Color swatches with low K-values

[ericosmosNEW]

I'm coloring a comic which is meant to go to offset print. Now, I always hear about the K-rule which means, keep the K-values as low as possible to avoid exceeding the TAC  limit (240) and hence muddy and too dark print colors. But it is hard to control for the K value when picking colors, so I thought using a color swatches where even darker colors have little to no K-values.

Does anyone know how to do color swatches with little K value in them? Or does anyone have those kind of swatches ready?

Another caveat is that I would have to recreate the swatch by hand anyway as Affinity for iPad doesn't support import of swatches as of now.

[Dan C]

Hi @ericosmosNEW,

Please see the below screen recording for how to create Swatches in Affinity, with a controllable K (Black) value - 

Is this what you're looking to achieve?  

[ericosmosNEW]

Hey Dan,

thanks. Yes, basically that is what I was planning to do. Here is the next caveat: when I create those low K colors and fill something with it and check with the color picker, it changes the mix of cmyk values, basically adding K and taking away cmy in relation.

See my, as of now, lonely post here 😢

 

[DM1]

9 hours ago, ericosmosNEW said:

it changes the mix of cmyk values, basically adding K and taking away cmy in relation.

What sample size are you taking? Would a larger sample average make a difference?

edit: no, larger sample size didn’t help. Still sampling different values.

[ericosmosNEW]

Yep. Seems like I still have to resort back to Photoshop especially for advanced print specific tasks.

Too bad