Graphical Chris Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 Can someone please explain in great detail how to add a spot colour to your document in Affinity Publisher? Everytime I add a Pantone colour to my Document palette, there is no SPOT graphic in the corner of the swatch to show that it is a PANTONE colour. When I output any PDF it appears as CMYK. I have only managed to add a spot colour once before and for the life of me can't get it to work again - not sure if an update has changed it or stopped it from working. I have followed the instructions from the manual and it doesn't work. Sure, I can add a swatch from any of the palettes, but it will never appear as a spot colour. I have followed other people's instructions, but they never elaborate enough. It is so easy in other applications, you just go to the pantone palette and select the PMS colour and it just adds it as a spot colourm showing the spot graphic. But with Affinity Publisher, you do the same thing and it adds a CMYK equivalent of the colour. I am dealing with offset printers that require PMS in the artwork so I can produce PMS plates. I also deal with plotters that require a pantone colour to use as a guide for cutting. None of this is possible with the Affinity suite. Can someone please help, it is driving me crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
purplie Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 I'm not familiar with spot color workflows, but maybe this: Open the Swatches window (Window > Swatches) In the Swatches window, click the menu icon (3 parallel lines) and select "Add Global Color" In the dialog box: Type your name for the color, select "Swatches" from the first dropdown, then a Pantone palette from the second dropdown, then a specific Pantone color; then select the "Spot" option. Seems like there should be a less complicated solution, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 According to help, Pantone colors become automatically spot colors when applied. No need to add them manually. https://affinity.help/designer/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Clr/spotClr.html?title=Spot colors As well as setting a global color to be a spot color, you can use pre-supplied PANTONE® colors, which will automatically become a global spot color in the Swatches panel's document palette when applied. A spot color swatch is indicated by a small dot in the bottom-right corner of its color swatch. You can check if a spot color has been assigned to an object's stroke or fill by using the Colorpanel. When publishing to PDF, the Honor spot colors option in the Export Options panel (Export Persona selected) lets you include spot colors in your output. You can also make the spot colors overprint in the same panel. Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. My posts focus on technical aspects and leave out most of social grease like „maybe“, „in my opinion“, „I might be wrong“ etc. just add copy/paste all these softeners from this signature to make reading more comfortable for you. Otherwise I’m a fine person which respects you and everyone and wants to be respected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted September 6, 2023 Share Posted September 6, 2023 Obsolete. Celia at Grafted Works and Dazmondo77 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celia at Grafted Works Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 This was really helpful, @lacerto. Thank you! lacerto 1 Quote 2019 MacBook Pro 16” | Affinity Designer 2 | Affinity Photo 2 | Affinity Publisher 2 2018 iPad Pro 12.9” | Apple Pencil 2 | Affinity Designer for iPad 2 | Affinity Photo for iPad 2 | Affinity Publisher for iPad 2 With Affinity since 2018 ❤️ graftedworks.com FEATURE WISH LIST 🥚True Vector Brushes 🥚Vector Pattern Fill 🥚Studio Link in All Apps 🥚InDesign-level PDF Export Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dazmondo77 Posted July 3 Share Posted July 3 On 9/6/2023 at 7:48 AM, lacerto said: Note that you need to manually make the spot color swatches global (using the context menu of the Swatches panel) to give them properties of a global swatch. You might also need to make spot color assignment twice to make sure that the assignment really takes (as shown in the video clip). lacerto -- nice tip, which I'll steal, with your blessing? lacerto 1 Quote Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.4.3 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.3, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6 Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.4.0 Betas 2.5.0(2430) www.bingercreative.co.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susan Johnston Posted August 12 Share Posted August 12 Thank you Graphical Chris!!! You made my day! Now I can finish my work and pick blackberries : ) Susan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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