Can one save a file and retain Pantone spot colour information please?

[William Overington]

Can one save a file and retain Pantone spot colour information please?

Say from Affinity Designer.

If so, which file type or types please?

I would like to try to produce some artwork with a Pantone spot colour. In fact a metallic, but the question is generic.

I know that I might not be able to get a print using the spot colour at present, but I would like to produce such a file for the experience and as chance favours the prepared person, if a chance arises I would have something ready.

William

 

[walt.farrell]

Exporting as a PDF should work.

[William Overington]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Exporting as a PDF should work.

Thank you.

Is there a direct file type as well please?

William

 

[walt.farrell]

What is a "direct file type"? I've never seen that term before.

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, BofG said:

Tiff supports spot colours, not sure if Affinity can save that was as I've never tried.

I never have either, and there's at least one recent topic about Affinity not supporting spot colors in, I think, EPS files.

The only way to know for sure is to try it, and then somehow analyze the output.

But we know it works for PDF.

[William Overington]

17 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

What is a "direct file type"? I've never seen that term before.

Well, it was just me trying to convey what I meant without knowing the parlance.

I regard png, bmp, jpg as direct file types.

To me, maybe I am wrong, PDF is a file type which is very useful for conserving a complete document that might include one or more images (if any) but from which extracting an image can either be awkward or impossible. o me a PDF is good for putting on the web, good to send to a print establishment to get a print or prints, but, and maybe I am wrong on this, essentially write-only memory.

I know that one can read a PDF into some applications. I have only ever tried it a few times when there seemed no alternative available, but it often needed some sort of bodging to get what I wanted.

https://www.lexico.com/definition/bodge

I have known the word to be used in the sense of put together as best one can in the circumstances. For example, in Apollo thirteen, one could say that the improvised system that was put together was "bodged together". A peculiar looking result, but it saved them.

As in, for example, "I bodged it together with some Araldite."

The meaning that Lexico gives seems to me to be more like the meaning of "botched".

https://www.lexico.com/definition/botc

William

 

 

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I regard png, bmp, jpg as direct file types.

They are image or raster files. "Direct" has no meaning in this context, as far as I am aware.

You can export an image as a PDF file. You can send the PDF file to a printing company, or Open it in an appropriate application (which might include Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader or a bunch of other PDF applications, or even Affinity applications) and work with it, including Printing it.

But if you want to use spot colors and a raster-format file, then you will need to know (a) which raster file formats support the use of spot colors and (b) whether Affinity supports creating them. I can't help with either of those, though for (a) I might suggest doing a good web search.

[William Overington]

Well, I suppose I should have included svg in my list of examples of what I regard as direct file types.

William

 

[William Overington]

I have found the following article that includes some information on printing using Pantone spot colours and metallics.

https://www.kmslitho.co.uk/print-pantone-spots-metallics/

William

 

[William Overington]

Which type of PDF should I use please if I want to produce from Affinity Designer a PDF that includes a Pantone metallic colour (I am using Panton 8363 C as an example) such that the file can be published on the web and archived so that if at a future time a print using Pantone 8363 ink is to be produced, then the file contains all of the information needed to do that please?

William

 

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, William Overington said:

such that the file can be published on the web

As I understand it, the purpose of Pantone colors is to be printed, not viewed online. I'm not sure why one would use them for something to be viewed on a monitor, where the colors cannot possibly match their intended print usage. But I suppose Print (Press Ready) is the right Affinity document type, and you just take your chances on how a CMYK PDF file displays in applications that generally expect RGB (and may or may not be color-managed, anyway).

[William Overington]

49 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

As I understand it, the purpose of Pantone colors is to be printed, not viewed online. I'm not sure why one would use them for something to be viewed on a monitor, where the colors cannot possibly match their intended print usage. But I suppose Print (Press Ready) is the right Affinity document type, and you just take your chances on how a CMYK PDF file displays in applications that generally expect RGB (and may or may not be color-managed, anyway).

Ah, it does seem rather a peculiar thing to do, yet there is a reason for me wanting to do that.

Yesterday in page 8 of the thread

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/138654-artwork-for-greetings-cards/

I posted the following.

----

I am beginning to think that it may be the situation that metallic printing is in practice only available for quite large runs of litho printing. Also, that having more than one metallic ink in an image would be a very costly exercise.

So, I am thinking that it may be that for me, as a hobbyist artist, the best that I can realistically achieve is to produce a design in Affinity Designer, make a jpg file and get a CMYK one-off print from Papier, as if it is a photo greeting card, but using artwork rather than a photograph and knowing that metallic ink will not be used, and also produce a PDF and send a copy to The British Library and note the doing of that in the greeting text inside the greeting card.

But I am going to try to find out if metallic printing can be produced using digital ink jet printing or giclée printing.

----

So although I would make the PDF available on the web, thus it being published and therefore eligible for legal-deposit at The British Library, that publication is as a way to conserve my artistic design so that, hypothetically at least, it could become printed at some future time. Chance favours the prepared observer is the saying, and in a similar manner, chance favours the prepared inventor.

William

 

[Wosven]

Pantone or specific brand spot colors informations are informations contained in extra channels, for files in CMYK usually (PSD, TIFF AI...).

