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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!

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One way is from File > Document setup > Color tab choose either Gray/8 or Gray/16.

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
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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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.

Alfred spacer.png
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)

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Wouldn't that just make all the objects 100% black instead of maintaining their luma (gray) levels? 

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

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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.

Alfred spacer.png
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)

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  • 1 month later...

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?

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  • 1 year later...

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?

 

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  • Staff

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.

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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.

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  • 1 year later...

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 by neojogo
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  • 3 weeks later...

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?

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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?

 

-- Walt
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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.

Screen Shot 2019-07-11 at 6.37.04 PM.png

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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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?

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

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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).

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

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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.

1970501119_ColorChooserwindow.jpg.fb0ffb869d05e69a527ee91659e90d22.jpg

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

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  • 1 month later...
  • 9 months later...
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

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