Printing with Affinity Designer changes colours

[Johannes]

Greyscale become multicoloured when printing from Affinity Designer.

 

Obviously a conversion to/from color profiles happens inside Designer. How can I prevent this from happening?

(This happens to all colours. It is just shown best with greyscale.)

 

My printer expects data in the same colour profile as my AD files working profile. (ISO coated v2 (eci))

 

When exporting a PDF/X1a and printing with Adobe Acrobat everything is OK.

 

[Callum]

Hi Johannes,

 

On Mac our Print dialogue is the one built into Mac OS please could you export your file from Affinity and then try printing it through Preview with the same print preset you use and try it with Colour Matching set to with Printer and again with Colour matching set to Colour sync set to your colour profile.

 

Thanks

Callum

[Johannes]

Hi Callum,

thanks for the fast response. I hope I understood you correctly:

 

I took the same existing export from my Designer file (the X1a with the good printout via Acrobat)

Opened it in Preview and printed it with the same print preset as before in Designer

again with the two methods as before in Designer and mentioned by you –

+ first with color matching with printer,

+ second with color matching set to  my ISO coated v2 (which is my working profile in Designer (and output intent in X1a) and is simulated by the Printer)

Both new prints look exactly the same.

 

and – tadaa – everything looks as perfect as if printed via Acrobat.

 

So how can I achieve that directly via Designer?

 

[R C-R]

Hi @Johannes! I don't know if this has anything to do with it but I noticed that in your 7th screenshot (the print dialog for AD for 'in printer' color matching, I think), there is this icon next to the Xerox DC12:

According to Apple's macOS Sierra: Icons in the Printer pop-up menu, this indicates that "the printer has a problem you need to fix."

 

Also, I don't know anything about your Xerox printer or what other color-related options its print driver provides, but for my Canon printer, the Color Matching section identifies the 'in printer' option by name rather than generically:

If I choose "Canon Color Matching" instead of "ColorSync" then a separate "Color Options" section permits adjustments of brightness, contrast, & CMY levels independently of any color profile. As mentioned in Apple's macOS Sierra: Choose advanced print settings, the options such as Color Matching, Paper handling, & so on vary depending on the printer & app so you probably do not have an additional "Color Options" section but you may have something similar.

 

Regarding printing from an Affinity app vs. Apple's Preview app, at least for my Canon printer the options (& their print results) are the same, so I do not think this has anything to do with the app per se.

[Johannes]

Hey @Callum

I looked further into this: Affinity (Designer) seemingly sends RGB-Data to printers even from a CMYK document.

 

This simply has to mix up the color purity of C, M, Y and K.

I could find out by toggling the RGB conversion (absolute/relative) in the Fiery-RIP setup. It had an effect on directly printing out of Affinity. It had none on printing the X1a via Preview.

It looks as if Affinity uses a sRGB (or similar) profile. (giving the Fiery my working profile eciRGBv2 makes it worse)

So all colors are converted just to sRGB and then to CMYK again. Everything becomes impure. Especially with colors within in the CMYK color space that aren't available within the small sRGB color space like green colours this gets way off..

 

How can I have Affinity (Designer) sending CMYK data to the print dialogue?

Can you/I make it a choice, what gets sent to the print dialogue: RGB or CMYK?
Like I can choose to use PDF X1a or X3 (which can contain eci-RGB-images for printers with larger color space).

[Callum]

Hi Johannes,

 

Thank you for the information you have provided I have asked a member of the QA team to look over this issue they should reply here once they get chance  

 

Thanks

Callum

[StainX]

Any news on this topic!?
Also have this kind of issue, that no matter what it sends RGB to the printer. 
If i create a PDF and print that, no problem.

[Dazmondo77]

Seven years (last Friday 1st October) and still can't print CMYK or nice sharp vectors to a capable postscript printer or rip without Affinity rasterising and converting to RGB -  Maybe we'll get this capability when we get separation preview? fingers crossed