Spot colors and preview color separations

[Ralf_Maeder]

I am a former graphics designer and worked 15 years ago in PrePress.

Nowerdays I still use Macromedia Freehand on Windows for occasional design work and recently purchased Affinity Photo and Designer. 

 

I was looking at the options related to spot colors and noticed that once I created a random color, I can't change this color to be a spot color. In order to create a custom spot color, I have to mark the "spot" box in the color creation tab the moment I create the color. This makes it tedious if the decision to use spot colors is made later on in the design process.

 

Another issue is how to check or preview correct color separation in respect to spot colors? The reason I chose Affinity as my main tools is because I want to avoid the use of Adobe applications at all cost. Freehand can print separations, which can be saved as PDF and previewed without any third party software. What do you recommend as a workflow for Affinity Designer user in order to check separations of spot colors, but without the need to use costly third party software?

 

Ralf Maeder.

[v_kyr]

11 hours ago, Ralf_Maeder said:

I was looking at the options related to spot colors and noticed that once I created a random color, I can't change this color to be a spot color. In order to create a custom spot color, I have to mark the "spot" box in the color creation tab the moment I create the color. This makes it tedious if the decision to use spot colors is made later on in the design process.

There is still room for improvements in AD here, since some tasks aren't always optimal solved in an obvious manner. You can file in a feature request for an overall better and more flexible handling here.

11 hours ago, Ralf_Maeder said:

Another issue is how to check or preview correct color separation in respect to spot colors? The reason I chose Affinity as my main tools is because I want to avoid the use of Adobe applications at all cost. Freehand can print separations, which can be saved as PDF and previewed without any third party software. What do you recommend as a workflow for Affinity Designer user in order to check separations of spot colors, but without the need to use costly third party software?

That's possibly another good point for improvements. See also this similar related thread here.