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spot color not overprinting


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Hi Thomahawk,

I've just tried this myself (both with the Layer Opacity set to less than 100%, and also with the Tint Opacity set to 100%) and it is working as intended. Could you attach a document that is failing for you and the resulting PDF file you've exported that shows the fail please?

SpotOverprintTintOpacity.afdesign
SpotOverprintTintOpacity.pdf
SpotOverprint.afdesign
SpotOverprint.pdf

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2 hours ago, Sean P said:

the resulting PDF file you've exported that shows the fail

2 hours ago, Sean P said:

SpotOverprintTintOpacity.afdesign SpotOverprint.afdesign

Doesn't work with PDF/X-3.
Layer Opacity <100 converts to CMYK.

And other related issues. See also:

 

Edited by loukash
quoted the wrong file

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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22 minutes ago, loukash said:

Doesn't work with PDF/X-3.
Opacity <100 converts to CMYK.

 

Unfortunately the original poster did not specify what export options they're using so I can only guess at this point.

As far as I'm aware this is a limitation of the PDF/X-3 format (see below), which is why the application is rasterising those areas to an image. That said what I do find weird is that if I set Rasterise to 'Nothing' then it does actually export out with both spot colours and Overprint. See attached files. I'll pass this along to development to see why that could be the case.
https://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/pdfx-3#:~:text=An updated version of PDF,for transparency and spot colors.

SpotOverprintx3_RasteriseNothing.pdf SpotOverprintx3_RasteriseUnsupported.pdf
EDIT: I do wonder if that prepressure article means transparency in raster images rather than a vector object's opacity.

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Just now, Sean P said:

As far as I'm aware this is a limitation of the PDF/X-3 format

Not a limitation of the format per se, but obviously a limitation of the PDF export library that Affinity is using. See also my aforelinked comparison thread.

Compare to this:
indesign_spot_opacity.indd (CS5.5)
indesign_spot_opacity_x3.pdf (inspect plates in Acrobat or equivalent)

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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13 minutes ago, Sean P said:

SpotOverprintx3_RasteriseNothing.pdf

This just exports the spot colors as opaque while set to overprint. It doesn't recalculate the opacity values to tint values, which is what the Adobe PDF library does.

As noted in my other thread, I can work around by exporting to PDF/X-4 and converting to PDF/X-3 via Adobe PDF. In the meantime I've set up a few conversion filters directly in Acrobat X, so I don't even need to take the route via InDesign or Illustrator import as described in that thread.

Of course, that works for me only as long as I'll continue to work in El Capitan (or not going higher than Mojave). Which is OK for likely a few more years to come. :)

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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  • 5 weeks later...

Meanwhile, we've investigated some of these issues further in another thread:

Read the whole thread. Towards the end I'm describing the mechanism and the crazy workaround how to make almost anything overprint.

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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