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Posted

I've been given a print-ready PDF as a starting point for an update. Can I assume that if spot colours were used in the original document that they will appears as spot colours after importing to Designer?

Posted

The elements have the correct spot colours applied, but the spot colours appear nowhere. Create Palette from Document won't help you here. Clicking a spot colour element and adding as global colour adds a spot colour to the Swatches panel, but this won't help you any further.

Handling spot colours (or colours in general) is not very satisfying in the Affinities IMO.

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Windows 10 / 11, Complete Suite Retail and Beta

Posted

That's what I was worried about! I no longer have access to Acrobat to see separations where this would be obvious. I have copy which I would have expected to be spot but it appears as process which makes me think there may be other elements lurking which will print poorly compared to the previous version. 

Posted
46 minutes ago, Paul Mc said:

after importing to Designer?

By "importing" do you mean File > Place or File > Open?

I ask because it makes a difference in some cases, though I don't know if it will in this one.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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Posted

Hi @walt.farrell sorry, I should have mentioned that I was using File | Open

The full story is that I've been given a print PDF to update and I'm worried that the way that Designer imports the data means that some important aspects of it are lost. This would be less of a problem in my case if I could detect the spot colours and recreate them but even that doesn't appear to be an option.

Place and passthrough might have been an option if I didn't need to modify the content.

Posted

It might help using the Designer Persona (if available) and the "Select same Fill" feature on an element that is surely spot and replacing with a spot colour from your Swatches panel. But this can give you other problems, which I am going to report soon.

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Windows 10 / 11, Complete Suite Retail and Beta

Posted

Hi @joe_l Yes, the Select same ... feature is likely to be useful in reconstructing any spot colour assignments. I'm curious about what other problems you've encountered might be. The only enhancement that I'd like to see is for the Select same ...  to allow for a Sub-select same ... At the moment if I have grey text on one artboard and do a Select same fill it selects all the grey text across all the artboards. It would be good if I could select same from a layer, group or an already selected set of objects.

Posted
7 minutes ago, Paul Mc said:

I'm curious about what other problems you've encountered might be.

 

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Windows 10 / 11, Complete Suite Retail and Beta

  • 2 years later...
Posted

Any News about this Spot colour issue? @Callum, @Lee D?

I have a print template for packaging with cut and fold contours defined in spot colors. When I import the PDF into Affinity Designer, the spot colors don't appear in the Swatches panel. While this isn't ideal, it's manageable during the design phase.

However, after exporting the print PDF (X-3:2003) and checking it in Acrobat, I noticed an issue. In Acrobat's separation preview, when I turn off the spot color layer, the spot colors are cut out of the background color. The spot color contours should instead be set to overprint so the print house can hide the lines as needed. 

I read in the documentation that I can adjust the overprint settings for spot colors in the Swatches panel. However, if the spot colors don't appear there (wired that Acrobat have), it becomes a significant problem.

Attached you can find the Affinity Designer Dok and the print PDF, also the Acrobat Screenshots.
Hope you have a Solution, because for a professional work I need professional Tools.

Bildschirmfoto2025-01-24um11_04_51.thumb.jpg.eef1bd10a61b95c728e0684424037dcd.jpgBildschirmfoto2025-01-24um11_05_02.thumb.jpg.265e72ce03df4553f79145fd98fba388.jpg
 

test.afdesign test_PRINT.pdf

Posted
12 minutes ago, 3joern said:

Hope you have a Solution, because for a professional work I need professional Tools.

Not a real solution, because is not solved yet.

a) Make your own Document palette

b) Click an element using a spot colour

c) Add it as Global Colour to your palette

d) Rightclick the colour and set it to overprint

e) Assign the Global Colour to the element again

f) Repeat this for all colours

Not a convenient way or I missed a step.

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Windows 10 / 11, Complete Suite Retail and Beta

Posted

Thanks, these are the steps I would have taken if nothing else worked. But then I could also have used Illustrator. I used Affinity Designer often because the time saving, but in this case the advantage is gone.

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