Help with overlays and printing!

[dhelm245]

I have been having issues printing projects from Affinity to the Toshiba copiers at our school. One of the issues I have had is that when we have our color setting set to "Auto" for printing, anything without any color should be counted as a black-and-white copy rather than a color copy. However, everything is being counted as a color copy and the copier company is telling me it is because "overlay is turned on (within the software). Mono/black pages are being charged color because the overlay sits on “top” of the image." My question is how do I correct this issue? Is there a general setting to turn off overlays? Is this something that I need to do when exporting the file as a pdf? I am not a trained graphic designer and more dabble in designing things so I am not sure what to do here. Any help would be appreciated.

I am also having issues where files will print with a red shadow around images, lines, and sometimes text. We are still working to try to figure out whether this is a software issue or a copier issue, but any ideas on if there is anything within Affinity that could cause this problem that I might be doing wrong?

[BlueLiner]

From Affinity designer? If you have no option for gray scale output when you print to the color capable printer, I would try setting the document to gray scale.

 

Click on File-Document Setup... Go to color and set to Gray/16. This will turn everything to shads of gray iun your document but you can return to color b setting it back to RGB8,RGB16, or CMYK. I work mostly for out put on the web so I use RGB.

[dhelm245]

Great question, I should have been more clear. I am using Affinity Publisher and this is a double-sided document where one page has color and the other page does not have any color present. So while the copier does have a mono or grayscale setting, I am duplex printing and need to have color available so that the side with color prints correctly. My understanding from the printer company is that the printer, when set to "auto" color setting, should be able to recognize when 1 side of a paper has color and the other side does not and only charge me for 1 color copy. However, because of the "overlays" the copier is viewing both sides as having color present. Now, I obviously could do manual duplex printing and print the color side with the color setting and then put the paper back in the copier and print the other side with the greyscale setting, and I will do that if I have to, but I was hoping maybe there was another solution to deal with the overlays that I am being told is causing the problem.

[BlueLiner]

I am a little confused as to what they mean by overlay. Have you applied an effect or layer that they are referring to? I can't say I have had this problem. When I print my document is either color or gs.

[walt.farrell]

@dhelm245: Could you prepare a sample .afpub file that has the problem, and the PDF you exported from it, so we can examine them? Also, it would be helpful to see the PDF Export settings you used.

13 hours ago, BlueLiner said:

Click on File-Document Setup... Go to color and set to Gray/16. This will turn everything to shads of gray in your document 

Documents in Grayscale will, I think, use RGB inks for printing, not just black. 

[dhelm245]

Here is the file I am currently having issues with. I have attached the .afpub file and the pdf export. I am using the standard export pdf for print settings.

Sereving Our Savior Flyer.afpub Serving Our Savior Flyer.pdf

[laurent32]

Seems like your problem come from your QR code that is CMYK color… ?

[dhelm245]

@laurent32 You are right, it is the QR code. I just printed it without the QR code and the copier recognized it as just a black-and-white copy. So, my next question would then be, what do I need to do with the QR code to have it recognized by the copier as just being a grayscale image?

[laurent32]

You might use "Black only key" :

[dhelm245]

@laurent32 I don't have that button showing that you pointed out, however, I recognized that my fill button was showing a black fill color for the QR code and so I changed that to no fill and that took care of it! The copier is now recognizing this page as b/w copy. I don't know why there was a fill to begin with since I never applied a fill, but at least I know what to look for. Thank you for your help!

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, dhelm245 said:

I don't have that button showing

In the English UI it would be "K Only".

[dhelm245]

@walt.farrell Yeah, I figured that is what it would say, however, in my UI the next button after "Replace Image" is the fill tool. Is there something I need to change to get the "K Only" option to show?

[laurent32]

My Publisher prefs converts the docs I open to CMYK, and when I opened your document that conversion took place.

Hence your document was converted to :

by my system (I think).

I thought it was OK because I saw you had nice CMYK values for the color on the other page…

And since it is now CMYK, I have that "K only" button showing.

BUT…

If you're document is RGB, you don't have that button showing up.

[dhelm245]

@laurent32 Ok, that makes sense! And that button does appear when I convert the document from RGB to CMYK. Thank you for your help! It is much appreciated!

[laurent32]

You're welcome !

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, dhelm245 said:

@walt.farrell Yeah, I figured that is what it would say, however, in my UI the next button after "Replace Image" is the fill tool. Is there something I need to change to get the "K Only" option to show?

I would need to see a screenshot of the complete application window so I can see what you're seeing. It should also include the Layers panel, with the layer in question showing.

[dhelm245]

@walt.farrell I got it figured out. My document with use the RGB color profile. When I switched to CMYK, the "K Only" button was present. Thank you for your help!