Publisher CMYK / Pantone workflow question

[RWB]

I am a little confused as to workflow regarding a CMYK (GRACOL 2006 or 2013, whatever profile doesn't really matter).

Typically I'd import a Pantone bridge CP palette that has LAB specs and within other brand apps get the appropriate CMYK values for that profile right in the app one way or another while maintaining the names, IE. 2466 CP or whatever. Works great, and lines up pretty much exactly with Pantone Color Manager when I use the same profile, same color and look up the CMYK values for that profile and that printing condition.

Works great across CMKY with vender supplied profiles/printing conditions as well as RGB workflow in other apps  with images again with conversions to ADOBE RGB, sRGB whatever profile is appropriate for that work and application and target.

With publisher any ASE file that's imported shows up as a spot color (even from color bridge, which it's not) and absolutely no apparent way to convert into the color space document working space profile/printing condition. I am absolutely fine with late binding if all that I have to do is export to PDF and uncheck "respect spot colors" and all will be well where I am sure those LAB spec'd spot colors that are LAB values for Pantone bridge get converted to proper CMYK numbers for that specific profile but I cannot find any documentation or good way to verify this is what is happening. 

I'd much prefer to use the same ASE color palette file across apps/work-flows and also SEE the actual values in use in my working color space inside Publisher. I don't have a lot of confidence on what's going on under the hood in export as when I "edit" the spot color the CMYK numbers are NOWHERE even close to what color manager tells me they should be with the same profile as my working space, in fact I cannot really begin to guess how those specific CMYK values when editing in publisher are arrived at.

Right now I have a work-around by exporting a CMYK ASE file that has profile/print condition adjustments baked in but would rather use the same ASE across projects.

Any answers or suggestions??

 

Thanks

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[RWB]

Without all the complicated process explanation above I am simply wondering if there is a way to convert imported LAB spot colors into document CMYK color profile process colors. In adobe apps it's very easy and the converted CMYK numbers correspond pretty closely with the CMYK profiled ASE palette from Pantone Color Manager for the same color.

Example:

Pantone 2466 CP using GRACOL 2006 profile in color manager shows  80 41 65 39 works fine if I export that as a CMYK ASE and import it to Publisher (CMYK GRACOL 2006 document) no problem. That's what I am doing now.

Pantone 2466 CP using "no profile" exported as a LAB ASE then imported into the same publisher document shows up as a spot color (no clue why Pantone does that or adobe or whoever's fault that is given 2466 CP is NOT a spot color). If I pull up edit color in Publisher and show the CMYK value it shows up as 50 0 7 67 which is nowhere close to the LAB value converted to the document profile. In fact it's almost random, as in completely bogus. 

If I do the same thing in Adobe apps I can easily convert the incoming spot color to document profile process color that is very very close to the directly exported CMYK GRACOL 2006 ASE exported directly from color manager. Is there a way to do that in Publisher?? The "edit color" option CMYK values are nowhere close to what they should be.

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[RWB]

I export a Pantone Bridge color palette from Pantone Color Manager as an ASE with LAB values. Affinity Publisher imports them as spot colors. When I bring up edit color in the Publisher palette for one of those colors the LAB is correct but if I switch it over to CMYK the.values are completely wrong as in WAY WAY WAY off.

I thought I made that clear. 

[RWB]

3 hours ago, Lagarto said:

Sorry, I do not understand the procedure you are carrying out. If you create palettes for apps using Pantone Color Manager, aren't they (e.g. Bridge Plus palettes) in ACB format? They are specifically in spot color format (color books). If I create document swatches from these and then export from Illustrator an .ASE file, I can import that file in Affinity apps  and it creates a regular palette with Lab values. If I have the dcoument CMYK profile set to e.g. Coated Gracol then what I see in CMYK boxes in the app are conversion values of the Lab values of the palette to CMYK, using Coated Gracol as target. Are you saying that you get a Bridge palette imported as spot color swatches in Affinity apps? And that Lab values of this palette are significantly different from those shown by Affinity provided built-in Bridge Coated palette? Or that Lab values are the same or close enough, but you just get bizarre CMYK values?

