PDF Black Overprint "fixed" with extra Adjustment Layer

[prophet]

In attempting my first "production level" project in Publisher, I've been been struggling with the black overprint issues in PDF exports from Publisher. Just to be up front, I'm a designer with several decades of print production experience and I've read (I think) all the pertinent threads about color space, PDF versions, etc. I haven't "solved" any of the very large flaws in Affinity, (no overprintg on spot color is particularly irritating) but I did discover an odd, buggy workaround that others might find useful, or perhaps someone higher up the food chain might see and address.

When attempting to create a correctly overprinted drop shadow on a linked file, I found adding an adjustment layer to the linked file "forces" the black to overprint correctly. In this case a Levels layer with no actual value changes does the trick.

Would love to not have to do this, but, for now, it gets me through this project.

 

[loukash]

3 hours ago, prophet said:

I found adding an adjustment layer to the linked file "forces" the black to overprint correctly. In this case a Levels layer with no actual value changes does the trick.

Hm… I've been experimenting with this idea now, but all it does to appear as if "overprinting correctly" is that it converts the underlying spot color to CMYK.

[prophet]

In this instance, the background is 4 color already. But yes, with a spot bg, it does convert.

Working on another technique and will post back later.

[loukash]

These are situations when I'm wanting to bang my head against a wall.
Elementary and simple workflows that – when applying them in Schmadobe's InDesign from 10 years ago, they just work out of the box. A perfect PDF/X-3 with all overprints, all drop shadows, all spot colors intact. No jagged edges, no antialiased edges, all crisp clean.
Then you want to achieve the same thing in Publisher, all looks fine on screen, then you export a PDF, and all you get is a stinking pile of crap. No matter which workaround you try, it just doesn't work because the underlying math/code – or whatever it is – is flawed.

Not that I have much use for drop shadows as a gimmick, but depending on context, a decent, almost invisible drop shadow adds much to light color text readability on background images or light background fills. Having it "just work" is simply a must. The only "workable workaround" would be the "last millenium workflow" where you had to construct drop shadows separately onto the background and place it all as bitmap images into the layout.

Serif, please, get your act together!

[prophet]

Managed to get Black overprint on a spot color. But it has its own quirk. Not super practical, but for a small project, might be workable with some trial and error.

 

[loukash]

Yeah, a blur! I was just about to try that, too!

[loukash]

33 minutes ago, prophet said:

Managed to get Black overprint on a spot color.

Can't make it work.
Can you please upload your documents?

[loukash]

Alright, it's now slightly off topic, but I found a workaround how to "overprint" spot color, based on my earlier experiments with duotone workflows:

1. set the spot color to overprint
2. duplicate the object that should have a drop shadow
3. add the drop shadow effect to the copy
4. place the copy behind the spot color object
5. keep the original without the drop shadow in front of the spot color object

You can't see the the drop shadow unless you set the spot color blend mode to Darken or Multiply for preview; set to Normal on PDF export.
The front object will knock out the spot color but not the drop shadow of its duplicate.

[prophet]

2 hours ago, loukash said:

Can't make it work.
Can you please upload your documents?

Sorry, away from the work machine. Shadow is made in Designer as a 100%black shape with Gaussian blur. That file is placed in a Pub file on a spot color background, given a blend mode of Multiply with an appropriate opacity (who knows the weird math that gets used though). Then PDF export, I used press ready.

I'll try your other technique on the morrow.

[Dazmondo77]

My main way of doing this is to group the duplicated gaussian blur or item with outer shadow then set the group (which only contains the blur) to multiply and output  PDF/X-4 - the trick is that the item with FX always needs to be in a group for the multiply to the group to work correct as overprint - also important is with the drop shadow method is to click on the shadow colour in the outer shadow layer FX panel, and even if it's already set to 100% K, just move the slider a notch then back to 100% and you should notice the swatch change (see attached 1.58 in the timeline)

If for some reason this fails to work, my other workaround for this is now easier in 1.9 + which is to rasterise your gaussian blur or duplicated item with outer shadow, right click on the now rasterised shadow, and roll down to convert to image resource, now click on the 'K only' button which is now available then set to multiply, output  PDF/X-4

[loukash]

@Dazmondo77, brilliant!

As long as your print guy accepts PDF/X-4, that is.
Or as long as you can import your X-4 into your ancient version of InDesign, Illustrator, Distiller etc. and convert it to X-3…

[loukash]

2 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

also important is with the drop shadow method is to click on the shadow colour in the outer shadow layer FX panel, and even if it's already set to 100% K, just move the slider a notch then back to 100% and you should notice the swatch change

Also important:
Make sure all CMYK profiles in your workflow match.
For my temporary documents I'm using the default SWOP profile to keep the Affinity file size small (see this post why).
But my regular workflow is either Fogra27, or ECI 300%, depending on print house. That's how my Schmadobe CS5 color matching is set up.

