Parts of JPGs Disappear Exporting to PDF from Affinity Publisher

[waltonmendelson]

I am using Affinity Publisher ver 1.10.5.1342 on Windows 10

I have a file with 50+ JPG images (the package includes 1 PSD).  I exported the Affinity Publisher file to PDF/X-4.

Four or five of the images in the PDF are missing parts.  These are gray and black images on white. As you can see the gray letter parts are missing.  

Yes, the are JPGs!  

I have attached: the PDF, the afpackage file, two annotated screen shots showing the problem. 

Walton

Package A 023J.zip A 023J Drop Capsg 15 PDFX4 .pdf

[joe_l]

No problem on my side. Did you change anything about the X4 preset?

[Lee D]

All ok for myself as well, I had to relink some resources first but then exported using the default X4 preset and everything looked ok, see below.

As @joe_l asks, was anything on the X4 preset changed?

[lacerto]

There might have been a problem with the update status of the linked images, since I did not have problems, either, to get e.g. the referred "bowl" image grays to display ok. 

But there is a major problem with the document color space (Gray/8), definition of body text black (K100), and intended export method (PDF/X-4). If your goal is to produce pure grayscale, you cannot export using PDF/X-4 as that forces document colors to CMYK (in this case the K100 of body text becomes four-color black). On the other hand, if you export forcing Grayscale as export color space (as you should when your document color space is Gray/8), the black of the text should be defined as Gray 0. If it is K100, it will be converted to RGB according to underlying color profiles and will in context of forced Grayscale export have a dark gray value of 0.15 (equivalent to K85). So as it is, with current specs there is no way to produce pure black however you export the document.

To correct this, you should either change the document color space to CMYK and keep K100 as body text color, make sure the K-Only button is turned on in context of all imported grayscale images, and export to CMYK using the document CMYK color profile. In this scenario using PDF/X-4 is fine (as would any other method that exports to CMYK). OR, if you want to keep the document in Gray/8 color mode, you should change the body text black from K100 to G0 and then make sure that you export using PDF (press ready) and force using Grayscale color mode (you can additionally force conversion of color spaces but this is probably not needed as you seem to have imported images in grayscale -- EDIT: Several are in RGB color space so this option really needs to be used).

[waltonmendelson]

Thank you all.

The only changes I made to PDF/X-4, PDF/X-3, and PDF/X-1a from the default: Show Bleed and All Pages. All the other settings are the defaults.

Today:

• I made a new PDF/X-4 file: it shows the same bad images.
• I made a new PDF/X-3 file: it shows the same bad images.
• I made a new PDF/X-1a file: it shows the same bad images.

I am confused by five things:

• Relinking: why?  In the Resource Manager the bad images on pages 76, 77, 88, 93, and 95 all show Status OK and Placement Linked and:
• Update is grayed out . . . how would I know to relink and how do I relink?
• JPGs: these bad images were originally made with layers, and what is missing in each image was a layer in the original multi-layered Photoshop image, but these were flattened and saved as JPGs.  How do such discrete parts disappear.
• The PDF/X-1a is PDF/X-1a compliant . . . to the extent that color space might be a issue (separate from missing image pieces), shouldn't it have failed the preflight?
• Cell fills on pages 64-74 were created in gray. In the PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 files, these tables are salmon.

@ Lacerto . . . Color Space: Yes, I intended for the file to be K-only. I will look more closely at your comments. Thank you!  

My apologies: I had wanted to deal only with one issue, the strange JPGs. But stuff comes up.

Walton

[lacerto]

13 hours ago, waltonmendelson said:

Relinking: why?  In the Resource Manager the bad images on pages 76, 77, 88, 93, and 95 all show Status OK and Placement Linked and:

The linking status might be inaccurate. When I opened the package, there were about 20 images that had "Modified" as linking status and when updating, refreshed the blurred images that were initially showed. Those operations probably guarantee that whoever exports based on your package, will not experience similar problems as you have experienced (with partially faded/missing colors/tones).

13 hours ago, waltonmendelson said:

Cell fills on pages 64-74 were created in gray. In the PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 files, these tables are salmon.