Anyway, you cannot directly convert a spot color to process color similarly as in Adobe apps but you should be able to copy any spot color swatch as e.g. a CMYK swatch by applying the spot color to some object, then using the color picker of e.g. the Swatches Panel to pick the document CMYK conversion color value from that object, then clicking the picked color value from the color well in context of the color picker to apply that value to the object where you picked the color from, and then adding from the fill a new swatch in your document palette. Something like this:

spot2cmyk.mov 1.79 MB · 1 download

I export a Pantone Bridge color palette from Pantone Color Manager as an ASE with LAB values. Affinity Publisher imports them as spot colors. When I bring up edit color in the Publisher palette for one of those colors the LAB is correct but if I switch it over to CMYK the.values are completely wrong as in WAY WAY WAY off.

I thought I made that clear. 

 

I can make a few screen shots if that is not clear enough.

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[RWB]

6 hours ago, Lagarto said:

I just realized that I can put the Pantone Color Manager on a trial mode and get the needed functionality, so I now created an .ASE palette and imported it in Affinity Publisher, and could reproduce the problem you describe.

So, when picking CP 2466 from the imported spot color Bridge palette, I get these Lab and CMYK values (with Coated Gracol 2006 as the document CMYK profile):

 

...which are totally wrong. 

But when I assign this color value to an object and then use that object fill to create a swatch in a document palette, and then double click the color to show the color editor, I get this:

 

...which are the correct values. So it seems there is some bug when displaying the color editor directly in context of the palette. As can be seen from the screenshot, the swatches picked from the objects are still in spot color format so that is not the issue in itself. You can convert a spot color swatch to CMYK by using the method I showed above in a video, but if you do not want the Bridge values as spot colors, the better method would be opening the created .ASE palette in Illustrator, then adding all swatches to document Swatches palette, and then exporting the document palette as an .ASE palette, as when doing this and importing that file to Affinity, the color swatches are not spot color. Lab and CMYK values also show directly correctly in the palette so there is no need for editing the swatch from within a document palette.

EDIT: Note that when you select a color value from within a spotcolor palette, that is automatically added as a swatch into a newly created document color palette, and THIS swatch behaves similarly as within the palette and has wacko Lab and CMYK values. You really need to assign the color to an object and then create a document palette swatch from that object, if you want to work around this problem. But as mentioned, best way to work around the whole thing is to do the Illustrator route to have the whole palette imported as a non-spot color palette (I need to check if the same strange problem happens with Affinity provided internal PANTONE palettes, or if it is just something strange that happens with imported spot color palettes.)

EDIT2: I just realized that the Windows and macOS Affinity apps behave differently when importing an ASE palette that has spotcolor definitions: Windows simply just does not support this, and therefore the described problem does not happen there. On macOS, if the Illustrator workaround is wanted to be used, the spotcolors have to be converted to process (Lab) in Illustrator and then exported.

THIS is exactly what I was describing and I am glad that you have confirmed exactly what I was seeing.

1. This seems like a bug that someone should fix, it's certainly not confidence inspiring when using Publisher. 

2. Publisher seems like it still has a ways to go before it can actually serve as a replacement for ID and Acrobat Pro. The work-around you suggest is far more cumbersome than what I am doing now. (Using Pantone Color Manager to just export a non-spot CMYK ASE file of Bridge colors with the profiled values, GRACOL in this case). I do really think that Publisher NEEDS the ability to convert spot LAB colors to CMKY / Working profile. 

3. Do you happen to know exactly what happens when exporting from Publisher to PDF when "respect spot color" is NOT checked? Does that do the conversion to working space from LAB? I haven't bothered to investigate.

 

Thanks for your effort in confirming the behavior I was seeing.

[RWB]

1 hour ago, Lagarto said:

If someone on macOS having access to InDesign wants to have Lab based Bridge color palettes imported to macOS Affinity apps, the trick is to import spot ASE palette created by Pantone Color Manager to InDesign, then specify the spot colors as process and color model as Lab, then export the swatches as an .ASE file and finally import that palette to Affinity apps macOS version. The swatches are regular (not spot color) but the color values are Lab based, similarly as when importing a spot ASE palette directly to Windows version of Affinity apps. 

As I said the process of just exporting an ASE to profiled CMYK from Pantone Color Manager seems much more efficient for now and doesn't involve Adobe apps which ultimately would be great to ditch the $50/Mon subscription which sadly I cannot do yet.

