Print Production needs Overprint, and Color (Ink) Separation

[jaxfh]

Hello fellow Developers,

I trust everyone's having a productive coding day. I wanted to bring to light a topic that's incredibly relevant in the realm of Professional Print Production – the importance of Overprint Simulation and Color Separation, and why we need to integrate these features into the next version of Affinity Publisher and Designer.

The world of print production is complex, blending an intricate mix of color science, material properties, and digital-to-physical rendering. Overprint Simulation and color separation are two pivotal elements in this process, largely overlooked in many design software, including ours.

Overprint Simulation is the digital process of replicating the effect of printing one color on top of another. It's used to anticipate and prevent gaps or 'white halos' from appearing between colors due to misalignment - a common issue in print production. Overprint Simulation ensures clean, precise printing, particularly around intricate graphics and texts. It also facilitates unique color blending options that can be indispensable for graphic designers.

Color Separation, on the other hand, is the process of decomposing a graphic or image into the primary print colors – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black), collectively known as CMYK. This is fundamental in transforming digital designs into tangible print products. The precision and accuracy of color separation directly influence the quality of the final printed piece, making this an essential tool for professional designers and publishers.

Affinity Publisher and Designer, while powerfully equipped with many other advanced features, lack built-in overprint simulation and color separation functionalities. The absence of these features complicates the print production process and can negatively affect the print output. Our users currently have to depend on other software for these functions, which is far from ideal considering our goal to provide a complete and intuitive solution for professional design and publishing needs.

Implementing these features would significantly enhance the efficacy of Affinity Publisher and Designer for print production. Overprint Simulation controls would offer more control over how colors interact, reducing potential print issues and broadening the creative palette for designers. Robust color separation tools would ensure that designs are print-ready straight from our software, saving time, and reducing the risk of color discrepancies in the final product.

Not only would these features better serve our current user base, but they would also make Affinity Publisher and Designer more competitive in the professional design software market, potentially attracting new customers who primarily work in print.

In conclusion, I urge everyone to consider the significance of overprint simulation and color separation features in our future updates. These are not just bells and whistles – they're fundamental tools for print production. Let's help our users to transform their digital art into printed masterpieces with the accuracy and color fidelity they deserve.

Examples:
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/inks-separations-screen-frequency.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/overprinting.html

Best Regards

[Oufti]

Thank you for taking the time to expose this! 

It also concerns keen graphic designers who like to check the files they send to printers. 

As you said:

3 hours ago, jaxfh said:

Affinity Publisher and Designer, while powerfully equipped with many other advanced features, lack built-in overprint simulation and color separation functionalities. The absence of these features complicates the print production process and can negatively affect the print output. Our users currently have to depend on other software for these functions

Today, this control can only be done with additional software, once the work has been exported as a PDF.

It would be much more convenient to be able to check the quality of our work at any stage of the design process. 

[jaxfh]

On 7/8/2023 at 2:37 AM, Oufti said:

It would be much more convenient to be able to check the quality of our work at any stage of the design process. 

Just like in InDesign or Illustrator

[C.A.Pelton]

I would like to chime in on this as well. I currently cannot use Affinity Designer for the commercial work I do. Though I love the tools and the non-destructive vector effects.

I am a Prepress Technician/Graphic Designer and all our files need to be prepared with the correct overprints and verifiable color separations. This is the first step in the Quality control process, and every print company I have worked for does this. Exporting to PDF, (which is not always accurate) is a workaround, which simply adds another step to the process,

Not to mention, if you are going to pay the sub for Acrobat, you might as well pay the sub for Illustrator. Acrobat should not be a solution for this issue.

[thadeusz]

Overprint simulation and color separation are kind of possible, even with spot colors. I also find Affinity programs to be very complicated to achieve a good and secure production workflow, but it's possible. It took me a while to get it sorted, but now I'm really confident and use it for all sorts of print productions. I'm checking separations with Packzview (https://www.packz.com/downloads-info/), which is free to download, but needs registration and new upload once a year. Overprint simulation is always visible in layout (when using Multiply on layers).

You should check if you really have spot colors in color palette, especially have a look at consistent color profiles and use Multiply on layers to overprint. That's about it. It took me a lot of testing to make sure it works. It's easily messed up with different color profiles on export. I'd love to see a separation preview in the program (as with channels in Photo, but showing correct separations for spot colors as well). When you work only in CMYK you already have separation preview, but you need Publisher and Photo to be installed as well – and use channel palette for separations. 

