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Black is getting a little bit greyish


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Hi! On export to PNG my files get a little bit grey where they should be black, look at the picture below, far to right is good black exported PNG from my old Illustrator, in the middle is choosen "coated FOGRA 39" in Document Setup and black is getting slightly greyish, and the very left is "euroscale coated", more black but also more blue. I cannot remember what I used from Illustrator there are a number to choose from, I am in Europe if it helps, I suspect it is in Document setup I should choose something, or maybe the print will be better if I stick to FOGRA 39 that I've read is a god choice, maybe it getting more black when printed? What do you think/use? (the shop is printing on a high quality inkjet printer or what it's called) (I've tested a few other settings but some colours goes crazy) (working in CMYK)

821883921_Skarmavbild2022-05-31kl_19_45_16.thumb.png.199b3f46ad4382d499983219ef675744.png

 

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1 hour ago, Jochum Berg said:

Hi! On export to PNG my files get a little bit grey where they should be black, ... (working in CMYK)

I have bolded the relevant parts. CMYK does not translate to RGB well. PNG is an RGB format.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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11 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

I have bolded the relevant parts. CMYK does not translate to RGB well. PNG is an RGB format.

Ok thanks Old Bruce, that's a good clue. Though it worked well with illustrator and the printshop I use, maybe I found a setting that worked around the problem, this must get further investigated, thanks!  (yes color management is very tricky indeed :) ) 

Edit: Can't choose any RGB in Colour Format longer, some colours like grey goes completely crazy

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Did a comparison, FOGRA39 and GRACoL and the old from illustrator, it's almost the same but I think GRACoL turns out a little bit better overall though they recommend FOGRA39 here in Europe. The old export from illustrator still looks little better the black lines are complete black.
However seen on my new screen I don't know, not big difference.
(The pictures are enlarged to see the lines better, lines are sharper when not enlarged, and the illustrator example I got in different size)
Maybe I should add that I send these for printing on a ink jet writer they are not going to be printed on big printing machines, I'm swedish I don't know the right words in english it makes everything slightly more complicated to understand, it's already hard to understand colour management without the language problem. 😅

926028139_Skarmavbild2022-06-01kl_10_08_20.thumb.png.95e5f928858003533de3964b1d24c41b.png

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Hmm I'm into something now I guess, Generic CMYK profile did make the black real black, however everything a little bit colder, blue sky gets dull, the search continue

Read somehwere FOGRA do decrease black a little to not getting greasy in the printing, however I'm not going to print but write inkjet printer, I do something fundamentally wrong I guess, though it worked before

Edit: Hmm, "Photoshop 5 default CMYK" makes black very black, looking good, though slightly more yellow. Hmm... don't want to use Photoshop in Affinity right? :D 

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To me it is not clear what you expect. You seem to expect a colour profile would not affect black, – whereas isn't that the sense of a certain profile, to adjust colours according to the profile definition? There is no 1 perfect, correct or best profile, the profile should always fit to the printing process and its involved soft-/hardware and the printing material (e.g. paper specifications).

So it appears more interesting here what profile your printer requires or recommends than what differences you see on your screen when comparing profiles. Aside the fact that print and screen are two different things and technologies to reproduce and display colours (one of various reasons why colour management came up at all). Consider on a screen the maximum "ink" (energy, input) causes white, whereas on print it results in black. Or: is the screen switched off it is black, is the paper unprinted it is white. It's the subtractive – additive thing.

Swedish / English: maybe this site can help. With an additional "subject" in front of a search term it filters to certain topics, for instance "print, typography".

https://ensv.dict.cc/?s=subject%3Atryck

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Thanks thomaso, yes, I guess I don't really know what I expect, I have got printed a number of pictures on an inkjet printer a couple of years now with perfect result, now I want with the new computer and the new software only get the same result, and if I see that black is dark grey now on the screen I'm afraid black will end up dark grey when I send it to print. 
My printer-guy just say I should use srgb, but that is rgb and I work in cmyk, he only prints photograph otherwise I'm the only one having drawings.
Thanks. :)

(tried a few words in that dictionairy and they didn't have them, swedish is not a big language)

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4 minutes ago, Jochum Berg said:

if I see that black is dark grey now on the screen I'm afraid black will end up dark grey when I send it to print.

The only way to come closer to this is via colour management. But still then there remains a difference of "shining" light of your screen vs. "reflecting" light of your print, which hardly have identical intensity. That's why in an optimized workflow not only the screen is calibrated but also the light around the screen, respectively in the room where you watch the print, is set to specific values (temperature + spectrum-neutrality + brightness).

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Yes, I understand the difference of the light on screen versa paper, I did work a little with prints like 20 years ago, before inkjets, but I see the difference between the old picture on the screen and my new but same picture on the same screen, - not knowing how they will be when printed, maybe they will getting better who knows. :D 
 

I started up my old computer now and looked at the drawings there in illustrator, the setting were "coated FOGRA39", funny how the same file could turn out different from Affinity with the same colour setting, maybe I have an another different setting somewhere else..

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Hi again, I made some research on the matter, found there is a newer FOGRA 39 out, FOGRA 51...

Downloaded it here: https://www.color.org/registry/PSOcoated_v3.xalter

though they call it not FOGRA 51 but "PSOcoated_v3.icc", and put it in ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher/profiles

It seems to work great, black is almost full black, at least much blacker than with FOGRA 39, and other colours looks okey but maybe a tiny little bit darker. Maybe this is the shit I don't know but I will test this. :) 

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FOGRA 51 came the year 2015, why is it not present in Affinity the year of 2022?

Ah, stupid of me, there were no profiles in the affinity folder I remember now, the profiles I see must have been copied over from my old Mac's system.

Down the whole picture with FOGRA 51 if anyone is curious:nykoping0950.thumb.png.3987b11a333fb9397910100914d1c94b.png

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