Black as K and Just K. Not a mixture of CMY. ===AS A DEFAULT==

[meridian360]

Please Affinity, for the love all things binary, please let us change the default 'black' to 100K, especially when the document settings are already in CMYK!! 

Why continue to punish (some of) us users by having the default black a "rich" black? It's annoying as heck to constantly have to change any new black objects or type, even imported stuff back to just K. Getting rid of the "rich" black is costing me time. 

Just set CMYK documents' black to K. 

I want to set black as 100K. Just K. K. Ok? 

Please? 

 

[meridian360]

And maybe the bigger problem is that Affinity has no real feedback system. Just these forums. 

You can make a post and put it out in the ether. But there's never any indication if the dev teams even acknowledge your 'feedback' or problem. 

That's considerably more frustrating, folks. 

 

 

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

1 hour ago, meridian360 said:

And maybe the bigger problem is that Affinity has no real feedback system. Just these forums. 

You can make a post and put it out in the ether. But there's never any indication if the dev teams even acknowledge your 'feedback' or problem. 

That's considerably more frustrating, folks. 

 

 

Why start another thread about this?

There are already several threads that take this issue to discussion…

Try to read this:

 

[meridian360]

And it's responses like this that don't help anyone. Seriously... Starting with..."Why..." does. not. help. Period.

It's like asking "Why would you WANT 100K?" If there are other threads, just link to them and be done with it. Please. Thank you. 

------ 

I started "another" thread because when I want to give feedback, my first reaction is to give Affinity feedback. NOT search yet another forum for another unanswered post. And the only way Affinity allows to contact them "directly" is through these user forums. So, I'm submitting *MY* feedback. If it's annoying, well, it should be! They haven't fleshed out their feature set yet, which is annoying to users! Something something...Squeaky wheel.

If it's been answered or Affinity is working on it, then by goodness sakes, they can respond --on the record-- and lock the thread. Otherwise, redundant threads only points out how pointless it is to use of forums threads as "feedback".

Cheers.

 

[meridian360]

And furthermore, I *did* search for why AD v2 is still using rich blacks and not 100k. With no relevant solutions/results in google. 

So I went to the forums and made a post. 

[fde101]

I suggest that you make your document grayscale, create your own palette of swatches to match what you want, or work with different software.

What you are asking for boils down to swatches that are excluded from color management, and Serif doesn't seem to be in too much of a hurry to provide that.

[MikeW]

How in the world does a palette that includes 100k black not get color managed?

I made my own default palette 100k to 10k in increments. Affinity applications color manage it just fine.

I made it because of this issue. I agree that if I choose a cmyk color model, the default palette, or maybe all of them, ought to be cmyk. It's the way other software works. That doesn't preclude making a swatch in other color models if desired. 

[tudor]

On 4/25/2023 at 2:28 AM, meridian360 said:

Please Affinity, for the love all things binary, please let us change the default 'black' to 100K, especially when the document settings are already in CMYK!! 

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "default black", but on my computer, in a new press ready CMYK document, black is 100K.

[fde101]

10 hours ago, MikeW said:

How in the world does a palette that includes 100k black not get color managed?

It does, which is the problem.

There is more than one CMYK color space.

If 100K black is in a palette created with one of them, color management would change it to something other than 100K when using a different CMYK color space.

As a result, any palette which was created with 100K black with a desire to keep it at 100K black would only be valid for that one specific color space.

What is needed in order to allow for a "universal" 100K black would be to NOT color manage the palette - in other words, to allow individual swatches to disable color management and run in a device color space instead of a color managed one.

 

EDIT: Example:

Try creating a document with CMYK/8 and the U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 Color Profile.

Use the sliders on the Color panel to set the color to 100K black, and add it to a new document palette as a color.

It will be added as 100K black.

Go into Document Properties, change the color profile to Japan Color 2001 Uncoated and leave it on Convert.  Apply that.

Go to the Swatches panel, right-click on the 100K black swatch, and choose Edit Fill.

It will no longer be 100K black.

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, fde101 said:

If 100K black is in a palette created with one of them, color management would change it to something other than 100K when using a different CMYK color space.

As a result, any palette which was created with 100K black with a desire to keep it at 100K black would only be valid for that one specific color space.

What is needed in order to allow for a "universal" 100K black would be to NOT color manage the palette - in other words, to allow individual swatches to disable color management and run in a device color space instead of a color managed one.

If I have a CMYK document, and I use the 100K Black from the Swatches panel: then items using that Black seems to remain 100K even if I change the Color Profile using Document Setup.

