Black text?

[N Hodghton]

As I've said earlier, I am editing a magazine for the Cycle Museum. They can only afford two pages of colour + covers, but I had this message from the printers (who recommended Affinity)

The main thing to watch out for in Affinity Publisher is black text often is made up of four colours. You have to make sure the black is 100% black only.

If this is the case how do I correct it please?

[Hangman]

Hi @N Hodghton,

Has the print company either requested or provided a particular ICC Profile they want you to use for the magazine?

Basically, you need to avoid using one profile for your document and exporting it using a different profile, that is when K100 will be translated into four colours...

Ask the print company how they require the document to be set up, whether it should use a specific ICC profile and if so, whether or not that profile should be embedded in the exported PDF.

Once set up as a CMYK document in Publisher using the print company specs, ensure that all text, ideally using a text style is K100 only and export it to PDF with the Colour Space set to CMYK and the Profile set to As Document and Embed Profiles on or off as per the print company requirements...

If you want to create a test page, export it to PDF and upload the Publisher document and exported PDF we can check it to see whether the text is indeed K100 and if it is you could then send the test page to the print company and ask them to check it meets their requirements before creating the magazine...

[N Hodghton]

Oh dear, I am now lost!

I've been dealing with the same print company for about 20 years, when editing another club magazine. That was using Adobe Indesign. Since Adobe have gone to subscription only Affinity Publiser was recommended. This is the first time I've attempted to produce a complete magazine (28 pages plus covers) using Affinity.

So a huge learning curve for me!

For pictures I'm using Photoshop Elements 24, which does all I need. Affinity Photo looked far too compicated for my requirements.

The printers were happy with RGB colour.

What is K100?

As I've almost finished the whole magazine I can take one page of text and send it as a pdf.

Do I just send it to the same Affinity forum as these questions?

Norman

[Hangman]

Hi @N Hodghton,

If you can upload one page of text as a PDF that would be perfect, or perhaps two pages would be better, ideally one of the colour pages and one of the purely black and white pages so we can test both...

Sorry, K100 just refers to 100% Black, the K referencing the Black in CMYK.

If you could also upload a stripped-down version of your Publisher file containing just those two pages as well that would be extremely helpful, feel free to substitute the text with dummy text.

This will allow us to see your Publisher settings.

Could you then also confirm or even better make a screenshot or the Advanced section of your PDF Export settings in Publisher which you can save as a PNG or JPEG and upload here as well?

Feel free to zip all the files together if easier or just upload the files individually...

The PDF Export settings will look something like this...

If you are happy to provide a link to the print company's website we can also take a look at their print spec requirements which will help us tie everything together...

Please don't hesitate to aks if anything doesn't make sense...

[N Hodghton]

The print company website is https://quorumprint.co.uk/

I have attached inside back cover, and the centre spread with colour and text.

I'll try the screen shot soon

Norman

News Sping 25.pdf Inside back .pdf

[N Hodghton]

Here is the screen shot.

I've never done one before so I had to search on line how to do it! I hope it's what you need.
Norman

[paleolith]

Pehaps a simpler answer will suffice. 🙂

Hopefully you are using Text Styles. Edit the top level text style, Character, Color and Decorations, and click Font Color. Make sure it's set to CMYK Color, and move the K slider to 100 and the other sliders to 0. This should be the setting for all text even on pages that include color, because a "rich black" consisting of all four CMYK inks will be less crisp. Rich black should be reserved for large areas of black -- larger at least then normal text.

If all Text Styles inherit the font color from a base style, that should do it. You may need to check other Text Styles to locate explicit rather than inherited color.

If you are not using Text Styles, you will have to select all text and do the same using the Character panel.

If you have line drawings or B&W images on the no-color pages, you may need to select the image and click the "K only" button in the context bar. This will assure that only black ink (K) is used for the image.

If this doesn't solve the problem, then you need Hangman's process to find the offending text.

[N Hodghton]

I wasn't using Text Styles. I thought that was just to chose a font!

I have already produced 28 pages of the magazine. If I go through the procedure will it cover all text and pictures already there, or will I have to go through page by page?

It's a busy weekend, so I probably won't do any more until next week.

Norman

with thanks for the help

 

[Hangman]

Hi @N Hodghton,

Many thanks for the files and screenshot...

The black text does appear as a four-colour CMYK mix in your PDF files because it's being converted from RGB to CMYK...

I couldn't find any print specs on the Quorum Print website so I gave them a call to clarify a few details, I hope that was okay...

Rather than providing that information in the forum, I've sent you a PM detailing what they told me so you can read that first and then, if you're happy for any of the information to appear as an update to this thread just let me know and I'll update the thread for others who may find this post and have similar questions...

[thomaso]

8 hours ago, N Hodghton said:

will I have to go through page by page?

You can change the text colour via the Find and Replace panel for the entire document without editing separate text styles individually:

Without entering any text for "Find" choose the Format option via the cog icon, then set the font colour to the current colour definition (the one you want to replace), in the "Replace" option set the colour to CMYK 0-0-0-100. Back in the F&R panel press the "Find", then the "Replace All" button.

