Change to spot colour

[21Pilots]

Can you take a global colour and change it to a spot colour?, or can that only be done when you are making a new global colour?

[thomaso]

No, we can't yet turn a global into a spot colour. Only its overprint attribute can get toggled after swatch creation.

[zeeloop]

Converting any colour into a spot colour is an essential feature! Without this possibility the software is not suitable for professional use.

[thomaso]

22 minutes ago, zeeloop said:

Converting any colour into a spot colour is an essential feature! Without this possibility the software is not suitable for professional use.

Just curious: in what use case do you turn any colour into a spot color? I agree, the UI for spot colors is cumbersome and limited + their export is limited / not failure free – but since spot colors are used for print and require their specific ink palette I currently can't imagine when converting is essential.

[zeeloop]

Hi Thomaso

Say I have a brochure with multiple pages. The client's corporate colour red is used in all sorts of coloured texts and graphics. Now in order to have the specific red printed in a very deep red which cannot be simulated with CMYK, the client wants to change that colour into a Pantone-like fifth extra colour. In a Affinity Publisher's rival for example you simply change that colour into Spot, and Bob's your uncle! That indeed is daily business in a graphic design studio.

[thomaso]

59 minutes ago, zeeloop said:

the client wants to change that colour into a Pantone-like fifth extra colour. In a Affinity Publisher's rival for example you simply change that colour into Spot, and Bob's your uncle!

In this case I guess that just the option to convert a custom colour into a spot colour would not help and not solve your problem. Different to ID, in Affinity not every colour swatch is a global swatch. So even if you would be enabled to turn/edit/convert nay custom swatch into a certain spot colour it wouldn't get assigned to the layout objects. And, unfortunately there is no find & replace feature for colours in general and across an entire .afpub.

But if you have defined the primary layout colour as custom spot swatch already then you can turn it into one of any spot palette, e.g. Pantone. (right-click on the global spot swatch > Edit > choose Pantone palette > select swatch)

I wonder how it is that you are asked this task so often. As far as I know, clients have a certain corporate design, including the definition of brand colours (spot colours or not), before they order a brochure or any other medium. So I would assume that the case you describe is an exception rather than an everyday situation. If it happens regardless of corporate colours, it is worth working in Affinity with global colour swatches without exception to avoid this indeed uncomfortable, actually unnecessary problem. Yes, not a nice workflow yet.

[zeeloop]

Hi Thomaso

Tanks for you reply. Most of what you’re saying makes sense. And of course i can manually select and object and texts, but hey, we're not in the 90s anymore, let the computer do the silly work!

The problem here is not how often you might use a certain function, but the problem lies in the philosophy of the software. It is very untrustworthy when you’ve bee let down in sort of a blind end in a workflow. An unfortunately there are quite a few in the Affinity tools.

Working with global colours gives me the impression that I can change the at any time into any colour of my choosing. So I treat the global colour swatch as a link to a source with exact colour specifications. Just like i use a text style (-swatch) as a link to exact text specifications. Now say, i have linked my text to text style My Text, I would be very surprised finding out that although I can change my font from one .ttf font to another .ttf font, but I would not be able to link it to a .otf font for some reason.

I have a list of comparable «small» but essential behaviors in Affinity which made me decide to extend the Adobe subscriptions for my teams, which actually is quite a disappointment for me since I spent a huge amount in getting into the programs. Of course I keep on watching how Affinity is developing in terms of how you can «trust» the tools.

Best,

Tom

[uneMule]

Hi @ all

La séparation de couleurs et l'aperçu des surimpressions est très utile dans un studio. Cet ajout serait également bienvenu.

The colour separation and overlay preview is very useful in a studio.This addition would also be welcome.