Display the color mode of the document

[Stephen_H]

It's a very simple mistake to make... working in RGB when you should be in CMYK. Export your PDF and... whoops, the publication rejects your PDF because it's RGB instead of CMYK.

Please can you add the color mode of the document to the display somewhere. Just a bit of text in the file name (like illustrator does) would be sufficient. At the moment, we have to go digging into the document setup to find out. The odds are, if I am looking for the color mode, I haven't made this mistake. We need it displayed somewhere so it can raise a red flag when we're accidentally working in the wrong format.

Look at my screenshot. Can anyone tell me what color mode my document is in? I can't, but it's obvious in illustrator which gives me a nice, secure, safe feeling.

Surely this must be simple to implement...

(Or am I just missing a feature I need to turn on?)

 

 

[walt.farrell]

Interesting. It's available on the context menu in Affinity Photo if you have the View tool selected, but not in Affinity Designer as far as I can see.

[Stephen_H]

Oh really. Strange. I feel it’s equally important in both apps. Perhaps more so in Designer since it’s more likely to end up producing artwork intended for print. 

 

[Alfred]

10 hours ago, Stephen_H said:

Export your PDF and... whoops, the publication rejects your PDF because it's RGB instead of CMYK.

Can’t you get around that by choosing a PDF/X profile? It isn’t ideal, of course, because some of your colours may look different when printed from the way they looked on screen, but at least you know they’ll be CMYK.

[Stephen_H]

11 hours ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

Can’t you get around that by choosing a PDF/X profile? It isn’t ideal, of course, because some of your colours may look different when printed from the way they looked on screen, but at least you know they’ll be CMYK.

No, it's not a solution. Try this experiment:

1 - In a CMYK document, draw a box in 100% cyan

2 - Duplicate the box and rasterize it

3 - Convert the document to RGB

4 - Convert the document back to CMYK (effectively the same as your exporting a CMYK PDF solution)

5 - Now analyze all the colors in your document. (Selections & color pickers)

You'll see you no longer have 100% as it's color mix. Visually, you probably saw no change, but if it's a corporate color in a logo, you've now got 2 versions of this color. One is right, and the other will lose me a client because I can't keep to their global corporate image.

[Stephen_H]

18 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Interesting. It's available on the context menu in Affinity Photo if you have the View tool selected, but not in Affinity Designer as far as I can see.

I've just checked... (I think you mean the Move tool?) Yes just like that, but it should be permanently displayed. If I have to select a tool, I might as well use a pull down menu.

Incedently, if you use the space bar to access the move tool, you don't get the move tool's contextual menu. I use the tool all the time, but I never select it which is why I didn't know about it.

Strangely, we don't get the same info when the move tool is selected in Designer. I think this is an oversight that needs fixing.