Pub2: Adjustment layers not exporting

[Louisk]

Hi there,

I'm exporting a document to PDF that includes colour pictures, with custom Black & White adjustment layers & curves placed above in Z and therefore applied to the whole page. This displays correclty in Publisher, but on export, all the effects are lost. I've tried 'include hidden layers'. Am I missing something? If the ability to place adjustments like this isn't supported, why is it displayed? 

I really don't want to go through the whole book and rasterise everything and lose the ability to tweak adjustments, or to duplicate and hide an unrastered version and then have two copies of absolutely everything!

I also obviously can't export as greyscale as my custom black and white balances will be lost and the curves adjusments are also missing.

Screenshot below.

APub v. 2.5.5 on Win10

[GarryP]

I’ve just tried to recreate the situation as much as I can see from the screen-grab and it’s working fine for me using Publisher 2.5.3 on Windows 10 – see attached image.

However, I can’t see all of the layer settings and construction of your document, or your export settings, so I could be missing something important, and I’m not using the same version of Publisher that you are.

Would you be able to share the document in public so we can experiment with it?

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Louisk said:

with custom Black & White adjustment layers & curves placed above in Z and therefore applied to the whole page.

Why are you doing it that way, instead of nesting the Adjustment Layers into the images they should affect? That way they affect only the images, and leave everything else alone.

[h_d]

I see the same as you @Louisk  (macOS, APub 2.5.5), and I don't know if it's a bug or intended behaviour when adjustments are grouped in this way.

One way to avoid having to modify every single image in your existing document would be to change the export settings under Advanced:

 

and choose Unsupported properties in the Rasterise: section. I'm not sure if this an ideal solution though as it may have unintended consequences elsewhere, and I think @walt.farrell's advice would be the best way to approach future projects.

 

[thomaso]

9 hours ago, Louisk said:

Am I missing something?

Check the mentioned export option for rasterization and make sure it is not set to "Nothing".

13 minutes ago, h_d said:

I don't know if it's a bug or intended behaviour when adjustments are grouped in this way.

Adjustments (and Filters) always get rasterized on export. If rasterization gets prevented in the export settings than they get ignored on export.

6 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Why are you doing it that way, instead of nesting the Adjustment Layers into the images they should affect? That way they affect only the images, and leave everything else alone.

To me the OP's setup appears fine: Since the Layers panel does not show a scrollbar the text layers must be inside the only collapsed = the top (Master) layer "Standard…" and thus above the Adjustment Group that affects the layers below but not the text, – right?

[Louisk]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Check the mentioned export option for rasterization and make sure it is not set to "Nothing".

Adjustments (and Filters) always get rasterized on export. If rasterization gets prevented in the export settings than they get ignored on export.

To me the OP's setup appears fine: Since the Layers panel does not show a scrollbar the text layers must be inside the only collapsed = the top (Master) layer "Standard…" and thus above the Adjustment Group that affects the layers below but not the text, – right?

Thanks, yeah it's set to "unsupported properties" for me usually, but even set to "Everything", still the adjustments layers are ignored, both in the preview and in the resulting PDF. Manually rasterising layers first works, but as mentioned I don't want to do that. In the screenshot attached of the included file, I clicked 'PDF (for print)' then changed the Rasterize to Everything. 

I do adjustments this way because it's a very quick and convenient way to apply the same settings to multiple pictures on the same page, which is a very frequent job in my document (though the adjustments for each page differ), and the settings for all images can be tweaked at once trivially. My text is above the adjustments in z so only the pictures get the adjustments.

I find it a bit strange that Affinity would have gone to the trouble of giving the ability to create adjustment layers on their own, give them a clear and intuitive behaviour (apply to all below in z), and then for the advice when that feature is bugged to be "don't use that feature in the future, do this much more time consuming and much less convenient method instead" 🤷‍♂️.

I can't share the document unfortunately, but this little extract attached is exhibiting the same behaviour for me.

AdjustmentsBug.afpub

[thomaso]

16 minutes ago, Louisk said:

even set to "Everything", still the adjustments layers are ignored, both in the preview and in the resulting PDF

That's indeed strange. I can't reproduce the issue in my V1 but h_d replied to "see the same", so there may be an issue with V2.

Can you try setting the group's blend mode to "Normal" / or to ungroup the two adjustments, just to see if grouping affects the result (which sometimes happens in Affinity)?

[werfox]

Hi @Louisk,

the document is set up with a RGB colour profile.
You can work with that, but for an export with greyscale images (and text) only
you need to change the colour space to "Grey" (see screenshot below).
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to that: if you intend to export your work in greyscale only, you could set up your document
with a Grey/8 colour profile (even convert the existing one – but make a backup copy first!)
and work with curves adjustment layers only (no need to use the b/w adjustment in that case anymore).

 

 

 

Best regards

Edited September 7, 2024 by werfox
Remakr about conversion/document setup with Grey/8 profile added

[Louisk]

Okay, the plot thickens - even if I drag the adjustments onto just one image, they don't work. Tried changing blend mode & colour space, but they're just not displaying. Maybe adjustments are bugged in 2.5.5. Anyone know how to downgrade the .exe version without losing settings etc.?

 

[carl123]

On the sample document you uploaded, deleting both adjustment layers & adding them again cured the problem for me

Can you try that on one of your pages then export/preview that page?

[thomaso]

23 minutes ago, carl123 said:

On the sample document you uploaded, deleting both adjustment layers & adding them again cured the problem for me

This solution reminds me to known issues with adjustments as assets. @Louisk, could this be a reason for your experience? Since you need this group multiple times across the entire document it may appear attractive to use assets…

[lacerto]

Obsolete.