Publisher 100K text exporting as rich black on cropped images

[ComicsGuy]

Been having a nightmare time with affinity and getting 100k black text on jpg images to export correctly on a comic book layout and turning into rich black on specific pages, and I think I've narrowed down the error to any pages that have had the images cropped within affinity publisher. I'm using euro uncoated cmyk, all the original comics are that colour version and the affinity publisher file is euro uncoated too and that's the export settings I'm using as well. 

Has anyone else had this issue? Is it that affinity changes the file or colour profile property when it's cropping in the program? The text is made in another program (and definitely 100k) as these are files artists have sent me so not possible to re-letter in affinity. 

If I hide the black channel I can't see the problem in affinity or photoshop, I'm just getting errors back from the printer and we can only see the text as rich black when I send to a friend with indesign. 

Any ideas for things that could be causing this glitch very appreciated, not being able to crop images to line the pages up correctly makes this program pretty useless to me!

[thomaso]

Hi @ComicsGuy, Welcome to the Affinity Forums!

Unfortunately I don't know a solution – but just can confirm for V1 an issue with grayscale / 100 K, turning on export to K + CMY black in resources that got vector cropped (via Vector Crop Tool).

Since there have been various issues reported (with or without Serif internal "reference tags") for vector cropped resources (e.g. unexpected rasterization and/or wrong transparency for layer opacity < 100) I can't detect via a forum's search which issue got fixed meanwhile or not. So a V2 user is required to shed more light on this in current app version(s).

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[thomaso]

47 minutes ago, lacerto said:

Crop the placed images by clipping them with shapes like rectangles:

In V1 the culprit seems to be not the order of nesting but the use of the Vector Crop Tool only. As long this tool was not used to edit a nested shape the images K-Only is maintained whereas K-Only is lost as soon that tool got used to edit the nested generic Triangle shape object for instance.

V1 grayscale cropped-v1.7.pdf

Workaround: also exporting as PDF-X seems to prevent from the issue:

v1 grayscale cropped-X4.pdf

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Hangman]

Hi @ComicsGuy and welcome to the forums,

4 hours ago, ComicsGuy said:

The text is made in another program (and definitely 100k) as these are files artists have sent me so not possible to re-letter in affinity.

Would I be correct to assume that the JPEG image and the text are two different files and you are placing the JPEG in Publisher and then Placing the Text as a separate layer on top of the JPEG or is the text already part of the JPEG file...

1. When you say the text is made in a different program, do you know which program is used to make it?
2. What format is the text being provided to you, JPEG?

[Hangman]

@lacerto and @thomaso... I'm perhaps missing something here but I've tried adding a CMYK JPEG file to a Publisher document using the same colour profile with the text both part of the JPEG and Placed as a separate layer on top of the JPEG...

In both instances, I've then used a Vector Crop on the JPEG file and tried a vector crop on the separate text layer, exported to PDF and in all cases, the text remains K100...

@lacerto, your sample file also shows the text in both the Vector Crop and the Clip as K100...

What am I doing differently to both of you...

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[ComicsGuy]

Hiya, thanks for the prompt feedback everyone, you're definitely a lot more familiar with the features of the program and printing than me so it's slightly hard to translate, but I think I've managed to understand some key points that are very helpful.

Answering the questions on the thread:

-I'm v2 so looks like the issue is still around! 

-the 100k text is in jpegs I'm importing (not ideal I know, but the only way my computer could handle a 200 page file and some of the text is hand drawn)

I'll test out using the rectangle tool to crop and pdf-x, will update you with how those have worked out. 

Cheers! 

[Hangman]

On 8/16/2024 at 3:23 PM, lacerto said:

With e.g. PackzView, which does not use simulation profiles for (re)calculating color values when the document expresses ICC-dependency without output intent, but instead just passes through internal color values.

That is indeed true, I believe the full version of PackZ does but certainly not the free reader... Thanks for the explanation and screen recording, that all makes perfect sense...

[ComicsGuy]

Hiya to update you all on this- PDF-x created a new problem and unfortunately knocked out all the black text in the rest of the document (ie text placed in affinity over coloured backgrounds in the contents page and page numbers) so had to proceed with acrobat 1.7, but the using picture frames/rectangle to crop worked as a work around to keep 100k where I needed it inside comic bubbles. Printers have accepted the files now!

[Hangman]

Hi @ComicsGuy,

That sounds like it may be a known bug if I've understood the problem correctly...

There is an overprint bug in the Affinity Apps which results in overprint failing when using Placed documents so if you are placing your text as a Linked or embedded document over your speech bubbles then when exported to PDF, overprint is not honoured, instead the underlying colour is knocked out...

This has been raised numerous times in the forums and is logged under AF-3962 but still awaiting a fix...