Affinity Designer 2: Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers)

[Lukc666]

Hello everyone.

Adobe products have a useful PDF export feature, where you can convert the color space of a file while preserving numbers. For example, if you convert from SWOP to Fogra, it will - crucially - ensure that 100K black stays 100K black and doesn't become an unpredictable CMYK rich black.

I haven't been able to find anything similar in Affinity Designer (or Affinity Publisher) and would like to know whether this feature exists, if not, whether there is some kind of hacky workaround to replicate it, and - possibly - whether this feature might be on the development roadmap?

My workflow to get a sense of where I would have used the feature:

I was designing a document for both screen use and physical printing. Since perfect color fidelity was not crucial, I initially set up the file as a generic CMYK and set up a series of global colors. Including 100K black. So far so good, right?

For exporting to RGB, it didn't matter that much whether numbers were preserved or not. All fine and dandy.

Then comes the printing and the printer requires a specific color space. Fine, I load up the color profile, export ... and the printer comes back to me that they couldn't print it, because it was all rich blacks.

I had specifically set up a global 100K black and used that, but on export into the new color space that 100K black was converted to something like 30.40.30.70.

This was incredibly frustrating, because I couldn't figure out where things had gone wrong - I hadn't expected the program to convert my 100K into a rich black without letting me know in advance. Let me tell you, it took quite a while before I figured out what was going on. Then I had to change the document color space (not at export) and go "fix" all the blacks manually. This was ... not fun.

Thank you for your help and comments folks,
—L.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Lukc666]

11 hours ago, lacerto said:

Because of the described complexity, I would place only RGB images in the document and avoid placing CMYK raster images in the document, at all. In addition, if there is need to place CMYK images (like AI ad EPS files containing e.g. charts, illustrations, etc. that need to have black defined in K100), I would place the final production files only after the CMYK color profile is known, and make sure that the embedded CMYK profile matches the document CMYK color profile (to avoid the nuisance of needing to redefine the working CMYK profile time and time again depending on varying needs, and then going through the tedious update procedure). When doing so, it is not necessarily a big thing to change the CMYK target in Affinity apps while keeping the existing values.

Thank you for that detailed breakdown of the process and situation! I appreciate it.

I feel like a step-by-step breakdown of this workflow would be incredibly useful in the help / tutorial files and avoid a lot of pain in production.

[Lukc666]

I have a bit of a sub-question - can anyone recommend any software that would reliably convert a whole pdf to a specified color space? Something that I could perhaps bolt onto my Affinity workflow for color management vis-a-vis printers?

[Ldina]

@Lukc666 Acrobat Pro can convert an entire PDF to a specified color space. I have an old copy of Acrobat Pro X (part of my old CS6 Suite) that still runs on my old Mac Pro Desktop computer (running OSX v10.8.5). I converted a test PDF to Fogra 39 to confirm. The original PDF has a lot of different elements  in different color spaces...sRGB, Adobe RGB, US Web Coated SWOP, Gracol, untagged files, etc. I also had vector, raster, AI, PSD, JPG and other placed formats in the original document, and they all converted to the destination profile just fine. It also has options to preserve 100K, etc. It's pretty flexible and a great tool for verifying and fixing problems in the final PDF, if required.

I'm sure there are plenty of other PDF production tools that will do the same thing. Acrobat Pro X is the only such tool I have and works for me (as long as my old computer is alive and well). I'm sure @lacerto can probably provide more in-depth information, since he seems to be quite familiar with all things PDF.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

 

[Kal]

On 3/2/2023 at 12:01 AM, lacerto said:

In a word: the whole thing is a mess.

Nightmare is the word I would have used. For anyone that cares about colour separations and the artwork they hand off to printers, Affinity apps aren't fit for purpose IMO. Thankfully, I don't do too much of this work anymore, but the wasted time and frustration whenever I have to do it would probably pay for a CC subscription a few times over.