kashura Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Hello everyone, Seems that this is a very frustrating and complicated process, and I can't get the file to look nice either. Sorry for comparison, but in Illustrator its one button : convert to grayscale. What is the best way to convert to grayscale with Affinity Designer? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 One way is from File > Document setup > Color tab choose either Gray/8 or Gray/16. kashura, Bryce and 816Wooly 2 1 Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kashura Posted July 25, 2016 Author Share Posted July 25, 2016 One way is from File > Document setup > Color tab choose either Gray/8 or Gray/16. Great, thank you so much! I spent probably an hour trying to figure this out. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 One way is from File > Document setup > Color tab choose either Gray/8 or Gray/16. Another way is to select all objects in the document and click the Black swatch on the Swatches panel. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Wouldn't that just make all the objects 100% black instead of maintaining their luma (gray) levels? Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 Oops, my bad! I was thinking in terms of recolouring raster objects. As you point out, it would just make any vector objects completely black. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klancaster Posted September 3, 2016 Share Posted September 3, 2016 This works great in Designer, but in Affinity Photo I tried many different export functions and it still added back in an alpha channel and and saved it as RGB. (I had actually given up and gone back to GIMP to fix the PNGs). What am I missing in Af. Photo? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaruss Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 I must convert to grayscale a colored file photo.pdf. I use: File > Document setup > Color tab choose either Gray/8 or Gray/16 photo.pdf is saved as photo-GRAY.afdesign. The file photo-GRAY.afdesign is a gray photo. But when I export photo-GRAY.afdesign in pdf format, I get a COLORED photo!!! Is something missing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted April 5, 2018 Staff Share Posted April 5, 2018 Hi zaruss, Welcome to Affinity Forums If you changed the format to grey/8 or 16 it should export as a grey image in the PDf. What PDF preset/settings are you using? Can you please attach the original photo-GRAY.afdesign file from which you are exporting the PDF? I can provide an upload link if you wish to keep it private. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 As far as I can tell, one either needs to set a gray output profile when creating the PDF, export to a grayscale TIFF (making certain to uncheck the metadata checkbox under the More button) and use another application to then export to PDF, or convert to a gray profile in pdfToolbox or Acrobat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaruss Posted April 5, 2018 Share Posted April 5, 2018 MEB, I tried pdf files 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 ,1.7 with success (with test photos). How can I send you the problematic file (19.7 Mo)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted April 6, 2018 Staff Share Posted April 6, 2018 Hi zaruss, Use this link to upload it. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neojogo Posted June 21, 2019 Share Posted June 21, 2019 (edited) How is possible that affinity designer can't convert color to grayscale, I tried to copy and paste my vectors on a grayscale document, but when i past again on may original document the elements are in color again, I really put my hopes on Affinity designer but I think it has to work a lot on this essential features that represents only a waste of time trying for nothing. Edited June 21, 2019 by neojogo D.VE 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Bohn Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 I did a search on this topic and found this thread. I'm surprised there is no color conversion tool. Then I thought at least if I select the object and change the color mode in the Color panel... but that's strangely an extra step. I click on my color object, click on CMYK in the panel and choose Grayscale, but then have to click the grayscale slider to make the change take affect. Why can't it just change without the extra click? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 18 minutes ago, Jeremy Bohn said: I did a search on this topic and found this thread. I'm surprised there is no color conversion tool. Then I thought at least if I select the object and change the color mode in the Color panel... but that's strangely an extra step. I click on my color object, click on CMYK in the panel and choose Grayscale, but then have to click the grayscale slider to make the change take affect. Why can't it just change without the extra click? I'm confused about where you clicked on CMYK in the panel (which panel) and where you chose Grayscale and what slider you clicked. Could you help me with a screenshot, please? Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Bohn Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 It's just the Colour panel. Actually now that I've fiddled with it more, it seems kind of silly. It doesn't change according to what you've currently selected. So I select a CMYK item and the colour panel just stupidly stays on grayscale. You would think that if I change the color mode to grayscale, the item would convert accordingly. It doesn't do that until I click the circle in the slider. It's little things like this that Affinity needs to work on to be take more seriously as professional graphics software. walt.farrell 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 38 minutes ago, Jeremy Bohn said: You would think that if I change the color mode to grayscale, the item would convert accordingly. You are not changing the color mode of anything, just choosing the method you can use to select a color for the frontmost color well. So if you are working in the CMYK color space, moving the slider would set a grey color for the fill well. If an object was selected, its fill would change to that grey, but it would still be in the CMYK color space if that is the document's color space. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Bohn Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 I understand that, I'm saying it SHOULD though. That panel should dynamically change according to what you have currently selected. It only goes part way at the moment - if you click a CMYK object and the panel is already set to CMYK then it changes to the color of the object. But if the panel was set to Grayscale, it stays on grayscale even though the swatch changes to the color, as you can see in my earlier screenshot. You can then change the mode back to CMYK and the color values are maintained. My point being that's an extra step - if I wanted to edit the color of my object I have to change to the correct color mode first. It should just change to CMYK when you first click the object. The popup menu is half useless if it's not actually changing the color mode of the selected object. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 Just now, Jeremy Bohn said: I understand that, I'm saying it SHOULD though. That panel should dynamically change according to what you have currently selected. Why? If I select an object with the intent of changing its color, why would I choose the greyscale slider mode unless I wanted to change it to a shade of grey? Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Bohn Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 That's not what I said. If the panel was set to greyscale because I was working on another object, it stays at Greyscale when I click on the color object. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 5 minutes ago, Jeremy Bohn said: That's not what I said. If the panel was set to greyscale because I was working on another object, it stays at Greyscale when I click on the color object. Try turning off Lock Color Space (the lock icon to the left of the color popup). Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Bohn Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 Thanks, that's what I wanted! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted July 12, 2019 Share Posted July 12, 2019 You can also just use some other color selection mode besides the sliders, like the HSL Color Wheel, Boxes, or Tint; or double-click on the color well to open the large Color Chooser window. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HenrikZ Posted September 10, 2019 Share Posted September 10, 2019 For Affinity Photo, one can simply either use (of course depending on the case) Studio Tab/ Adjustment/ Black & White Develop Persona Tone Mapping Persona MortenS 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynn I Posted June 23, 2020 Share Posted June 23, 2020 On 4/5/2018 at 4:02 PM, MEB said: Hi zaruss, Welcome to Affinity Forums If you changed the format to grey/8 or 16 it should export as a grey image in the PDf. What PDF preset/settings are you using? Can you please attach the original photo-GRAY.afdesign file from which you are exporting the PDF? I can provide an upload link if you wish to keep it private. I know this is an old post but is there an answer as my exports are in color too even though I have the format in greyscale Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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