-

[N Hodghton]

Thank you to everyone for your help, much appreciated.

 

[N Hodghton]

This morning I've got back to the magazine. I've started with the four covers, inside and outside. All were fine changing to CMYK, setting to K100 and the others to 0. All except the inside front cover. For some reason all the text changes to 20pt and bold, the same as the heading. Attached is the page before I changed it.

I followed Text style>create character stye>colour and decoration>font colour

so what have I don't wrong here?
 

Inside front .afpub

[N Hodghton]

On 3/21/2025 at 2:29 PM, paleolith said:

Pehaps a simpler answer will suffice. 🙂

Hopefully you are using Text Styles. Edit the top level text style, Character, Color and Decorations, and click Font Color. Make sure it's set to CMYK Color, and move the K slider to 100 and the other sliders to 0. This should be the setting for all text even on pages that include color, because a "rich black" consisting of all four CMYK inks will be less crisp. Rich black should be reserved for large areas of black -- larger at least then normal text.

If all Text Styles inherit the font color from a base style, that should do it. You may need to check other Text Styles to locate explicit rather than inherited color.

If you are not using Text Styles, you will have to select all text and do the same using the Character panel.

If you have line drawings or B&W images on the no-color pages, you may need to select the image and click the "K only" button in the context bar. This will assure that only black ink (K) is used for the image.

If this doesn't solve the problem, then you need Hangman's process to find the offending text.

I'm trying to work throught the B&W images. I couldn't find anything listing K only, but if I went to Fill it brought up the CMYK screen so I used K100 and the other three to 0.

Hopefully that does the job?

Norman

[Hangman]

Hi @N Hodghton,

4 minutes ago, N Hodghton said:

For some reason all the text changes to 20pt and bold, the same as the heading. Attached is the page before I changed it.

I followed Text style>create character stye>colour and decoration>font colour

This will happen if you've selected all the text on the page and then created a Character Style. Then it uses the first line of the selected text as the basis for that Character style applying it to all the text on the page, i.e., Times New Roman Bold, 20 pt...

If the intent is only to change the text colour to K100 throughout, without applying text styles...

1. You'll need to change the Document Colour Format from RGB to CMYK, FOGRA39 
2. Then select one of the text frames with the Move tool (don't select the text itself) followed by Select → Select Object → Frame Text
3. This will select all the 'Frame Text' text Frames throughout your document. If doing this page by page then just select the text frames on the individual pages
4. Repeat for any Artistic Text you may have in the document using Select → Select Object → Art Text
5. Once selected change the sliders in the Colour Panel to CMYK, enable the Padlock to the left of the CMYK label and then change the colour value to K100
6. Because the QR Code on the Inside Front cover is an image rather than a vector QR Code, you'll need to change it to K100 by selecting the image layer inside the Picture Frame and clicking K100 in the context toolbar. Alternatively, you could recreate the QR Code directly inside Publisher.

Note: The QR Code looks like a placeholder at the moment, I'm assuming it should point to a specific website?

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, N Hodghton said:

For some reason all the text changes to 20pt and bold, the same as the heading. (…)

I followed Text style>create character stye>colour and decoration>font colour

so what have I don't wrong here?

This might mean that the unexpectedly affected text got a character style (with a different font size) applied already before you applied a different one (for 100 K) and that their paragraph style was defined as "20 pt and bold". We can apply only 1 character style definition per character … so if we remove an applied character style the text reverts to its paragraph style definition.
(I can't open V2 files)

[N Hodghton]

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

Hi @N Hodghton,

This will happen if you've selected all the text on the page and then created a Character Style. Then it uses the first line of the selected text as the basis for that Character style applying it to all the text on the page, i.e., Times New Roman Bold, 20 pt...

If the intent is only to change the text colour to K100 throughout, without applying text styles...

1. You'll need to change the Document Colour Format from RGB to CMYK, FOGRA39 
2. Then select one of the text frames with the Move tool (don't select the text itself) followed by Select → Select Object → Frame Text
3. This will select all the 'Frame Text' text Frames throughout your document. If doing this page by page then just select the text frames on the individual pages
4. Repeat for any Artistic Text you may have in the document using Select → Select Object → Art Text
5. Once selected change the sliders in the Colour Panel to CMYK, enable the Padlock to the left of the CMYK label and then change the colour value to K100
6. Because the QR Code on the Inside Front cover is an image rather than a vector QR Code, you'll need to change it to K100 by selecting the image layer inside the Picture Frame and clicking K100 in the context toolbar. Alternatively, you could recreate the QR Code directly inside Publisher.

Note: The QR Code looks like a placeholder at the moment, I'm assuming it should point to a specific website?

Thanks for all this.

I've never bothered to check the QR code but I presume you are correct and it sends you to the Museum website.

I think I have got the whole magazine into the correct format. NOTE, I think I have!

