Offset Printing issues with Publisher 2

[Graphical Chris]

I have come across some major issues in regard to offset printing.  Just to allow an understanding of these bugs/issues, I will go over some requirements need for offset printing - these requirements is where I had the issue.

1) Offset printing requires 4 plates to be made for each of the CMYK colours.  Therefore, images/photos need to be CMYK format so each of these colours appear on each of the plates.  Blacks are not appearing in the black plate.

2) Overset of certain blacks to allow neat printing of fine text on certain colour objects is also required (ie., black text on top of a light coloured box should use overset black so that the printer does not have to try and match it aginst the colour, leaving white strips on the edge of the text.  Overprint black text is not working, even though selected to be overprint

I am not sure if these issues stem from Publisher 2 itself or from imported artwork from another source and Publisher 2 is bringing in some sort of Meta data that is causing the issue.   This particular one, I imported supplied PDF from someone that produced the artwork within Canva.  After importing this PDF, I then proceeded to edit and adjust making the artwork ready for Offset Printing - but issues still arose, even though I went through all processes to make it offset print ready.

ISSUE/BUG 1:

CMYK Images are coming out as RGB (even when exporting and selecting the ICC to be a CMYK model).  When creating all 4 plates, the black plate is missing any black in the images, making the image appear to be an RGB image.

What have I done to fix this?

1) Converted all images to CMYK in a separate program (photoshop) and re-imported them into Publisher 2.

2) Made sure Design was using CMYK Model within Publisher 2.

3) Exported PDF out using all CMYK ICC models and requirements for CMYK Offset Printing

WHAT HAPPENED: this was a 2 page document.  Page 1 worked fine.  Page 2 would not export the image on this page as CMYK.  Not matter what I did, no CMYK Image would export as a CMYK.

ISSUE/BUG 2:

Overprint black was not working on page 2 of the document.

What have I done to fix this?

1) I created a new 100% black (C0 M0 Y0 K100 and set this colour to overprint).

Overprint of black would work on page 1, but not on page 2.

OTHER STRANGE ISSUES:

I noticed that when viewing in Adobe Pro, everything looked good, and said it was CMYK.  But when I ran a Preflight to convert everything to CMYK, other colours behaved strangely.  Colours that had no black in them, all of sudden became black etc.  So the exported PDF file from Publisher 2 brought some strange issues with it and after preflighting it, they weren't usable.

HOW I FIXED ALL OF THE ISSUES ABOVE:

I fixed all of the issues above by exporting the PDF from Publisher 2 as I normally would, but I imported the PDFs into Adobe Illustrator and exported back out again.  This fixed the CMYK colours and the black Overprint.  The trouble with this is, it now means I have to keep Illustrator and I really need to be doing everything within Affinity and not using Adobe for anything due to the subscription.  Otherwise, I might as well keep the subscription and not spend anymore on Affinity.

Having a fix for this within Affinity for this issue would be good.  I am not sure if this is because issues were brought in from the imported PDF from Canva (which all printers hate) or if these issues occur when created from scratch within Affinity Publisher 2.  I don't know this, because I have had this issue occur randomly and can't remember which ones were imported and which ones were created from scratch.

[NathanC]

Hi @Graphical Chris,

10 hours ago, Graphical Chris said:

ISSUE/BUG 1:

CMYK Images are coming out as RGB (even when exporting and selecting the ICC to be a CMYK model)

To confirm, on export to PDF have you enabled the 'Convert Image colour spaces' option to convert any placed RGB images on export to the destination profile? Without doing this images will retain their original colour space in the final PDF.

If the issue persists even with this setting enabled, could we possibly take a look at the .afpub file along with a screenshot of your desired PDF export settings?

10 hours ago, Graphical Chris said:

ISSUE/BUG 2:

Overprint black was not working on page 2 of the document.

Provided that the output profile selected in the export settings was either left as 'Use document profile' or matched the document profile set I've not been able to replicate an issue with this as the overprint property was retained on my K only text when checked in Acrobat's print production object inspector. The only circumstance where this would occur and affect all pages is when converting to a different CMYK profile on export due to the the overprint property not getting applied as the text was converted to 4C black. I think we'll also need to take a look at the PDF where this occurred as well as the original .afpub.

I've provided an upload link below, if you've used link resources for the images it would be best to send the .afpub over as a packaged file via File > Save as Package > Save to an empty folder in explorer and then compress that folder to a .ZIP so we have access to all resources used.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/oj9bkt7MqXpOwOB0LXfZ

Many thanks

[Graphical Chris]

Hi NathanC,

 

Thank you for your responses.

In regard to BUG/ISSUE 1: I converted all of my images to CMYK before importing them.  So I didn't needn't to tick that box, but I could try it anyway.

This is overall probably a hard one to diagnose as it will look good in adobe reader, but the outputted PDF has underlying issues.  I tried to do a quick fix and convert the PDF to CMYK using Adobe Pro preflight, but it caused some colours to go black an other colours to go wildly different from what they should be.

I think these issues stem from the original source artwork which is from Canva.  Let me explain my processes:

1) Customer supplies PDF artwork that was exported from Canva (Printers hate Canva).

2) I import this PDF into Publisher 2 and make necessary edits within Publisher 2.

3) File gets saved as a Puiblisher 2 file for later edits if required.

4) I export updated artwork out into a PDF which gets turned into 4 plates for the offset printer.

I can't be certain, but I believe these issues with colours and overprint black only occurs when importing PDFs from Canva.  So it would seem Canva PDFs bring in some issues of some type that cause these strange bugs.

In regard to BUG/ISSUE 2: the overprint was working on one page, but not the second page, the same page where the RGB image was not converting to CMYK.  And yet I did the same for both pages - in fact, I created a global overprint black swatch that was used on the 1st page and the 2nd page.  But for some reason, this second page had issues with this.

I can't send you the file just yet as it is a sensitive file that can't be released anywhere until after 4th March as it is related to elections and this informaion is not allowed out before a certain time.  Once this date passes, I will pass this on.  It has happened before, but I can't remember which one had the issues as I deal with thousands of artworks, so I can't send you a previous one.

[werfox]

Hi @NathanC and @Graphical Chris,

I wanted to add some observations to this issue.

I did some tests yesterday and today and figured out that the overprint option on PDF export seems only to work with PDF-X (PDF-X/4 in my case).
Attached two simple exported files and the Output preview of both in Acrobat Pro with the Black plate turned off:

1. The PDF (Press ready) export:

2. And here the output preview of a PDF-X/4:

 

The simple AfPub layout file (version 2.4), the PDF export settings and the exported files are also attached.
The sample text is set without defining any special colour swatch with overprint option, but it should export as such with the export option checked.

 

Best regards

werfox

simple_test_overprint_pressready.pdf simple_test_overprint_x4.pdf simple_test_overprint.afpub

[Hangman]

Hi @werfox and welcome to the forums,

I'm not seeing the same issue with your Press Ready file, did you definitely upload the correct version?

[NathanC]

Welcome to the forums @werfox

I'm also seeing similar results to Hangman, this may be related to the PDF reader version, If I use object inspector in Acrobat's print production menu I can see that the text overprint property shows Overprint as 'True' after selecting the text in the 'press ready' file.

[werfox]

Hi @NathanC and @Hangman,

thank you for your responses.

It might probably be a problem with the Acrobat version I used. I checked in a recent version and it is indeed OK!

Sorry for the trouble, my mistake.

 

Best regards