Font color isn't coming through when exporting

[vlimm]

I've got a book file that's fully formatted, apart from a final pass-through, but when I go to export to a PDF, the font color comes through light and patchy. Please note that I've been using a level 0 on the greyscale, so I've no idea why this isn't on the darkest setting--or why it's patchy!

I'd appreciate any help you can provide, and am including a sample file below. Please note that the copyright page, endorsement attributions, and the page headers seem to come through alright. I can't figure out what's different between them and the rest of the text!

Spanish Captive Set Free v7 excerpt.pdf

[walt.farrell]

I would need the corresponding part of the .afpub file, too.

[vlimm]

Yes, of course. Here it is.

Spanish Captive Set Free v7 excerpt.afpub

[vlimm]

(Sorry, @walt.farrell, please see above.)

[thomaso]

Your PDF seems to have a white stroke (contour/Kontur) assigned to the text with a fill of RGB or CMYK, not K-only.

[vlimm]

@thomaso, thanks for finding this. I wonder if you can help me find where this is present in the Affinity file? I've never come across anything like this before. Is it something within the file? Something that happened on export/print? I'm inclined to think it's within the file as the white stroke appears to be somewhat selective (e.g., not touching the headers or attributions for the endorsements), but I have no idea where to look next. 

[thomaso]

I don't have APub V2 installed and can not open this .afpub. – There are various spots in the interface where a white stroke can get assigned to or removed from text. Ideally all text got formatted with styles saved in the Text Style panel and can get the stroke removed there via the various style definitions.

Alternatively you can remove text stroke with the Find & Replace panel where you choose a specific format property (e.g. stroke width or stroke colour) for "Find" and one for "Replace". Unfortunately I am unable to do so if I open your PDF in APub – whereas it generally works in a test document. If you can not solve it yourself with the screenshots shown below you might get more help of a V2 user.

1. Find And Replace Panel > Find > Cog icon > Format …

2. Define the style property that should get found (e.g. stroke width)…
[If you rather search for all white stroke colour you must set it in the right colour space (RGB / CMYK).]

3. … and accordingly the definition for Replace … (e.g. no stroke at all)

I have no idea why it fails to me to find any result with your PDF opened in APub V1 (neither stroke width nor white in RGB or CMYK) …

… whereas it works in my test .afpub:

[vlimm]

8 hours ago, thomaso said:

Your PDF seems to have a white stroke (contour/Kontur) assigned to the text with a fill of RGB or CMYK, not K-only.

@thomaso, thank you so much! The information you provided was exactly what I needed. The screenshots really helped. I deeply appreciate all of your time and help.

Spanish Captive Set Free v7 excerpt.pdf

[thomaso]

8 minutes ago, vlimm said:

The information you provided was exactly what I needed. The screenshots really helped.

Glad you solved it. – Now I like to know if you fixed it via the Find & Replace panel? If yes, can you please do a test and open your first PDF in APub V2 and see if there Find & Replace works for you to find results of text with stroke? (the part that failed for me in V1 with this PDF)

[vlimm]

@thomaso, actually I didn't do a find and replace as you'd mentioned there might be problems with it. I did a manual search, which was pretty easy because I have used text styles for everything. When I tried to do a find and replace on the original file, APub v2 crashed. I tried a few variations of the find/replace search term to see if I could get it to work, but it consistently crashed.

[thomaso]

17 minutes ago, vlimm said:

When I tried to do a find and replace on the original file, APub v2 crashed.

Interesting. It could be worth a separate topic with the affected .afpub attached.
(in case of copyright you could delete pages except one that has white text stroke – but then you should test again if the crash still happens with F&R in the reduced .afpub).

Does F&R work for you in a new document with new text with a white stroke? If not then the separate topic might get created in the sub-forum for bug reports.

P.S.: Your new PDF still has black text defined in K + CMY (rich black) (or in APub as RGB or HSL). If the PDF is meant to get printed you might want to change the text fill colour to 100 K only … and convert the title image (page 1) + the 3 images on page 3 to grayscale, or set it as text, too.

[vlimm]

@thomaso, thanks for this. I will do some more testing, and submit a bug report if it's possible to replicate the problem.

Thanks as well for your PS. I'm a pretty new user for Affinity, and don't really understand a lot of the color side of things. Can you tell me where I should go to change the text fill colour to 100 K only? Right now in Affinity, I've got it set to 0 on the "greyness" dropdown, but I guess that's not the way to do it...

 

[thomaso]

8 minutes ago, vlimm said:

I've got it set to 0 on the "greyness" dropdown, but I guess that's not the way to do it...

This sounds your APub document profile is set to Grayscale? If yes, Grayscale (as only 1 colour channel) is generally tricky in Affinity with PDF export. Consider switching to CMYK instead and make sure black text is defined as CMYK 0-0-0-100. For images use the "K only" button in the context toolbar. For export do not change the settings "As document" and "Use document profile".