The four cover pages and the main magazine are now PDF and a zipped folder, but the whole lot is more than 17MB. How can I send it to you to check?

I know there are programmes for sending very large files but I've never used them.

 

 

[Hangman]

1 minute ago, N Hodghton said:

I've never bothered to check the QR code but I presume you are correct and it sends you to the Museum website.

Currently, it doesn't; it looks like a placeholder QR Code. If you scan it, it shows the search terms "We really need to use this asset. We can tailor it to our individual needs. Individual Signs can be displayed at any location. Apart from the printing and laminate costs, it's free"

4 minutes ago, N Hodghton said:

I think I have got the whole magazine into the correct format. NOTE, I think I have!

More than happy to take a look if you'd like a second pair of eyes...

4 minutes ago, N Hodghton said:

The four cover pages and the main magazine are now PDF and a zipped folder, but the whole lot is more than 17MB. How can I send it to you to check?

You can either upload it here, 17 Mb isn't an issue or PM it to me if you'd prefer not to upload to the forum...

5 minutes ago, N Hodghton said:

I know there are programmes for sending very large files but I've never used them.

For files up to 2 GB, you can use WeTransfer for free, you just need the email address of the recipient. WeTransfer is used by a lot of print companies for just that purpose, though they'd usually be dealing with much larger files, so they will be using the paid version...

https://wetransfer.com/

[N Hodghton]

Hi Simon

I just copied the QR code from an older copy of the magazine from before I was editor.  The prevous editor died suddenly, and I was asked by a friend if I'd take over because I'd been editing our club magazine. What I didn't know was that nobody knew anything about how the magazine was produced, and I could hardly ask his widow. So I had to start from scratch, and also persuaded them to use Quorum for printing.

I think I've now formatted the magazine for CMYK, K100, and gone over all the B&W images. If it's right I'll copy all the techncal advice and add it to my AFFINITY NOTES folder, otherwise I'll forget everything before the time of the next issue!

One thought; as I can now have colour on any page does it matter if the text isn't K100?

Norman

 

 

 

Magazine maybe.zip

[Hangman]

Hi Norman,

Thanks for the file. I'll take a look and give it a once-over at report back...

Re your question, "as I can now have colour on any page, does it matter if the text isn't K100?". 

The answer is 'Yes' it still matters... Because the magazine is printed using a four-colour process, each of those four colours needs to perfectly align to result in crisp printed text. 

Because there are always tolerances, when you have small, thin text, the slightest misalignment between the four colours will result in what appears to be blurry text. This is the reason for ensuring the text is K100 and contains no other CMY, as it means there can't then be any mis-registration issues, and the text should remain crisp to the naked eye... It also means less ink is used, so it can potentially have cost implications, more so on large print jobs...

Result of misregistered CMYK Text Top | K100 Text Bottom

[N Hodghton]

Hi Simon

Thanks

I see what you mean about registration.

No rush. The sun is shining here in Somerset, so I think I'll sit in the garden with a book!

Norman

[Hangman]

Hi Norman,

I've sent you a PM, so I'll just wait to hear back from you...

[N Hodghton]

53 minutes ago, Hangman said:

Hi Norman,

I've sent you a PM, so I'll just wait to hear back from you...

Hi Simon

I know you've sent PMs before, but I can't remember how to access this one!

Norman

[Hangman]

38 minutes ago, N Hodghton said:

I know you've sent PMs before, but I can't remember how to access this one!

Hi Norman,

If you go to the top of this thread in your Browser window to the left of your forum profile name, you should see an envelope icon and hopefully a red new message number. If you click on that, it should take you to the message, but if not, just let me know...

[N Hodghton]

1 hour ago, Hangman said:

Hi Norman,

If you go to the top of this thread in your Browser window to the left of your forum profile name, you should see an envelope icon and hopefully a red new message number. If you click on that, it should take you to the message, but if not, just let me know...

Hi Simon

I've found your PM, but not where you said it would be. I went to my last post, clicked on my name and it came up with a list of all the messages I've sent. There at the top was an envelope. Click on that and there was your message. Which I will study tomorrow if I have time. I've copied it to a Word document

One question about using this forum. If I start typing a reply but then go elsewhere for information, when I go back my text has disappeared. Is there anything like the 'draft' folder on email?

Norman

 

[Hangman]

Hi Norman,

I'm glad you've located the PM... I think it depends on where exactly in the forum you are at the time you look for the PM...

3 minutes ago, N Hodghton said:

One question about using this forum. If I start typing a reply but then go elsewhere for information, when I go back my text has disappeared. Is there anything like the 'draft' folder on email?

I find it can at times be a bit hit and miss, so if moving away from a post I've typed to check something else I always copy the text in reply post first or make a duplicate tab as I've had instances in the past where I've typed a really lengthy, detailed reply only for it to vanish when switching back to the original tab and clicking in the Reply box again...

I'm not aware of a Draft option, though one would be very welcomed...