cover has rich black, and the front cover and spine K100, so when rendered similarly, the back cover becomes darker. As the opposite is true, this clearly has not happened, even it the back cover does have the black defined in CMYK (possibly RGB 0, 0, 0 converted to CMYK).

2) The K100 of the front cover (= a guess) has been rendered so that it becomes RGB 0, 0, 0, and the four-color-black of the back cover (= a fact) gets rendered in dark gray, and accordingly becomes lighter. This may have happened, but without seeing the front cover production PDF, this is just a guess. But this does not explain the difference in blackness between the front and back of the Amazon screenshot, since the rich black of the back cover would be rendered in much darker gray than shown in the screenshot, even if this scenario were true.

If the attached PDF was really used for creating the backcover of the Amazon screenshot, there must be something wrong with the production workflow. The PDF file itself is such that it should produce a good RGB screenshot with dark black. 

What sort of work flow error might do that? I've attached me afpub file. 

ForumFullCover.afpub

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You have a mix of RGB and CMYK embed documents making up the cover.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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13 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

One further note: I am not familiar with Amazon KDP production workflow, but if this is just a front cover sceenshot problem, isn't is possible to updload a PNG screenshot separately? Does it need to be a PDF (leaving it vulnerable to possibly automatic rasterizations and profile stripping)? 

Unfortunately, they want a "Print Ready PDF", and will not accept PNG.

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46 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

 

I suppose the book was also actually printed: can any difference be seen in the blackness of covers there? When I produced a print file using the default "PDF (press-ready)" without changing anything, the resulting file has the ambiguency described above but nothing that a competent printer could not handle. The black of the front and back should become identical despite the mixed profile sources.

 

The book has not been printed since it appeared to be discolored during the set up process. But maybe I'll just try printing it. 

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In case it helps AntiqueFlaneur or anyone else having Affinity + KDP color issues, here's how I solved this:

I set the document to RGB and exported to PDF using the "Digital (High Quality)" preset. I set DPI to 400, rasterized everything, and set Embed ICC and Honor Spot Colors to no. The Amazon cover image now appears much truer to the source document, with brighter, less-washed-out colors (compare the cover attached here to the cover attached earlier in the thread).

It's still over my head as to why this worked, but it did. My best guess is that the KDP workflow simply does not expect documents prepared for professional printing.

Hope that helps!

 

1474396160_KDPCoverFixed.png.259cf6233598ca74e2240452468cd1e7.png

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Some answers and direct support from Serif (and/or Amazon) would be interesting at this point. 

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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5 hours ago, Lagarto said:

This means that the best workflow is to create an RGB document and deliver it by using the "PDF (for print)".

I haven't experienced uploading a sample PDF to see what happens but, at least theoretically, they recommend CMYK (and accept RGB, too). Excerpt from KPD's "Getting started" PDF, linked on "File Formats and Specifications":

Quote

General specifications
• We support PDF v1.4 and lower.

Color interior requirements
Color pages
• We recommend using CMYK color space, though we also accept RGB.
(...)

Page 14 + 18 in  https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle-publication/KEP/KEP_POD_Getting_Started_EN._CB1570193013_.pdf

PDF v1.4 means that PDF/X-1 and X-3 are suitable – but X-4 is not. (APub's default preset "for print" creates a PDF in v1.7)

Also, to avoid embedded color profiles getting ignored in case of a not color-managed print workflow, APub's preset for X-3 may get manually (additionally) activated the "Convert..." option and force this way any assigned-only profile to be respected. APub's X-1 preset has this option ticked by default.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/17/2020 at 8:06 AM, Spraypaintsensei said:

In case it helps AntiqueFlaneur or anyone else having Affinity + KDP color issues, here's how I solved this:

I set the document to RGB and exported to PDF using the "Digital (High Quality)" preset. I set DPI to 400, rasterized everything, and set Embed ICC and Honor Spot Colors to no. The Amazon cover image now appears much truer to the source document, with brighter, less-washed-out colors (compare the cover attached here to the cover attached earlier in the thread).

It's still over my head as to why this worked, but it did. My best guess is that the KDP workflow simply does not expect documents prepared for professional printing.

Hope that helps!

 

1474396160_KDPCoverFixed.png.259cf6233598ca74e2240452468cd1e7.png

 

Thanks for this. Following your suggestion did get that weird back cover color to go away. The print edition is still looking a lot more washed out than the ebook, though, and I don't know why it has a random black border around it. 

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  • 7 months later...

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