Help my magazine is printed in other colors then the affpub document and the pdf export document looks on my computer.

[Nathaliefs]

Help, I have a major problem and a deadline (tomorrow morning 9.30 european time)

My almost press ready magazine comes out of the printer in the wrong colors.

For example my design of the header is in Canva Pro (I have Affinity Photo en Designer for a week, but i only learned publisher yet).

The colors are different en darker (not aqua blue -vibrant colors) , de texture of the elephant is gone )….Help what is wrong and how to solve this problem.

Tomorrow is deadline and my printinghouse want to help, but doesn’t know and don’t work with affinity publisher

Can you please help me out?

Is it a wrong setting?......something else?

Greetings from the Netherlands

Nathalie van der Vechte

Affinity support.docx

[Hangman]

Hi @Nathaliefs and welcome to the forums,

If your magazine is being professionally printed on a four (or more) colour press it will be printed using CMYK Process colours. CMYK colour has a narrower gamut (range of printable colours) than RGB colour...

RGB (an additive colour model) is primarily used for television or websites, CMYK (a subtractive colour model) is widely used for printed advertising such as brochures, magazines, posters, business cards, etc.

RGB colours most noticeably green, yellow-green, bright reds and oranges are not reproducible in CMYK without the use of special inks and colours overall will appear more muted and flatter in CMYK than RGB.

The magazine header you've designed in Canva Pro uses RGB colours, in particular in the yellow-green colour range and it looks as though you've specified colours within your magazine using Hex colours which are an RGB specification.

As you are in the Netherlands the printing company will likely use either a FOGRA or ISOcoated v2 colour profile to define CMYK colours. The printing company will either have information on their website regarding the colour setup they require or will be able to tell you the colour setup they require when creating your document and converting it to PDF.

Depending on the print company's requirements you should set your Affinity Publisher document using a CMYK colour space with the colour profile the print company specify and when defining colours within your document you should practically specify these using CMYK colour values rather than Hex values, especially for the main black body text.

While it is possible to use RGB or HEX values within a document that is going to be printed you need to keep in mind that these will be converted to CMYK values and will subsequently look flatter and darker which is what you are seeing with your file.

If you can export your Canva Pro header as an SVG file you will be able to open and edit the colours in Publisher in the relevant CMYK colour space and make adjustments to the CMYK colour values and if your elephant is an image (photo) rather than a vector object adjust the brightness and contrast (if required) when in the CMYK colour space to get a more realistic idea as to how this will appear once printed or better still recreate your header from scratch directly in Publisher using a rectangle with a gradient fill to which you can add the elephant images on top along with the magazine title and date.

Importantly, you've specified your main black body text using #000000 which will convert to a CMYK mix (something like C:87 M:78 Y:65 K:93) and has the potential to look blurry when printed owing to alignment issues...

Once you know the correct ICC Colour Profile to use you need to ensure the main body text is specified as K100 only so that it's printed using only the Black Plate and not a mix of CMYK colours...

Long story short, you need to understand the printing specs required by the printing company and then set up your Publisher document accordingly and practically specify CMYK colours if you want to have a better idea of how they will appear once printed or be mindful that RGB colours will not be as vibrant when converted to CMYK.

The print company may also require a particular PDF version to be used when creating the file you send them, e.g., PDF/X but again you will need to check the printing specs on their website or liaise directly with them to ensure you provide a PDF file that meets their requirements...

I hope that helps a little, though probably of little comfort if your deadline is 9:30 am tomorrow morning...

If you have questions please just ask, there are generally plenty of people in the forums who can help you...

[Nathaliefs]

Thanks for your helpful mail👍

I learned a lot by reading it, but my time wasn't enough to change everything. Canva Pro also send me good tips and those settings i good use also. For now i made the frontpagina of the magazine a little bit lighter.

The proof which was send by the printing company with photo's and a phonecall was good, so it is now printing 3500 magazines. I'll learn how to do things in affinity suit, so it will be better and better i think. We work with affinity publisher for a week now, so i'm very proud how it is now.  See attachment.

Thank you very much and keep up the good work!!

Greetings from the Netherlands

Nathalie van der Vechte

Wijkkrant sep 2024 v12 definitief.pdf

[Hangman]

Hi @Nathaliefs,

I'm glad you were able to sort things out and you made your print deadline...

I hope you are pleased with the printed version once the ink is dry and I wish you every success with your community newspaper and hope the 3,500 readers in De Wijert appreciate all the hard work that has gone into producing it...