color separation output

[basabi]

Hello,

I am embroiderer and have a little knowlege in Photo and graphics. I used to do what I need for images used for creating embroidery - auto digitizing as well as manual embroidery digitizing - with Corel.

But for my photo editing - more or less hobby  - I started to learn Affinity. I never used Adobe though. I have also Affinity Designer and Publisher.

In this forum I only found that Affinity cannot output separate files for cyan/magenta/yellow/black - but those posts are already 3 years of age. Did this change?

My example: I need an animal's head on transparent background because for my embroidery SW I just need the head and no color for background. I touched up my image, had transparent background applied. I am used just to select "print separations" when printing to PDF but I fear this is not possible in Affinity?

I then proceeded to create greyscale images from the four channels (CMYK) but then the background is black - that is no help for me - it should be either transparent or clean white. Is there a way to get my four greyscale layers without resp. with plain white background? I really tried everything in combination with AP and AD but unfortunately effortless.

Any hints are welcome,

 

TIA

Barbara

[basabi]

Well,

 

Murphy's law - after two days I just found a solution for my purpose - it's not very comfortable but at the end of the day, I can output what I need.

FYI

I used my touched up image with transparent background saved to tiff and created cmyk greyscale layers. I copied ever single layer into a single Photo document, then used the paint bucket (G) with clean white applied and clicked into the background. Finally saved each new file to png and then could use it in my embroidery SW.

 

Anyhow, I am very curious about comments  of  my initial question in terms of separations output "print to PDF".

 

thx

Barbara

 

 

[loukash]

1 hour ago, basabi said:

my initial question in terms of separations output "print to PDF".

PDF via Ghostscript to TIFF separations.

Discussed in depth from circa here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/79594-can-anyone-recommend-an-acrobat-pro-alternative/&do=findComment&comment=737563

I've had quite some success using Ghostscript from the command line:

Eventually I plan to finish the programming of an Automator plugin that should do the conversion via context menu from Finder. My current "internal beta version" is still too rough to publish though.

Another user in the same thread is currently developing a Windows application based on Ghostscript.

[loukash]

3 hours ago, basabi said:

create greyscale images from the four channels (CMYK) but then the background is black

I've been playing with it a bit, and there is a somewhat "clunky" way to create CMYK separations directly in Photo:

1. make sure your document is CMYK
2. flatten to a single pixel layer
3. Layer > Invert (! – see #5)
4. View > Studio > Channels
5. right-click (control-click may not work on Mac: a bug?!) on Pixel Cyan > Create Grayscale Layer (it will be inverted back to correct values!)
6. select the original CMYK layer again
7. right-click Pixel Magenta > Create Grayscale Layer
8. select the original CMYK layer again
9. right-click Pixel Yellow > Create Grayscale Layer
10. select the original CMYK layer again
11. right-click Pixel Black > Create Grayscale Layer
12. you can now invert the original CMYK layer back to its original state if you still need it
13. you may also want to copy the four grayscale separation layers to a new document (select the four layers, copy, File > New From Clipboard)

Could be possibly partially automated with a macro? Haven't tested it yet.

[basabi]

Sorry, just had time only now to follow your instructions. Yes, that is exactly what I did, but honestly, I will use my other graphics app for this, which is much more comfortable for this task and I am lucky to have a license too.