When checking the current test file in Acrobat, even though it's overprinting and otherwise looking visually correct, the shadow was displayed as composite CMYK, not K. I've almost pulled my hair out trying to figure out what's wrong, until I realized that the profiles don't match, and Acrobat only tries to compensate for that…

2 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

my other workaround for this is now easier in 1.9 + which is to rasterise your gaussian blur or duplicated item with outer shadow, right click on the now rasterised shadow, and roll down to convert to image resource, now click on the 'K only' button which is now available then set to multiply, output  PDF/X-4

To make this method work truly reliably even with PDF/X-3, the image resource should be in true grayscale and have absolutely no alpha. I.e. the best is to "make it linked" temporarily, open in Photo persona, convert to grayscale with rendering intent Saturation, export to JPEG (which will always strip any alpha channel no matter what other stupid bug there may be), relink or reembed, K only. Don't use any blend modes or opacity, just an "old school" global swatch set to overprint. Only then it will behave predictable on output. Set to Multiply for layout preview only, turn to Normal (opaque) for PDF/X-3 export.
That's what I've learned from my aforementioned duotone experiments.

The question remains:
Why the F do we even have to go through all this?!

Edited March 23, 2021 by loukash
see below

[loukash]

46 minutes ago, loukash said:

just an "old school" global swatch set to overprint. Only then it will behave predictable on output.

Nope, it doesn't.
It works with spot colors set to overprint, but not with K or a K tint swatch set to overprint.

PDF/X-3 export is just f*ing broken.

Lesson learned here:

Whenever I need reliable PDF/X-3 output on any layouts that involve transparencies, effects or spot colors, it's back to InDesign.
Anything else is a waste of time.

[prophet]

@loukash and @Dazmondo77, thank so much for your insights into this.

Dazmondo77's Layer FX technique seemed like the most "reasonable" option and with a vector shape, success! But with a placed image, no go. Even when the image used as the shadow image is set to K only, I still get 4 color shadow over the spot BG. Same technique on both, but different results.

 

[prophet]

2 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

If for some reason this fails to work, my other workaround for this is now easier in 1.9 + which is to rasterise your gaussian blur or duplicated item with outer shadow, right click on the now rasterised shadow, and roll down to convert to image resource, now click on the 'K only' button which is now available

Ah, just saw this tidbit below the video and that does the trick.

1 hour ago, loukash said:

Why the F do we even have to go through all this?!

Indeed! So many hoops to jump through.

[loukash]

We need unconditional object based "Overprint" attribute!
That would already solve quite a few issues we're dealing with in this thread.
As in: This "wheel" has already been invented decades ago. Just implement it, Serif!

[Dazmondo77]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

We need unconditional object based "Overprint" attribute!

Damn right

The above workaround I posted is still very hit and miss and only works with PDF/X-4 and the bizarre thing is I can only seem to get it to work when using Fogra 27 - with my other top profile (ISO v2 300%) Vector drop shadows show in Acrobat as 4 colour black whereas a shadow converted to raster (using the the above technique where you rasterise then convert to image resource) works as expected, this is when using end to end ISO v2 300% ???!?!??!??! is this a bug?   

 

[loukash]

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

with my other top profile (ISO v2 300%) Vector drop shadows show in Acrobat as 4 colour black whereas a shadow converted to raster

Works for me now:

[Dazmondo77]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

Works for me now:

Is that CS6 or 5.5 as I see you can synchronise using ISO300% and Fogra27 - not available to synchronise in my CS5, I have to setup separately  ----  so just changed the Acrobat profile to ISO300% in preferences and it's worked - now I can view ISO300% as expected  

Thanks loukash

----  what a pain in the AR-dobe 

[loukash]

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Is that CS6 or 5.5 as I see you can synchronise using ISO300% and Fogra27 - not available to synchronise in my CS5

It's a mixup:
The upgrade path from the 2003 "Adobe Design Collection" to CS3 was cheaper buying individual app upgrades rather than upgrading to the "CS3" suite en bloc. Same for CS3 to CS5. So I ended up with ID CS5.5, PS CS5.1, AI CS5, and eventually AC X. (Don't let me start on the p.i.t.a. installing the apps from scratch on El Capitan: I had to search and download the individual AI CS5 update packages on archive.org because Schmadobe's built in CS5 update mechanism is broken and the adobe.com download links are dead!)