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[RWB]

8 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

You're welcome. I learned plenty of useful things myself, after some confusing tests!

As a conclusion it seems that the only glitch that there is (in macOS versions), is that the color editor in context of imported palette swatches behaves erratically. But what I mentioned above about imported Bridge spot palettes being RGB based and somehow profile-dependent, it does not seem to be true. I tested this now by assigning CP 2466 to a rectangle both from the directly Pantone Color Manager created imported spotcolor .ASE palette, and from the InDesign created Lab-based non-spotcolor .ASE palette, both imported to macOS version Affinity Publisher, and they both seem to produce correct conversions when used in different color spaces.

In the video below, I demonstrate this by using AdobeRGB and sRGB RGB color spaces, and Coated Gracol 2006 and ISO Newspaper26v4 CMYK color spaces, and both swatches produce equal conversion values. I tested also exporting to RGB and CMYK PDFs (PDF/X1a:2003) by unchecking "Honor. spot colors" option, and they export equally and using the color values show in the UI (it just has to be noted that Affinity apps do not export correctly to RGB unless the document RGB color space is in destination color space, as they use sRGB as default when exporting from CMYK mode document, even if the underlying RGB color space is AdobeRGB; you need to switch the color mode to AdobeRGB and then also force AdobeRGB or document color profile as the destination color space when exporting to RGB mode PDF.)

(Note: When you check color values, remember to have the lock icon turned ON, when switching color models, otherwise the selected objects will have their color values redefined!)

 

So yes, this seems to work, just remembering to turn off the spot colors (you can create a preset where this is done to make it a bit easier). It would be nice if the Windows version could import .ASE spot color palettes, and equally nice if the macOS version version could ignore spot-color state of the palette swatches at user's request!

 

bridge_isonewspapercmyk.pdf 600.05 kB · 0 downloads

bridge_gracolcmyk.pdf 493.23 kB · 0 downloads

bridge_adobergb.pdf 20.94 kB · 0 downloads

bridge_srgb.pdf 20.94 kB · 0 downloads

Thanks for the update...

 

Just as an aside all this stuff drives me absolutely insane in terms of the unnecessarily complex and bizarre behavior across the board when it comes to color conversions or lack of color conversions. In general on the press end of things I find a lot of people that know what they are doing and all of them agree things could be MUCH simpler. The vast majority of the problem seems to come from the spectrum of desktop design people a large portion of which have no idea what they are doing when it comes to color spaces/profiles/conversion of the fact that the numbers are completely meaningless without a profile/intent context but have developed "this is the way I do it" mentality and kind of force print providers to also do very strange things so that CMYK numbers they arbitrarily type in match "something" they use as a reference.

 

Just a note regarding one of your tests that from one perspective is "pretty close" as you described it but from my perspective WAY OFF (not as bad as the wonky color editor behavior on imported spot colors). It seems (like MOST other software) when using the "built in" Pantone bridge coated colors within publisher it just uses the raw CMYK numbers that are associated with Pantone's very very specific profile/print conditions rather than attempt to convert them to the working document profile. Again not very useful for anything but very casual draft work. Which leads me to a question...

My personal workflow is as outlined above when matching specific colors via bridge:

I work with printers that actually want documents in a specific profile (they deal with day to day variations in specific conditions from there), right now that's typically GRACOL 2006 or 2013. I use Pantone Bridge to grab a CMYK palette that was made with the profile conversions so I get a very good match on final output that compares very favorably to the actual bridge chips under D/50. I also convert my image assets on export to the document profile. Works great without a ton of back and forth crap, I've even found on-demand services where I get very very similar output using the same way of doing it.

What do you do for bridge colors generally to get decent process color matches for bridge colors? 

I personally cannot possibly understand why the. entire industry seems to be so backwards in going to late binding conversions by the printer. All the tools/software and standards have been around for a while now. decent monitors have been around for soft-proofing for years that are not crazy money, what's with the frigging device specific numbers that still plague this??? Built-in job security for a bunch of people? I don't get it. The "huge" issue of dealing with RGB black to CMYK black via strait profile conversions has been dealt with 6 ways from Sunday, most of the on-demand providers deal with that under the covers no matter what people send them.