Black (Illustrator vs Publisher)

[HYR]

I'm working on a black and white coloring book that was designed in Adobe Illustrator. If I print from Illustrator (2021) I get a darker black, when I print from Publisher (1.9.0) it looks almost gray. When I color pick each from a third party color picker I get (0,0,0) from Illustrator and (109,0,13) from Publisher within the apps themselves. Any ideas why?

(Note: I'm on Mac OS 10.15.3)

Here's a photo of the same doc printed from both apps...

https://cln.sh/xAGktW176elMJjjKSTKo

[firstdefence]

It also looks like Affinity Publisher is sparser in laying down ink.

[Joachim_L]

6 hours ago, HYR said:

Any ideas why?

Used the same colour profile for both applications? What file format did you use for opening in APu? Could you upload this file?

[firstdefence]

Possibly the printer settings, one being photo quality, one being text?

[HYR]

I think it has something to do with the black color changing when imported into Affinity Publisher. In Illustrator it's (0,0,0) but in AP it's:

So it's not even fully black when imported. The file I'm using to import is a .ai file.

[Joachim_L]

5 minutes ago, HYR said:

The file I'm using to import is a .ai file.

Could we get a hand on this (or similar) file?

[firstdefence]

RGB vs CMYK?
Rich Black vs 100% black?

[HYR]

48 minutes ago, Joachim_L said:

Could we get a hand on this (or similar) file?

square.ai – @Joachim_L here's a simple test. I save it from Illustrator 2021 as a Illustrator 2020 file. It contains a black square (0,0,0). When I import into Publisher and I check the color I get (340, 5, 13).

@firstdefence Both were CMYK... not sure how to check "Rich Black" vs "100% Black". How would I do that?

[firstdefence]

Rich black will have a percentage of CMY as well as K, instead of just 100% K and 0% CMY 

[Joachim_L]

Apart from the fact, that Affinity sends only RGB data to the printer. Placing the AI with the corresponding ICC profile in APu, the PDF output of the black is rich black. Turning from Passthrough to Interpret the "correct black" is exported. So I would call it a bug and this thread should moved accordingly.

[wonderings]

I really don't know why it is so difficult in Publisher and getting PDF's correctly. I took the test square.ai file that HYR uploaded. I checked first in Illustrator it is made up of 100% K and document colour mode is CMYK, all correct. I drop that .ai file into Publisher and then simply export as a PDF for print and look at the separations which are now a CMYK mixture. Why do I need to be playing around with profiles in order to do something so simple? If the file is 100% K then leave it be unless I choose to change and alter. This is over complex and not something I ever have to deal with in Indesign. 

[Joachim_L]

To bump this a bit: I made another test and generated a PDF from the AI file and all went well. So only AI in Passthrough mode seem to make trouble.