These cells have Y100 M100 color definitions and then 40% opacity, while cells that have kept their gray outlook have 50% K and then 40% opacity value. I have no idea why PDF/X-4 does not make them in color but instead is affected by the "Gray/8" document color space (yet exports K values as four-color black), while PDF/X-1 and X-3 make them in color. I also cannot explain, why the resulting cell gray in PDF/X-1 and PDF/X-3 seems to be K20 (and not a percentage value of a four-color black, as it is in PDF/X-4 export). Anyway, I suppose that the intention is to have all the gray cell backgrounds defined in the same tone? 

[waltonmendelson]

Cells: now that you point out that what I presumed was gray (some value of K-only; and the Swatches were grayscale), is in fact C00 M00 Y100 K100.  When I made the first color which I thought I was reselecting as needed, it was C00 M00 Y00 K100.  However, I do not understand why the salmon color? And . . .

Yesterday, I went through the entire Affinity Publisher file and remade ALL of the cell fills starting from the beginning of the book.  But some PDF pages were not salmon.  I used the same Fill color on the Swatches palette, but Page 64 (attached) is C15 M12 Y00 K0. My workflow:

I started on Page 1, and looked at every page for cell fills. I selected every filled row. I clicked on the same foreground color and set its opacity to 40%. I did this in one work session.  I saved the file after each adjustment. I did not do the glossary section. 

Linking: When I open the file, no image in the Resource Manager is marked "Modified" . . . all are OK, and the 5 images that converted badly, are all linked. 

As I mentioned above, these images all have update grayed out. How would I update the links?

JPGs: I have seen corrupted JPGs.  Generally, some rectangular section is noise or color. These do not appear to be corrupted.  How can these 5 JPGs be deconstructed back to a state when they were multi-layered?  

General: I can work around the cell fills. There are no unwanted font substitutions. I have no work around for the JPGs not converting correctly.  

I can see how going through a dozen versions of InDesign, converting ultimately to Affinity Publisher is not the best strategy, to understate things. I know how hard it is to trouble shoot someone else's problems.  

Walton

[Old Bruce]

Just a general note here about the use of JPEGs. Please just use RGB JPEGs. Not CMYK or Greyscale. The JPEG file format was designed to be used as RGB. There are all sorts of problems here in the forums where the culprit is CMYK JPEGs.

If you want to use Greyscale (or CMYK) files use TIFF.

[lacerto]

36 minutes ago, waltonmendelson said:

I was reselecting as needed, it was C00 M00 Y00 K100.  However, I do not understand why the salmon color?

This is what I get, at least on page 65:

36 minutes ago, waltonmendelson said:

How would I update the links?

I guess there are at least two ways: a) by replacing and choosing the same file (tedious, and I am not absolutely sure that current crop and sizing, if any, are retained), b) by moving the linked files away from their current location and then, when opening the document, answering yes to relocate the files in their new location to have Publisher auto-relink to existing files with the same name.

36 minutes ago, waltonmendelson said:

These do not appear to be corrupted.  How can these 5 JPGs be deconstructed back to a state when they were multi-layered?

I think that Publisher keeps multiple versions of placed images embedded in the document even if they are supposed to be linked. No one really knows why and how this happens, but somehow it seems that the previous states of these files could "explain" what you have experienced here. If you have not, yet, I recommend that you make multiple full copies of your publication as you keep on finishing it, and keep them in safe place to be able to revert to a previous version should your most recent version become corrupted.

[waltonmendelson]

JPG/Previous States: These images were created well over 10 years ago in Photoshop, flattened, saved as JPGs, placed in InDesign. 

I converted the InDesign files to Affinity Publisher earlier this year.  There can be no previous states . . . as if they were created inside InDesign or inside Affinity Publisher . . . because they were JPGs from before they were placed in InDesign.

They do not act/look like corrupted images.  My question, I guess has to do with the existential mysteries of JPGs and PDFs.  