Since PDF manage all the needed info, profiles, etc.we usually use this type of file, after importing images using spot colors or using spot colors directly in the document.

For example, you can add a specific area or layer (= channel with specific name), depending of the printer recommendations, so they'll know the areas to add varnish or special inks.

 

If you want to print with Pantones, you can use Pantone swatch depending of the type of paper (coated, uncoated, etc.). There's also today specific Pantone colors, defined to be used on paper and on screen with better results visually, that the old ones taht were different on screen and printed.

But if you want to use metallic or fluorescent colors, there's really, as said by Walter, no reason to use them in files for a screen display. It's better to use effect to simulate visually the result like (gradients for metallic colors), and produce a PDF for print with all the needed informations (color profile, bleed, etc.). Those are distinctive intents that need different files, and it's better since there's no need to put online PDF for print, those are larger and contains items that don't help readers and can be confusing if they're not used to such files.

[wonderings]

On 5/29/2021 at 3:30 PM, William Overington said:

Well, it was just me trying to convey what I meant without knowing the parlance.

I regard png, bmp, jpg as direct file types.

To me, maybe I am wrong, PDF is a file type which is very useful for conserving a complete document that might include one or more images (if any) but from which extracting an image can either be awkward or impossible. o me a PDF is good for putting on the web, good to send to a print establishment to get a print or prints, but, and maybe I am wrong on this, essentially write-only memory.

I know that one can read a PDF into some applications. I have only ever tried it a few times when there seemed no alternative available, but it often needed some sort of bodging to get what I wanted.

https://www.lexico.com/definition/bodge

I have known the word to be used in the sense of put together as best one can in the circumstances. For example, in Apollo thirteen, one could say that the improvised system that was put together was "bodged together". A peculiar looking result, but it saved them.

As in, for example, "I bodged it together with some Araldite."

The meaning that Lexico gives seems to me to be more like the meaning of "botched".

https://www.lexico.com/definition/botc

William

 

 

Really not sure what you are asking. PNG will not retain pantones, nor will bmp or jpg. PDF is a great option and a standard and will retain your colours if the file is setup properly from wherever you make it. Not sure why you want to avoid PDF. Also not sure why you want to use a pantone colour if it is not for print, no screen is going to view the pantone alike so if it is for digital use they are all going to display it differently. Again if PDF's made properly from a vector program or publishing program are great, and can be edited if need be later, though easiest is always the original program that created it. 

What is your intended use for the image you want to save with a pantone? Is it for print? For web?

[William Overington]

5 minutes ago, wonderings said:

What is your intended use for the image you want to save with a pantone? Is it for print? For web?

To conserve it at The British Library and elsewhere too so that it could be printed using a Pantone metallic ink, at some future time.

I would make it available on the web, not for viewing on the web, but as a way of making it available so that it could become printed.  

William

 

[William Overington]

20 minutes ago, BofG said:

The latest digital presses from Xerox can do gold/silver print so you might be able to find a short run supplier to meet your needs. 

Thank you.

I have found the following link.

https://firstcopy.co.uk/xerox-iridesse-production-press

William

 

[William Overington]

5 minutes ago, BofG said:

Have a read about pdf-a

Thank you.

Alas, Affinity does not do pdf-a.

William

 

[Wosven]

10 minutes ago, William Overington said:

Affinity does not do pdf-a.

it does, even if some 'd rather have PDF/X1-a:2001 instead of PDF/X1-a:2003

[wonderings]

28 minutes ago, William Overington said:

To conserve it at The British Library and elsewhere too so that it could be printed using a Pantone metallic ink, at some future time.

I would make it available on the web, not for viewing on the web, but as a way of making it available so that it could become printed.  

William

 

I think you would want 2 different PDF formats, one for archival and one for print. 

The Iridesse will print the metallics but not specific pantone metallics. You basically have silver and gold. Looked at that press a few years ago, did not fit our needs and the metallic is a niche market that we would not make our returns with on that unit. If the print intent is to use metallic from a digital press like the Iridesse or from the other competitors like Ricoh, Konica, Kodak, etc, your best bet would be to connect with a printer who can do this and find out what spot names are needed for the colours themselves. You would not need any specific PDF format for this if it is CMYK + Spots. In Indesign I would generally use High Quality PDF's or X4. Colours are maintained, including spots/pantones. 

 

[Wosven]

14 minutes ago, BofG said:

PDF-X != PDF-A

Which PDF/X are you talking about? In 30 years of printing, we used those standards without any problems when needing specials colors.

[William Overington]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A

https://www.pdfa.org/

https://www.pdfa.org/?s=pdf%2Fa

William

 

[Wosven]

3 minutes ago, BofG said:

It's a flavour of pdf that is for archival purposes. It's nothing to do with pdf-x.

Yes, i messed with the idea of printing special Pantone colors, PDF/A is for me mainly for legal documents and others ones we need to keep a certain amount of time, but not for documents that need to be printed like books or magazines, since in this case, it's better to at least keep the PDF for print in our archives. For publications, we send a copy of each one to the Bibliothèque nationale de france, no PDF.