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Coloring Bitmap tiffs in Affinity Designer


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Yep! I shouldn't have gotten too excited! Affinity (Designer, Photo or Publisher) won't output to PMS only CMYK Come on Affinity! this is needed! now back to your original programme.

 

Addendum: you could still do it in a manual kind of way - as the color doesn't need to be specified in the file as long as the right bitmap image gets assigned the correct ink color and correctly registered it would work, but then that's taking the process back quite a few years! 

Thanks for listening...

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  • 11 months later...
On 8/5/2018 at 3:07 PM, thomasbricker said:

Hello Gang,

 

One of the techniques I use in Illustrator is to make a Photoshop graphic into a bitmap tiff, place it into Illustrator and then assign that artwork a color of my choice.

That apparently is not an option in Affinity software. (No such thing as Bitmap format in Affinity Photo)

What would be an equivalent in the Affinity world?

How would I achieve that same affect?

(The art must have a transparent background, allowing me to colorize the art at I wish within Designer.)

 

I do this as well in AI, any progress?

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 11/1/2019 at 9:48 AM, Lagarto said:

There is definitely use for monochrome bitmaps in graphic design and it is a pity there is no support for this. 

Absolutely so! I was quite baffled when I discovered that the Affinity apps are obviously still ignoring this format (meaning: 1 bit strict b/w images) – especially as there is no such export option in Photo. Also, the whole business of colouring grayscale images in layouts – which used to be so easy in the Adobe apps – is handled in an unnecessarily complicated way in Publisher. Although I generally love to use it there's still some headroom, I'd say.

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1 hour ago, Lorox said:

the whole business of colouring grayscale images in layouts – which used to be so easy in the Adobe apps – is handled in an unnecessarily complicated way in Publisher.

Just in case: after this thread was started in APub / AD an additional button got invented: "K Only" in context toolbar. Though it is a compromise only for missing 1-bit capabilities it allows to colorize images of different file types with 2 clicks. Depending on their color space an applied fill color affects differently, for instance:

54399958_imagecoloredk-only.jpg.7672af1be7afd8271a4bc14d82ce8f8e.jpg

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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47 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Just in case: after this thread was started in APub / AD an additional button got invented: "K Only" in context toolbar.

Yes sure, it took me a while (and a visit to the Affinity forum...) to discover that button and learn about its significance. But it's a bit of a peculiar way to do it, I find.

Looking at your examples, I think it is quite strange, that you can obviously assign a fill color to an image that already has (mixed) colours in the first place. With a grayscale or 1 bit TIFF on the other hand, it seems just natural that you should be able to replace its original inherent colour (black) with another one, but when you do this with a full color image the underlying logic seems not so clear.

Do you have some sort of "rationalization" to understand what might be happening here? In your examples those with just an fill color assigned look a bit like they probably would when you first convert them into grayscale and then put the fill color above them in "Overlay" mode (or when you use the "colorize" mode of the Hue/Saturation adjustment in Photoshop). Plus the "K only" they look more like grayscale images just printed with the assigned fill color instead of black (where in case of CMYK that pseudo-grayscale color image looks like just the K channel of the CMY image).

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Hi folks, I have a grayscale picture in Afp with K-only turned on. I colorize this image with global colour set to overprint. The colour has basic cmyk values: C0, M100, Y0, K0. After exporting my file to PDF/X the picture isn't overprinting the background. Next to the image i have basic shape colorized with the same colour and swatch and overprinting works well (see my screenshot below).

The only way to overprint that image is to make the swatch not only overprinted, but also a spot colour. After that it works fine, but than I have fifth colour in my PDF. Is this normal and logical, or is it a bug? Why isn't it possible to overprint the image with process colour only?

Screenshot 2020-12-02 at 16.49.23.png

Affinity Suite 2.3.1 | iMac 5K (2017) 24GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.9

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1 hour ago, Laganama said:

Hi folks, I have a grayscale picture in Afp with K-only turned on. I colorize this image with global colour set to overprint. The colour has basic cmyk values: C0, M100, Y0, K0. After exporting my file to PDF/X the picture isn't overprinting the background. Next to the image i have basic shape colorized with the same colour and swatch and overprinting works well (see my screenshot below).

The only way to overprint that image is to make the swatch not only overprinted, but also a spot colour. After that it works fine, but than I have fifth colour in my PDF. Is this normal and logical, or is it a bug? Why isn't it possible to overprint the image with process colour only?

Try setting the image to use the Multiply Blend mode.

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In some cases the effect of multiply is the same as overprint. But multiply ≠ overprint.

By overprinting, the process colour overprints only another process colour. It is not affecting the same process colur in another object. By multiply, for example magenta, is in overlaping objects combined (multiplied) all together.

It would by great to have the K-only tool working also with basic overprint swatches.

Screenshot 2020-12-03 at 12.50.52.png

Affinity Suite 2.3.1 | iMac 5K (2017) 24GB, macOS Monterey 12.6.9

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3 hours ago, Laganama said:

In some cases the effect of multiply is the same as overprint. But multiply ≠ overprint.

...

It would by great to have the K-only tool working also with basic overprint swatches.

All that is true. And is also not possible currently in Affinity applications.

You asked about an image. It'll work that way for what you showed above...most likely. If the way it currently works is too much a design drawback, consider using an application that can properly handle the design requirements.

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7 hours ago, Laganama said:

By overprinting, the process colour overprints only another process colour. It is not affecting the same process colur in another object. By multiply, for example magenta, is in overlaping objects combined (multiplied) all together.

As a workaround you could...

1. Group the multiplying image + the objects which shall be overprinted
2. Set the Group's blend mode from "Passthrough" to "Normal".
 

1144639085_overprintnotspot-groupnormal.jpg.afc00dd4d75a88079277dd138d5d7e47.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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