So I'm not sure what the issue is. Also, in the PDF Export dialog, make sure Overprint Black is selected (it is on by default for several of the PDF presets) and you're using PDF/X compatible export settings.

According to the Help for Overprinting,

Quote

As a professional printing feature, overprint works when publishing PDFs using a CMYK color space and PDF/X compatibility.

You don't need to explicitly make an overprint for black, for black text or black graphics, as this is set by default. On PDF publishing, you can control black overprinting using the Overprint black option in the Export Options panel (for any PDF export options).

 

[MikeW]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

It does, which is the problem.

There is more than one CMYK color space.

If 100K black is in a palette created with one of them, color management would change it to something other than 100K when using a different CMYK color space.

As a result, any palette which was created with 100K black with a desire to keep it at 100K black would only be valid for that one specific color space.

What is needed in order to allow for a "universal" 100K black would be to NOT color manage the palette - in other words, to allow individual swatches to disable color management and run in a device color space instead of a color managed one.

 

EDIT: Example:

Try creating a document with CMYK/8 and the U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 Color Profile.

Use the sliders on the Color panel to set the color to 100K black, and add it to a new document palette as a color.

It will be added as 100K black.

Go into Document Properties, change the color profile to Japan Color 2001 Uncoated and leave it on Convert.  Apply that.

Go to the Swatches panel, right-click on the 100K black swatch, and choose Edit Fill.

It will no longer be 100K black.

Which is why God created the Assign option versus Convert.

My color palette doesn't change values using Assign. So, avoid Convert. Presto.

But all you've done is provide an example of how dumb it is that Affinity applications even have a color model to begin with, and that they, Affinity applications, lack further options to preserve numbers at output (ala InDesign). Document DPI is another dumb thing.

[fde101]

2 hours ago, MikeW said:

My color palette doesn't change values using Assign. So, avoid Convert.

The problem there is that Assign preserves the numbers at the expense of failing to maintaining consistent colors.

The whole point of color profiles is that they compensate for differences between devices: what is (100,50,70,36) on one device might be the same color as (90,55,75,30) on another (random example, but that's the basic idea).  Convert makes sure that the color stays as close as possible to being the same when you switch profiles, by adjusting the numbers to maintain the color accurately.

Convert means that your colors were correct, and that you now need to prepare them for a different device or set of output requirements.

Assign means that the correct values had the wrong profile attached to them and you need to change how the color values are being interpreted (so they were wrong to begin with).

 

2 hours ago, MikeW said:

options to preserve numbers at output

Yes, exactly!  If you preserve the numbers, you are no longer applying color management.  As I said in my previous post, what is needed in order to support what is being requested is a way to selectively disable color management for specific swatches, so that when you convert your colors to a different profile, those specific colors keep their numbers and change their color to match the way the numbers are interpreted on the new device.

 

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

the 100K Black from the Swatches panel

Interesting.  For me that swatch from the panel is not 100 K.  It even changes color visibly when I convert the document to a different profile, as do objects I filled by using it.

[tudor]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

Interesting.  For me that swatch from the panel is not 100 K.

That swatch is always 100K here. It remains 100K even when I convert the document to another profile (obviously, that doesn't apply to objects filled by it).

[walt.farrell]

11 minutes ago, tudor said:

That swatch is always 100K here. It remains 100K even when I convert the document to another profile (obviously, that doesn't apply to objects filled by it).

In my test earlier, which might have been on 2.1 beta, even the objects remained 100K. I haven't had time to try recreating the test to see if I did something wrong.

[fde101]

Either there is a bug in the 2.0 release that was fixed in the beta, or (if @tudor is also on Windows?) it might be a difference between the Mac and Windows versions (in which case one of them probably has a bug), or something really strange is going on here...

[MikeW]

4 hours ago, fde101 said:

The problem there is that Assign preserves the numbers at the expense of failing to maintaining consistent colors.

The whole point of color profiles is that they compensate for differences between devices: what is (100,50,70,36) on one device might be the same color as (90,55,75,30) on another (random example, but that's the basic idea).  Convert makes sure that the color stays as close as possible to being the same when you switch profiles, by adjusting the numbers to maintain the color accurately.

Convert means that your colors were correct, and that you now need to prepare them for a different device or set of output requirements.

Assign means that the correct values had the wrong profile attached to them and you need to change how the color values are being interpreted (so they were wrong to begin with).

Yes, exactly!  If you preserve the numbers, you are no longer applying color management.  As I said in my previous post, what is needed in order to support what is being requested is a way to selectively disable color management for specific swatches, so that when you convert your colors to a different profile, those specific colors keep their numbers and change their color to match the way the numbers are interpreted on the new device...

No.