Need help with export setup and blending options.

[rram]

Hello!! I'm working on a personal project and while testing the export settings, I saw that some blending effects were off and some Outer Glow Elements weren't as I wanted. What would the correct settings be? I attach a pic for ref.

[thomaso]

Hi @rram,
Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

The difference looks like a colour space / profile switch, for instance a CMYK document exported as RGB. Note, some blend modes appear quite different in different colour spaces. – What are your colour settings for the document and for the export?

[rram]

Thanks for the welcoming!

8 hours ago, thomaso said:

Hi @rram,
Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

The difference looks like a colour space / profile switch, for instance a CMYK document exported as RGB. Note, some blend modes appear quite different in different colour spaces. – What are your colour settings for the document and for the export?

I started the project in Adobe InDesign and migrated 2 weeks ago with v2. The native document was CMYK and I tried to make sure that it remained in AP.

 

Doc setup:

 

Export setup:

 

Edit: Quotation

 

 

Edited January 17, 2023 by rram

[thomaso]

9 hours ago, rram said:

I started the project in Adobe InDesign and migrated 2 weeks ago with v2. The native document was CMYK and I tried to make sure that it remained in AP.

What result do you get with this setting? (X-4, document, document, no convert)

[rram]

26 minutes ago, thomaso said:

What result do you get with this setting? (X-4, document, document, no convert)

You're awesome, still not the precise result I see in the preview, but this is something I'd print without a doubt. Plus all the other elements with blending modes or Outer Glow FX behave normal.

Thank you very much!

[lacerto]

Note that Affinity apps are pretty much out of their depth when using blend modes and needing to ensure that flattening works (that is, not leaving flattening to the printer by using live transparency in PDF/X-4 or any non-PDF/X-based productions). If you need to use live transparencies, always ask RIP proofs.

Compare e.g. the following PDF/X-1-based PDFs produced from InDesign and Publisher (transparencies flattened):

blendmodes_apub_flattened_pdfx1.pdf

blendmodes_id_flattened_pdfx1_rgbflatteningspace.pdf

Some differences that ID does and Affinity apps do not:

1) Flattens without rasterizations.

2) Keeps the text.

3) Lets the user choose blending space (above RGB) yet produces seamless blends without antialiasing. The effect depending on blending space is quite different.

 

[thomaso]

51 minutes ago, lacerto said:

using live transparency in PDF/X-4 or any non-PDF/X-based productions

Can you explain why Affinity requires here PDF/X (a rather limiting PDF version) respectively why non-X appears not work for the wanted result?  … whereas, by PDF specifications, other PDF versions would be able to handle this transparency correctly, too?

39 minutes ago, lacerto said:

3) Lets the user choose blending space (above RGB) yet produces seamless blends without antialiasing.

Even if I may not choose a blending space I would expect one that corresponds with document & export colour space. – Do I assume right that this known blending space issue logged in V1 as afb-1644 still continues in V2? (respectively, by the way, did you notice yet in V2 any improvement concerning colour handling?)

[lacerto]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Can you explain why Affinity requires here PDF/X (a rather limiting PDF version) respectively why non-X apIpears not work for the wanted result?

I might have formulated this badly: I mean exactly opposite, to be able to keep live transparency, you need to have PDF/X-4 or any non-PDF/X-based method (which in Affinity apps is always 1.4 or later; Affinity apps do not support PDF 1.3 which would make it possible to flatten without resorting to PDF/X-1 or PDF/X-3 which are the only export methods that automatically force transparency flattening. They both also force native colors to CMYK.

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

Even if I may not choose a blending space I would expect one that corresponds with document & export colour space. – Do I assume right that this known blending space issue logged in V1 as afb-1644 still continues in V2? (respectively, by the way, did you notice yet in V2 any improvement concerning colour handling?)

I have not tested this intensively but in this instance I switched the blend mode color space in InDesign to RGB which produces greenish Screen mode blend for upper "Proyeccion Astral" text that has C=75 M=5 Y=100 K=0 (or its RGB conversion, there is no really difference) as fill color against the RGB bitmap (as can be expected), and then continued exporting to PDF/X-1. This has no visual change on canvas (within Publisher), nor does it have change even when exporting to RGB, with all elements of the PDF being in RGB color space:

blendmodes_from_doc_rgb_purergbvalue_rgbred.pdf

Note how in InDesign just changing the transparency blend space makes the blend look pretty much like blending done by Publisher:

blendmodes_id_flattened_pdfx1_cmykflatteningspace.pdf

As you mentioned, blending in different color spaces gives different results. It is of course important, too, that somewhat predictable results are shown already before actual export.