Adding Spot Colour to Document

[Graphical Chris]

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.

[purplie]

I'm not familiar with spot color workflows, but maybe this:

1. Open the Swatches window (Window > Swatches)
2. In the Swatches window, click the menu icon (3 parallel lines) and select "Add Global Color"
3. 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.

[NotMyFault]

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.

[lacerto]

4 hours ago, Graphical Chris said:

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. 

Welcome to the forums, @Graphical Chris. You might have inadvertently picked you PANTONE color from one of the libraries that are NOT spot colors but process-based, e.g. PANTONE Color Bridge Coated and Uncoated, PANTONE CMYK Coated and Uncoated are process-based. The most common PANTONE libraries containing spot color definitions are PANTONE Formula Guide Solid Coated and PANTONE Formula Guide Solid Uncoated.

Note that when you pick first spot color from these libraries, Affinity app will place the swatch in a new document color palette (if not already created), but will name the color something like "Global Color 58", which is the global color name. The swatch's Spot color name (that will be used when you export, and that will appear as spot plate names in PDF) is shown in the Color panel.

If you wish to have global color names to show spot color names, you can manually rename them (using the context menu of the Swatches panel), or you can use the following method to use spot color names directly as the swatches are created: 

 

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).