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I'd like to know about the color profile of PNGs in Affinity Designer when designing in CMYK


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Hi there!

I am designing for my Redbubble shop, and one of the requirements for my design files would be that everything (especially for print on apparel) should be first created in CMYK, then uploaded as sRGB for my PNG images. I am using Affinity Designer to make the designs for my shop. I am not sure, but after I export these design files as PNGs, should I upload them to Affinity Photo to make sure that they are in sRGB format (by re-exporting them in sRGB)? Are PNGs going to be in CMYK when exported by Affinity Designer if I use CMYK as my color profile? I have both software so I don't mind doing this, but I just want to make sure if this is a necessary step. I want to ensure that my design files for my Redbubble shop are A-1, especially for apparel :)

Please let me know, and thanks in advance!

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Hi,

you can export in any color format directly from Designer. No need to use Photo.

Just click to export options

https://affinity.help/designer/English.lproj/pages/ExportPersona/exportOptionsPanel.html

If you have 2 export settings saved as export profiles, you can use the export persona of Designer to create both versions in one step. 
 

Tip of the day: you can even export continuously in background while editing.

PS: I missed that you want to combine cmyk and png. That is not possible, as others pointed out. My advise is only valid for document formats which actually support rgb and cmyk, like tiff, pdf etc. never the less, you can export multiple formats and color profiles from designer. Only need to choose the correct  ones.

Edited by NotMyFault

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@ScarletQueen

To the best of my knowledge and experience PNG files will always be in RGB, regardless of what the original is. No such animal as a CMYK PNG exists.

Unsure of what Redbuble is. I am guessing from what you wrote in your post that they need a CMYK file for printing and a PNG file for display on the webpage. Am I correct?

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Hi … thanks for responding.

Redbubble is a print on demand platform used by artists to upload and sell their designs on Redbubble’s products. After receiving an order, Redbubble then prints out the design on the product and then ships out the order to the customer. Their printers use CMYK to print on their apparel. So we need to first design in CMYK, but it is important to use an exported PNG file in sRGB and we would use that file to upload and place it on the products on their online platform.

I thought that I saw once that the PNG in Affinity Designer was in CMYK at one point. So that is why I am asking.

 Thanks 😊 

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22 minutes ago, ScarletQueen said:

I thought that I saw once that the PNG in Affinity Designer was in CMYK at one point.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics:

Quote

PNG supports palette-based images (with palettes of 24-bit RGB or 32-bit RGBA colors), grayscaleimages (with or without an alpha channel for transparency), and full-color non-palette-based RGB or RGBA images. The PNG working group designed the format for transferring images on the Internet, not for professional-quality print graphics; therefore non-RGB color spaces such as CMYK are not supported

So the short version is as @Old Bruce said, there is no such thing as a CMYK PNG file.

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