Colouring grayscale or 1 bit-tiffs in AFPub ...

[jweitzel]

Hello out there,
I would be *very* sorry, if that question is already sufficiently solved/answered. But I do only find the same *question*/feature request:

How do I colour grayscale tiffs or 1-bit (= b&w) tiffs in AFPub?

For professional designers this seems to me a rather vital feature:

creating a picture frame
inserting a grayscale/1-bit tif in that frame
activating the *frame* –> allocating the *background*/frame a certain colour (e.g. red)
activating the *picture* –> allocation the picture/content an other colour (e.g. yellow)
voilà! You have a two colour logo or even more, by working with gradients, a colourful result!

the same to 1-bit/b&w-pictures ("bitmaps"):
Every black&white tiff has a *transparent* (because "white") background
every black pixel in a b&w (1-bit) tif can be allocated any colour.
voilà!

:-)))

Is there a tutorial for it?

I would be very pleased, if that *very important* feature has been realized in AFPub since the first question for it in 2018!

Best wishes to your for 2023!
Johannes

 

 

[thomaso]

40 minutes ago, jweitzel said:

this seems to me a rather vital feature:

creating a picture frame
inserting a grayscale/1-bit tif in that frame
activating the *frame* –> allocating the *background*/frame a certain colour (e.g. red)
activating the *picture* –> allocation the picture/content an other colour (e.g. yellow)
voilà!

Is your recipe not working for you?

1-bit images don't 'exist' in Affinity, they get treated as RGB / Grayscale.
In a CMYK document you have the button "K Only" which enables you to colourize RGB images the same way.

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, jweitzel said:

the same to 1-bit/b&w-pictures ("bitmaps"):
Every black&white tiff has a *transparent* (because "white") background
every black pixel in a b&w (1-bit) tif can be allocated any colour.
voilà!

Since Affinity doesn't interpret white as transparent a workaround could use the Blend Options to mask white in the image and thus show the background colour assigned to the picture frame:

[jweitzel]

Hello Thomaso,

thanks a lot from Müllheim to Cologne for your helpful answers! For I didn't post 2018 that same question, I got to know that "problem" only via search, not by following that thread. This aspect or problem of colouring grayscale/b&w tifs in Affinity seems rather common.

For I do not understand exactly the succesion of steps to colourize grayscale tifs, my question: Is there somewhere a tutorial or help in learning so? As much as I had been familiar with the Adobe softwares, all that knowledge is now a *trap* in getting familiar with the Affinity Suite. One is always "thinking in InDesign" – and this is exactly the wrong way in trying it. (The same in coming from years with Aldus Freehand. Confronted with Illustrator, I never got warm with it, I never looked through the "strange" approach of the programmers of Illustrator).

Best wishes and thanks!
Johannes

 

[RM f/g]

As a workaround you may try wrapping your 1-bit file in a pdf first so it remains untouched by Affinity.

– Open your 1-bit file in Designer. Change to grey/8 with profile Black & White.

– Export to pdf using settings ‘Use document profile’ and uncheck ‘Embed profiles’.

– Place this pdf in a new Designer/Publisher file as ‘Passthrough’. Set Opacity to Screen.

– Place a rectangle or other shape with desired colour below the placed pdf. The black in the placed file will take the colour of the shape below.