For more Grayscale info and experience I recommend for instance this thread / post or other posts of @lacerto.
(In a forum search for certain keywords you can add a tag for a certain author).

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, thomaso said:

This sounds your APub document profile is set to Grayscale?

No, it's CMYK/8. And the text in question is a Rich Black:

And has a .24 pt stroke, as you've mentioned before.

And Find/Replace is unable to locate it using those characteristics, but I seem to remember a bug already logged about that.

[lepr]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

No, [the APub document is] CMYK/8. And the text in question is a Rich Black:

 

The document is CMYK/8 but the text is RGB black. You have CMYK sliders with the lock engaged in Colour panel. The lock forces a conversion to CMYK to be reported in the panel instead of the actual RGB. You need to disengage the lock to get true colour definitions reported in the panel.

 

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

And Find/Replace is unable to locate it using those characteristics, but I seem to remember a bug already logged about that.

Not a bug in this example. Find/Replace won't find CMYK rich black text because the text is really RGB black. Find/Replace will find RGB black, of course.

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, lepr said:

The document is CMYK/8 but the text is RGB black. You have CMYK sliders with the lock engaged in Colour panel.

Whereas @Walts test appears sufficient here since the OP mentioned to have the text black set as with the Grayscale slider mode: "I've got it set to 0 on the "greyness" dropdown", which unfortunately in Affinity does not mean K only (as we might expect at least in a CMYK document) but as RGB. From this perspective the colour lock in Walts example doesn't really matter sice it shows anyway that black is defined different than with K only.

2 hours ago, lepr said:

Not a bug in this example. Find/Replace won't find CMYK rich black text because the text is really RGB black.

I think the issue with F&R and this specific document was a white text stroke / a width of 0,24 pt … which appeared not to work in F&R.

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I think the issue with F&R and this specific document was a white text stroke / a width of 0,24 pt … which appeared not to work in F&R.

The Stroke panel indicated the stroke on the letters was that black I showed.

I will have to re-try the F&R testing using an RGB color definition to see if that helps, as @lepr thinks it will.

[thomaso]

19 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

The Stroke panel indicated the stroke on the letters was that black I showed.

Your screenshot shows a black fill colour well in front – while the stroke ring (behind) occurs in white. – This white stroke did cause the issue of this topic ("the font color comes through light and patchy"), which might not have been noticed at all with a black stroke.

[lepr]

6 hours ago, thomaso said:

Whereas @Walts test appears sufficient here since the OP mentioned to have the text black set as with the Grayscale slider mode: "I've got it set to 0 on the "greyness" dropdown", which unfortunately in Affinity does not mean K only (as we might expect at least in a CMYK document) but as RGB. From this perspective the colour lock in Walts example doesn't really matter sice it shows anyway that black is defined different than with K only.

My post was factually correct and was in response to a factual error.

 

5 hours ago, thomaso said:

I think the issue with F&R and this specific document was a white text stroke / a width of 0,24 pt … which appeared not to work in F&R.

The problematic text has RGB black fill and CMYK white stroke. F&R will work if its find parameters are set with those colours.

 

 

[walt.farrell]

14 hours ago, lepr said:

The problematic text has RGB black fill and CMYK white stroke. F&R will work if its find parameters are set with those colours.

Interestingly, it doesn't find it.

[thomaso]

14 hours ago, lepr said:

The problematic text has RGB black fill and CMYK white stroke. F&R will work if its find parameters are set with those colours.

Why should the fill colour definition be required for a stroke search in F&R?

In my experience in V1 it is possible to search for a stroke property only – but it failed to me with the PDF of the OP opened in V1.

[thomaso]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Interestingly, it doesn't find it.

What if you search for the Outline width only? … or the Outline white only?

[walt.farrell]

2 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Why should the fill colour definition be required for a stroke search in F&R?

It's not, but it didn't work without the Fill color, and @lepr had suggested it might be needed, so I tried it.

Just now, thomaso said:

What if you search for the Outline width only? … or the Outline white only?

Thanks. Searching for just Outline CMYK White (nothing else) is the only one I've been able to find that works.

[thomaso]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Thanks. Searching for just Outline CMYK White (nothing else) is the only one I've been able to find that works.

Thank you, too, and sorry, I should have tried this before with my document. After stroke width did not work with the OP's PDF I had just tried colour in my .afpub, which did work, so I assumed an issue with OP's file(s).

Now I notice that searching for stroke width only does not work here in my .afpub, too, and also width + white does not work. It appears F&R is unable to search for stroke width?

[lepr]

15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Interestingly, it doesn't find it.

These three alternatives work for me:

• stroke: CMYK white
• fill: RGB black
• stroke: CMYK white & fill: RBG black

Note that I wasn't specifying stroke width for the search.

I saw the same as thomaso that Find fails for stroke width 0.24 pt. I think the stroke in the document is not precisely 0.24 pt because if you change the stroke of some text by entering the value 0.24 pt for width, then that text will be found when searching for stroke width 0.24 pt.