Background around images

[Tonya1026]

I have both Affinity Designer & Photo. My designer puts a background around images that ARE transparent. This lightly colored background doesn't show up until you go to print the design and after its printed on paper. I'm including the same exact image and background from Affinity Designer (upload 1) and Affinity Photo (upload 2) so you can see that is it not the image that's the issue. The correct way this image is supposed to look is upload 2. 

This happens with ANY PNG I try to use. I've tested it multiple different ways and AD always makes the final printed image discolored with a weird background. I have even tried rasterizing which does NOT remove the background and makes the image blurry so that is NOT a solution. This happens with PNGs and SVGs that have been uploaded to designer. 

The only "solution" I have found is exporting the whole finished design, then reimporting it, which does get rid of the background but then I'm unable to make individual changes if needed, without doing the whole process again. This is very frustrating and I have no idea why its happening. It only recently started doing this around the end of October. 

I prefer using Designer over Photo so I would really like this to be fixed. If anyone has an idea what caused this and what I can do to fix it, please help! As far as I know, I did not change any settings or anything.

[GarryP]

Have you tried creating the document in Photo, making sure it looks/prints right, then saving it, then opening the saved document in Designer and seeing if they look/print the same?

If the documents look different then that would suggest to me that there’s something (or maybe more than one thing) in your application Settings which is different, maybe something to do with Colour Management or similar (I’m not an expert in that area).

Try launching both applications, without creating/opening a document, put the applications side-by-side on your screen and then go to each Setting page in turn checking to see if there are any differences.

[NathanC]

Hi @Tonya1026,

As well as following GarryP's advice above could you also possibly upload a copy of the saved .afdesign/.afphoto file where you're encountering this issue so we can take a look?

[Tonya1026]

12 hours ago, GarryP said:

Have you tried creating the document in Photo, making sure it looks/prints right, then saving it, then opening the saved document in Designer and seeing if they look/print the same?

If the documents look different then that would suggest to me that there’s something (or maybe more than one thing) in your application Settings which is different, maybe something to do with Colour Management or similar (I’m not an expert in that area).

Try launching both applications, without creating/opening a document, put the applications side-by-side on your screen and then go to each Setting page in turn checking to see if there are any differences.

Ok I'm going to try again but creating it in Photo then opening it in Designer seems to work, but creating it in designer (which is what I normally use because of the different options, still doesn't work) Also when I just go to create a new file it seems the color format and profile is different between the 2 so I'm going to switch the designer one to see if that fixes it. Thanks!

[Tonya1026]

10 hours ago, NathanC said:

Hi @Tonya1026,

As well as following GarryP's advice above could you also possibly upload a copy of the saved .afdesign/.afphoto file where you're encountering this issue so we can take a look?

I did try to create in Photo then open in designer, which does seem to work but still isn't really a good solution because I prefer to use AD instead. However, I did notice the color profile was different between the two. I plan to change it but I wanted to send this to you first so you could better understand my issue. I did not switch anything so I'm not sure why they're different. Here is a better picture so you can see exactly what it looks like when its printing. It doesn't show up until you're in the printing stages and its already printed on paper. The next 2 photos are from the "New Document" screen. The first is Designer, the second is Photo. I am also uploading the cactus file from image 1 so you can see what it looks like before its printed. 

Test Cactus.afdesign

[Tonya1026]

13 hours ago, GarryP said:

Have you tried creating the document in Photo, making sure it looks/prints right, then saving it, then opening the saved document in Designer and seeing if they look/print the same?

If the documents look different then that would suggest to me that there’s something (or maybe more than one thing) in your application Settings which is different, maybe something to do with Colour Management or similar (I’m not an expert in that area).

Try launching both applications, without creating/opening a document, put the applications side-by-side on your screen and then go to each Setting page in turn checking to see if there are any differences.

Ok just to let you know changing the color format and profile to RGB/8 seemed to remove the unwanted background so my issue is fixed I guess. I don't actually remember ever changing it and I don't know much about the different color formats so I'm not sure why its like that. But I appreciate your suggestion. Thanks so much!

[GarryP]

You’re welcome.

In your New Document dialog screenshots, the top one is for the Press Ready A4 preset while the second is for the Print A4 preset (see the line of text buttons above the ‘mini pages’); they’re both for the same size of paper but for different results.

I think, but am not sure, that the Press Ready presets are for commercial printing – hence the CMYK Colour Format – while the Print presets are (mostly) for home printing – hence the RGB Colour Format – or something like that (an expert will be able to give better advice here).

If your image has an RGB colour format and your document has a CMYK colour format, or visa versa, then that can often cause problems because the RGB colours don’t always ‘map’ onto the CMYK colours nicely because of the different methods of printing – RGB is additive for ‘printing with light’ on a screen while CMYK is subtractive for printing with inks on paper (or other physical medium).

Colour formats/management is a really complicated subject which I know very little about so I wont try and explain it further than that.
If you want to know more, try a web search for RGB versus CMYK and choose a rabbit hole to go down.

[Tonya1026]

On 1/19/2024 at 3:36 AM, GarryP said:

You’re welcome.

In your New Document dialog screenshots, the top one is for the Press Ready A4 preset while the second is for the Print A4 preset (see the line of text buttons above the ‘mini pages’); they’re both for the same size of paper but for different results.

I think, but am not sure, that the Press Ready presets are for commercial printing – hence the CMYK Colour Format – while the Print presets are (mostly) for home printing – hence the RGB Colour Format – or something like that (an expert will be able to give better advice here).

If your image has an RGB colour format and your document has a CMYK colour format, or visa versa, then that can often cause problems because the RGB colours don’t always ‘map’ onto the CMYK colours nicely because of the different methods of printing – RGB is additive for ‘printing with light’ on a screen while CMYK is subtractive for printing with inks on paper (or other physical medium).

Colour formats/management is a really complicated subject which I know very little about so I wont try and explain it further than that.
If you want to know more, try a web search for RGB versus CMYK and choose a rabbit hole to go down.

I honestly didn't notice any of that until you pointed it out. Well technically most of my designers are made to be printed and then pressed on items for sublimation. I'm not really sure what the best choice would be but I will try to look into it. Thanks!