Color of Fill: although I got the same C00 M00 Y100 K100 for pages 65-74, Page 64 was C15 M12 Y00 K0 . . . and they were all re-filled to the same color swatch at the same 40% last night. Just to guarantee uniformity.  I can work around this.  But either I am blacking out and unconsciously picking different Foreground colors, or something funny is happening. 

Because of other issues, like, erratic Font Manager, fonts loading/not loading, PDF files sizes varying ±100% in size erratically . . . I do not think I'm blacking out. 

JPGs & CMYK: I have read one or two posts on Adobe about color inversions or related color issues with JPGs and CMYK. If memory serves me the solutions were not necessarily to avoid JPGs (I could be wrong). I have never experienced problems. Although of the tens of thousands of images I've had printed, 90% were sRGB.  My end use is printing through KDP. I have talked to one of the top technical people at HP Indigo about color space and image file formats.  He talked about using JPG and CMYK with no mention of problems.  But that's just them.

I will look into changing the format, but my question has nothing to do with color inversion, shifts, etc.  

Thank you all.  I'll try to patch things together. 

Walton 

 

 

 

[waltonmendelson]

@ Lacerto

I moved the 5 images to a different folder, then Replaced them.  They are now fine!  Thank you.

Walton

[lacerto]

57 minutes ago, waltonmendelson said:

They do not act/look like corrupted images.

I do not think they are. But there are numerous posts on this forum that show that Publisher somehow embeds images (resulting in strangely increasing file size) even if they are linked. Perhaps something goes wrong in this kind of caching operation and these cached versions of files will be used when exporting, instead of accessing the original linked files. Anyway, it is worth a try to do that auto-re-linking of images using the trick described.

I guess that in the core of these problems is the confused way Affinity apps handle grayscale, indexed and monochrome images. If you have a look on Resource Manager having your document open, there are numerous images that are reported to be "Grayscale", yet have sRGB profiles embedded. These are all actually RGB JPGs and just tagged  as "Grayscale" when the document was determined to be opened in Gray/8 mode (or perhaps it was initially CMYK/8 and the mode was switched afterwards). Some may have initially been paletted images with gray values, some might have been monochromes. Neither are supported in Affinity apps and will be converted to RGB with equal color values producing gray. When you have RGB files with equal values (producing gray tones) in a Gray/8 document and intend to produce pure gray, you need to force Grayscale color mode at export time, and also check "Convert image color spaces" to make sure that placed RGB and CMYK images are actually converted to grayscale. In a similar manner, if you place RGB and CMYK images (with non-neutral colors) in a Gray/8 document, they are shown to be "Grayscale" on the canvas and in Resource Manager, but will typically be exported in true colors, even when exporting to gray color space, unless image color spaces are forced to be converted using the equivalent export setting.

Conversely, when you have a CMYK document, all grayscale images are actually auto-tagged with "K-Only" attribute when placed (the attribute can be controlled using a toolbar button with this caption), to be handled as grayscale images and exported correctly when exporting to CMYK. If the flag is turned off, the images are handled as Affinity apps natively do, as RGB images, which results in the grayscale images being converted to four-color black when exported to CMYK modes. "K-Only" is available also for CMYK images, in which case only the black channel of the image will be shown and exported, when exporting to CMYK.

What's more is that these flags will be left on or off if and when you change the document color mode, without having the attribute controls visible any more, and accordingly continue to cause confusion without any visible clue of the reason.

I have personally not found TIFF images being handled differently from JPGs so I think this is equally confusing when working with TIFFs.

[lacerto]

2 hours ago, waltonmendelson said:

But either I am blacking out and unconsciously picking different Foreground colors, or something funny is happening. 

You can use the Table panel to help you spot non-gray cell backgrounds (and stroke foregrounds), like here on page 73, as the Panel shows color definitions in true colors also when working with documents using Gray/8 color mode:

[waltonmendelson]

I do see, and did right away when you pointed it out, that what initially I set as C00 M00 Y00 K100, and I did set it and I have kept the color swatch, is Y100 K100.  

I don't see how that converts to salmon, but frankly, it's not high on my priorities.

I'll re-do the tables.  

Thanks for the time and effort. 

Walton