Interestingly, Bridge CS5.1 can suddenly sync them all. I only find out TODAY!  
I vaguely remember that it didn't work back in 2011 when I installed it first on Snow Leopard and later on Mountain Lion.

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

what a pain in the AR-dobe 

But then again, if you need PDF/X-3, it just works!
Sigh…

I've done full complex gatefold LP sleeves and multipage CD booklet layouts within one single AI document, with the Roughen live effect applied to all live text and all vector objects, transparencies, overprint, shadows, fake "cheap lazy 60s retro" typography, fake 3D à la letterpress, fake "barcode sticker", fake yellowish cardboard, fake "cheap grainy printing" effects, you name it. The AI document takes about 5 minutes to load, 66MB without an embedded PDF "mixdown", and editing it was definitely a strain on my nerves. (For the subsequent release from the series I split the layout parts over several documents.) Applying or modifying saved text styles in AI CS5 makes you want to bang your head against a wall. But the PDF/X-3 export was flawless, GZ Media didn't complain, and the print result was perfect, exactly as intended: discogs.com/release/8103001#images/21843569 (the glossy shrinkwrap visible on the front cover photo is real though, not faked…)

Sadly, there's no way do accomplish this in Affinity as of today. Unless you'd go "full pixel mode". Nah, forget it.

[loukash]

7 minutes ago, loukash said:

transparencies, overprint,

Looking at my old layout again, here I have faked "cheap spot color overprinting":
discogs.com/release/8103001#images/40830650

Detailed view at the source:

That's the magic of unconditional object based "Overprint" attributes!
Also enjoy the magic of live Roughen effect on text. (Even though it has its own quirks…)

By the way, the fake yellowish cardboard is a linked JPEG set to Multiply blend mode on top layers above the rest:

Don't even try to imagine what would happen if you'd export a PDF/X-3 from a similar Affinity layout.
Even though internally within the Affinity document window, it would likely be a breeze to work with, unlike in AI.

[Dazmondo77]

Nice work loukash - Ive used similar technique for album artwork in the past, although, I'd never tackle a job like that in Illustrator, it always felt a bit odd for me with multipage documents, I'd just copy paste into InDesign which used to be my choice for all page layout and even packaging and cutting forms and all that - I only ever used Illustrator for vector Illustration and logos - I was always at home in InDesign and always got decent output - I'm kind of like the same working in Publisher now although for me StudioLink is a game changer, being able to do everything without having to switch apps is now a taken for granted standard. If only we had a rock solid viewable overprint / knockout and proper separation preview and a decent, print centric, Acrobat alternative - also be able to print accurately to postscript devices from Affinity (currently a joke) -  oh -  and all the other stuff 😉

[loukash]

10 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I'd never tackle a job like that in Illustrator, it always felt a bit odd for me with multipage documents,

I'm originally coming from Freehand, you know. Freehand 9 & multipage documents, what a joy it was.   (Until you'd try to export a printable PDF, that is. What a disaster that was. At least so used to say my then-printguy…)

10 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

StudioLink is a game changer, being able to do everything without having to switch apps is now a taken for granted standard

Definitely! I'm enjoying that as well.

[prophet]

3 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

InDesign which used to be my choice for all page layout and even packaging and cutting forms and all that - I only ever used Illustrator for vector Illustration and logos - I was always at home in InDesign and always got decent output - I'm kind of like the same working in Publisher now although for me StudioLink is a game changer, being able to do everything without having to switch apps is now a taken for granted standard. If only we had a rock solid viewable overprint / knockout and proper separation preview and a decent, print centric, Acrobat alternative

This is 100% my experience and desire. We were always drilled in the "right tool for the job" approach: PS for raster images, AI for vector graphics/logos, ID for almost all layout. StudioLink is an amazing…toolbox? multitool? Just need those last few foundational elements across the suite (global layers, envelope warp, correct overprint and separation) and a little spit polish on the bells and whistles and I'll never look back at Adobe.

My home studio is Adobe free, but had to supplement Affinity with a PDF editor for the occasional form building and signing (Foxit PhantomPDF). The work place however, is still CS6 with 100s of active projects that I hope to eventually migrate to Affinity.

[prophet]

Doing some more testing and experimenting with this. Posting here for possible insights and posterity.

Panel 1 is my Publisher file
Panel 2 is the spot color channel of the generated PDF
Panel 3 is that PDF opened in Designer, with the shadow components "pulled" to the right the show what has happened to them.

On Panel 2, you can see the obvious issue of the drop shadow knocking out the background rather than overprinting. Possible solutions are presented in the comments above and I've tried all with varying success.

On Panel 3 you can see some weird failures/successes. The most egregious to me is that a native AFPhoto file placed in what amounts to the same piece of software, produces the bizarre white box!