Affinity Publisher - Issue with background color

[sweethoss]

I'm having a strange issue with APub.  I'm have some graphics created that consist of a gray rectangle and some images and textboxes laid over the top of it.  (see first pic).  The rectangles are affinity shapes and have a background of #8998A0.  This looks great on screen.  However, when I print it, it looks like it's putting a slightly lighter colored background behind images and textboxes (see second picture).  I'm a little perplexed on how to solve this. 

P.S. Further making this weird is that the original rectangle's background color of #8998A0 was previously a lighter color until I changed it to #8998A0, and I'm pretty sure that lighter color matches the printed gray that's around the images.  It's like it's retaining that previous color somehow, but only when it prints.  

What am I missing?

 

[walt.farrell]

Can you provide the .afpub file?

[sweethoss]

Attached...

Scoreboard.afpub

[iconoclast]

As far as I know, you can prevent your document from containing wrong colours by creating a document palette and add only the colours you use to this palette. Remove the others from the palette. I'm still not familiar enough to Publisher to be sure, but I think this should work.

But this is strange behaviour anyway. Don't really know why this happens.

[Wosven]

Did you try exporting as PDF and printing the PDF? (there's only one grey when exporting to PDF). Perhaps it's only occuring when printing directly.

[sweethoss]

26 minutes ago, Wosven said:

Did you try exporting as PDF and printing the PDF? (there's only one grey when exporting to PDF). Perhaps it's only occuring when printing directly.

Great suggestions, just tried it, but it's still happening.  I might need to deconstruct this and print it piece by piece.

[walt.farrell]

Your file prints just fine for me, @sweethoss, and I don't see anything wrong in the .afpub file. So I'm not sure what's happening for you.

[sweethoss]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

Your file prints just fine for me, @sweethoss, and I don't see anything wrong in the .afpub file. So I'm not sure what's happening for you.

Huh, I wonder if I need a restart...no idea.  I appreciate the assistance.

[Wosven]

25 minutes ago, sweethoss said:

Great suggestions, just tried it, but it's still happening.

The file export fine to PNG, no different greys. It's possible it's the same bug we had when printing in QXD or ID, using transparent objects. Sometime, their background looked different when printed directly, but exported as PDF and final printing were correct.

[sweethoss]

Interesting, I think I've narrowed it down to being a transparency issue.  The text in my APub document has a gradient.  When I print the same text without a gradient, it doesn't have that weird background issue.  Furthermore, the image that I brought in has a transparent background, and that too suffers the issue.

[RM f/g]

Looks familiar to me.

I would say: give it a try without transparancy. Try using a clipping path instead.

[sweethoss]

Just now, RM f/g said:

Looks familiar to me.

I would say: give it a try without transparancy. Try using a clipping path instead.

Not sure how to use a clipping path.  I just have some text that I typed and did a Gradient Overlay effect...off to google "clipping path"

[RM f/g]

For me it was the transparent part of the png that caused the problem.

[sweethoss]

Just now, RM f/g said:

For me it was the transparent part of the png that caused the problem.

Yep, I'm almost positive that's what's happening here because it also happens on my image that I brought in, which happens to be a transparent png.

[sweethoss]

The only way I can figure out how to make this work is to create the text in photoshop with the background as the same color and import it in.  I can't figure out the clipping mask suggestion...

[iconoclast]

For a clipping path you would have to draw vector pathes (without strokes) around the objects. Normally digital images are always rectangle shaped. A clipping path allows to define non rectangled image shapes. Evereything outside the vector path will be outside the image, so cut off (transparent). That's for example a fine thing to let text float around the edges of an image in a DTP-Software that supports this. Publisher normally doesn't need a clipping path for this.

I'm not sure which file types will be supported for clipping pathes in Publisher (if so). In InDesign and QuarkXPress I used to work with TIFFs with clipping pathes.

[RM f/g]

this is what I meant

Scoreboard mod.afpub

[lacerto]

(...)

[iconoclast]

I think, if you create a layout, you should always be carefull that all the images you add to it have the same resolution in DPI/PPI (in this case the images don't) and colourspace and -profile. I don't know if I'm really up to date in this case, but as I learned to create layouts about twenty years ago (with QuarkXPress) we were told always to take care for it, to prevent problems. And I think that it still makes sense.

By the way, the images could better have been placed as vector graphics. This would have resulted in smaller file sizes, better quality and lesser problems with transparencies, I think. Only photographs and paintings should be placed as raster images.

[lacerto]

(...)

[sweethoss]

So what you're saying is this is probably better handled in something like photoshop or APhoto?   

[iconoclast]

I think it doesn't matter if you do it in Photoshop or Photo. But you should take care that all the images you insert into your layout have the same colour profile and the same resolution (normally 300 dpi for print). And it will possibly also help to create a document palette with only the colours in it that you are using in your document.

And to get the best possible quality I would create the graphics with a vector graphics software like Designer, Illustrator, CorelDraw or Inkscape; export the graphics as SVG and insert them as SVG into your layout. SVG means "Scalable Vector Graphics": graphics that can be scaled without a loss of quality (bluring or pixelation). Vector graphics are always sharper than pixel images.

One additional idea: The graphics in your document are raster graphics (pixel images) that you have set in front of a vector object (the big grey rectangle). Possibly this somehow causes the difference in the appearence of greys. You could try to rasterize the big rectangle and see if this solves your problem.

And an annotation: There are some bad contrasts in your design. The numbers with their gradients look flickering in front of both greys. It doesn't look good and it is not verry legible. A darker grey or a dark colour would be better.

[sweethoss]

Let's take out the image issue for a second.  The same thing happens when my text has the gradient on it.  When I remove the gradient, the gray background issue goes away.  With that being created inside affinity, it shouldn't be a color profile issue, at least I wouldn't think so.

[lacerto]

(...)

[sweethoss]

I'm not changing any color settings.  Printer is HP color laserjet m255...

P.S. Thanks for the help and engagement.  Much appreciated!