Good luck!

[loukash]

On 7/7/2023 at 11:19 PM, jaxfh said:

consider the significance of overprint simulation and color separation features in our future updates. These are not just bells and whistles – they're fundamental tools for print production.

+1,000,000!

1 hour ago, thadeusz said:

checking separations with Packzview

As far as I can tell after a few weeks of use – compared to Acrobat X on my old El Capitan MacBook – the current version of Packzview appears to be reliable.

Also, for PDF/X preflight check there's "PDF Studio". Its trial mode is not time limited, it only adds a watermark in case you would want to print anything. Its separation preview doesn't work correctly, however, and it doesn't even recognize spot color plates.

1 hour ago, thadeusz said:

It took me a lot of testing

Yeah, in the past few years I've participated in many threads on these forums to explore all these issues and finding functioning workflows and workarounds…

1 hour ago, thadeusz said:

When you work only in CMYK you already have separation preview, but you need Publisher and Photo to be installed as well – and use channel palette for separations. 

Note, however, that APh's "Channel separation" won't display the automatic K100 overprint.

[thadeusz]

5 minutes ago, loukash said:

Note, however, that APh's "Channel separation" won't display the automatic K100 overprint.

Thanks for clarifying! I've always done separation check in Packsview as an extra step, even with CMYK only.
I start checking separations a bit before making final corrections in my workflow - so, that I'm ready when corrections are done and everything is final. Of course I'm doing a final check on my print file, but mostly without any last minute surprises... 

[Akhelas]

On 7/7/2023 at 4:19 PM, jaxfh said:

Color Separation, on the other hand, is the process of decomposing a graphic or image into the primary print colors – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black), collectively known as CMYK. This is fundamental in transforming digital designs into tangible print products. The precision and accuracy of color separation directly influence the quality of the final printed piece, making this an essential tool for professional designers and publishers.

To add another voice to the conversation, I would also find this tool very useful. I create indie tabletop games in PDF and Print formats. I like Serif's Affinity software - and love that it's a solid alternative to Adobe - but I really do need a tool to check ink when preparing print files. Color separation is basically the only reason I'm still juggling software providers.

[smg]

On 7/7/2023 at 11:19 PM, jaxfh said:

Hello fellow Developers,

I trust everyone's having a productive coding day. I wanted to bring to light a topic that's incredibly relevant in the realm of Professional Print Production – the importance of Overprint Simulation and Color Separation, and why we need to integrate these features into the next version of Affinity Publisher and Designer.

The world of print production is complex, blending an intricate mix of color science, material properties, and digital-to-physical rendering. Overprint Simulation and color separation are two pivotal elements in this process, largely overlooked in many design software, including ours.

Overprint Simulation is the digital process of replicating the effect of printing one color on top of another. It's used to anticipate and prevent gaps or 'white halos' from appearing between colors due to misalignment - a common issue in print production. Overprint Simulation ensures clean, precise printing, particularly around intricate graphics and texts. It also facilitates unique color blending options that can be indispensable for graphic designers.

Color Separation, on the other hand, is the process of decomposing a graphic or image into the primary print colors – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black), collectively known as CMYK. This is fundamental in transforming digital designs into tangible print products. The precision and accuracy of color separation directly influence the quality of the final printed piece, making this an essential tool for professional designers and publishers.

 

I agree with this request, is a must to have feature for a professional work.

I would like also to propose to use the CxF (CxF/X4) file for ink specification  transparency and color specification, now is an ISO standard https://www.iso.org/standard/71110.html

[Dimka]

Yes, spot channels feature will be very helpful in print production

[morphis]

Recently upto v2 and was hoping that spot colors were treated properly.

- Multi-channel export for TIFF and PSD

- Overprint attributes for fill , stroke

- Separation Preview ( Illustrator does this ok enough but could be improved upon )

- Separation Export

- Multi-channel print support ( Indesign's Ink management for print is pretty good starting place )

[Josh Li]

+1 for this and also the ability to assign overprinting per layer object and not only per color

overprint preview (+ by separation) would also be essential to assess technical document viability before generating the print job files.