Strange colouring showing up in printed version.

[Steve_1010]

Hi Everyone,

I printed a book on KDP. On the back cover of the book some of the text and logos have a strange coloring over them.

I've included an example in the attachment. If you look carefully at the attachment you'll see a logo. But, if you look more carefully, the logo is in a square that is a slightly different red. (My apologies, it doesn't show up well on the camera) Almost as if a small film of yellowish colour was overlayed.  If you look even closer, you can see the letters, 'SMAR' also have this square around them.

This slight discolouration is happening on the logo and some of the text on the back cover but in Publisher everything looks great.

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Thank you so much....

 

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, Steve_1010 said:

Almost as if a small film of yellowish colour was overlayed.

It looks to me as though the background is the same colour as the logo, but transparent. Most of it is almost completely transparent, so you get a rectangle whose colour is very close to that of the red background, but there are odd bits which appear orange/yellow because they’re less transparent than the rest of it.

[carl123]

17 minutes ago, Steve_1010 said:

This slight discolouration is happening on the logo and some of the text on the back cover but in Publisher everything looks great.

Just checking....

How many guesses can we make until you upload a sample Publisher document/page that has the problem?

 

[Steve_1010]

Hi Alfred - Thank you for the ideas. 

Hi Carl123 - That's the strange part, there is no problem on Publisher. Here is a screen shot of the same location from the Publisher page.  There is no colouring on the logo or letters...

[carl123]

I'm guessing, we are going to be here for a while...

[Alfred]

17 minutes ago, carl123 said:

upload a sample Publisher document/page

 

6 minutes ago, Steve_1010 said:

Here is a screen shot of the same location from the Publisher page.

Please upload a Publisher (*.afpub) file, not just a screenshot.

[Steve_1010]

Wow, I didn't know that was possible! Brilliant, here it is.

Affinity_Forum.afpub

[Steve_1010]

lol

[carl123]

18 minutes ago, Steve_1010 said:

Wow, I didn't know that was possible! Brilliant, here it is.

Are you sure you sent us the exact same page as shown in your original post

That one (the screenshot) has another letter after the word SMART (in black)

The .afpub file you uploaded does not have that 

[thomaso]

With your .afpub I don't get the issue when exporting with the '(for print)' preset:     Affinity_Forum.pdf

Can you upload this page from the PDF you had sent to the printer?
And possibly a screenshot of your export 'More' settings?
Did the printer request any specific PDF format or profile?

[Steve_1010]

Hi Carl123 and Thomaso,

My apologies. Printing deadlines delayed my response. 

Thank you, Thomaso, for the attachment.  Here's the PDF we sent to the printer. SC1 COVER FRONT (Feb 19) PDF.pdf

Also, here are screen shots (below) of the export 'More' settings we used.  

The context in Japan is, by law, you must go through a 3rd party publisher when printing with KDP Japan.  So, we sent a PDF to this company and they processed it with their software, and then they sent this PDF to KDP and they processed it. So, we're wondering if this middle-man company is creating this problem.

[thomaso]

Unfortunately I can't tell exactly what was going on in your print but have a guess only. I had expected to see the color issue (differing background red in the area of the white logo/text with transparency) in your initial PDF, maybe after switching the viewing profile, but the issue doesn't show up in my trials in Acrobat. (About 20 years ago it used to be a known issue in InDesign exports, visible in PDF & print)

Your .afpub's space/profile is CMYK, the red background, too. The white item is a .PNG with sRGB profile. Your export setting is CMYK, embed profiles, don't convert. That way the white element is still sRGB inside the CMYK .PDF. The issue might also be influenced by the image file type .PNG which can't be CMYK and therefore isn't meant to be used for print. (e.g. PNG transparency is reported various times to appear in black when printed). So, possibly another image format might have avoided the issue already.

Although the PDF specification allows mixed color spaces & profiles within a .PDF it might happen that a print provider's configuration doesn't work properly. In my impression also Affinity does export PDFs differently than e.g. InDesign, in particular regarding profiles.

Finally this recommendations & notes about profile handling by KPD makes me assume to avoid the color issue you would use only 1 color space for all layout elements, or convert all to 1 on export.

[Smee Again]

Been having the same issue when printing from Publisher. I use to create photo business cards in small lots. Always a brown area between cards both horizontally and vertically.

I finally gave up and went back to Page Plus for this project.

[Steve_1010]

Hi Thomaso,

Thank you for the amazing response.  I'm fairly new at this and I'm slowly digesting your information. Can I ask a few follow-up questions?

1) You said: "Your .afpub's space/profile is CMYK, the red background, too".  Where do you fine this space/profile on Affinity?

2) You also said: "Your export setting is CMYK, embed profiles, don't convert".  I don't see any reference to CMYK or "don't convert" in the export settings.  (Although I do see "Embed ICC File") Am I missing something?

3) You said: "So, possibly another image format might have avoided the issue already." Is a work around then to convert the PNG images in JPEG and proceed from there?

Again, thank you. 

Steve  

 

[thomaso]

@Steve_1010,

1. document: Context Toolbar (or menu File) > Document Setup… > Colour
1. red rectangle: Colour Panel with the "lock" unselected

2. right below the "Embed" checkbox is the "Convert" checkbox

3. since your PNG contains transparency: TIFF or PDF
If you choose JPG you would need to create + save an additional clipping path (which, additionally, is cumbersome to handle in Affinity). So TIFF would be easier, or a vector format like PDF.

[Steve_1010]

Thank you Thomaso, for all the information. That's very helpful.

The next version won't be printed for at least 6 months, but I'll convert the PNGs to Tiff and put them in the file. I'll keep my fingers crossed and see what happens in 6 months...

Again, thank you the advice.