Printing problem - film negative image printing completely black

[PLShutterbug]

Using latest Affinity Photo version.

Printing to Canon Pixma Pro-10 printer using Canon Photo Paper Pro Luster profile.

An image of a "normal scene" previews and prints as expected.

I'm trying to print some wedding photos from my sister's wedding some years ago originally taken on 2-1/4" Vericolor III film. I used my macro lens on my Nikon Z 7 to photograph the negative, then used a curves adjustment to reverse the colors, then a fill layer to remove the mask, then a second curves adjustment to adjust colors. I have an HSL adjustment at the top of the layer stack but it is turned off.

When I print straight from the .afphoto file the resulting preview in Canon IJ Preview is completely black, and so is the resulting print. See the screenshot.

If I save as a .JPG, then open the .JPG and print that, it prints. The colors are not right, but that's probably a profile thing - I'm not going to worry about that now.

My question: why is this image that looks ok in Photo and prints if saved as a .JPG and then opened in Photo, printing completely black?

(I realize there is still some color correction to do ... don't worry about that now.)

Thanks in advance.

[Old Bruce]

I would guess it is a result of the inversion made by the Curves Adjustment Layer. Try printing after doing a Merge Visible so that layer is at the top.

[NotMyFault]

As the printing functionality is extremely buggy both on Mac and Windows (for reasons mostly outside  Affinity) it is best practice to export you document in a suitable format (jpg, tiff, PDF) and print it directly on OS level, or using default apps like Acrobat Reader, or web browser.

Next, you could really improve the image with help of levels or curves adjustment to level the color channels.

[v_kyr]

All in all hard to tell without seeing what has been applied, in what range/order in the layers panel here then. Meaning, just seeing Canon IJ Preview and the APh print panel doesn't tell much here!

[PLShutterbug]

1 hour ago, NotMyFault said:

As the printing functionality is extremely buggy both on Mac and Windows (for reasons mostly outside  Affinity) it is best practice to export you document in a suitable format (jpg, tiff, PDF) and print it directly on OS level, or using default apps like Acrobat Reader, or web browser.

Next, you could really improve the image with help of levels or curves adjustment to level the color channels.

Note this sentence from my original post:

"(I realize there is still some color correction to do ... don't worry about that now.)"

And this one:

"... then used a curves adjustment to reverse the colors, then a fill layer to remove the mask, then a second curves adjustment to adjust colors."

I knew and still know I have to work on the image to get it right. I acknowledged that in my original post.

However, if I get the color balance, contrast, etc. perfect but it still prints black then all that work won't help, will it?

What's amazing to me is how the human eye adapts to see the color that something should be, regardless of what it actually is. I thought I had it nailed, tried these prints, sent the plea here, and then went back a couple of hours later to see if any responses had shown up and was astounded at how much the color is still off.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, PLShutterbug said:

However, if I get the color balance, contrast, etc. perfect but it still prints black then all that work won't help, will it?

What's amazing to me is how the human eye adapts to see the color that something should be, regardless of what it actually is. I thought I had it nailed, tried these prints, sent the plea here, and then went back a couple of hours later to see if any responses had shown up and was astounded at how much the color is still off.

You are correct in holding off on the final work if you cannot print anything but black. I do believe that the problem is caused by the number and type of adjustments you have. Could you try a Merge Visible to get a rasterized version and then print to see if any actual image comes through.

Your second point about our vision system, eye and brain, both amazes and frustrates me. I will choose some colours and then as you said come back a couple of hours later and wow, those are not what I thought I was choosing. I was seeing what I wanted to see, what I hoped to see.

[PLShutterbug]

2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

You are correct in holding off on the final work if you cannot print anything but black. I do believe that the problem is caused by the number and type of adjustments you have. Could you try a Merge Visible to get a rasterized version and then print to see if any actual image comes through.

Your second point about our vision system, eye and brain, both amazes and frustrates me. I will choose some colours and then as you said come back a couple of hours later and wow, those are not what I thought I was choosing. I was seeing what I wanted to see, what I hoped to see.

I will do that. I actually already did, but then decided to work on the balance some more before trying a print. I saved as JPG once and it did print the image when I opened that file, so I know I can get it to work. I like the idea though of just adding a Merge Visible layer.

One thing: do I need to make the other layers invisible when I print with Merge Visible at the top of the stack, or does it matter?

[v_kyr]

24 minutes ago, PLShutterbug said:

One thing: do I need to make the other layers invisible when I print with Merge Visible at the top of the stack, or does it matter?

Merge visiable layers, merges layers together, aka if 3 layers are visable they will be merged together into one layer. Usually only activated/visual layers should be printed either way here, due to a print operation and you decide by enabling/disabling which will be taken into account at all for your printout from the layers panel!