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Is there a way to convert process colours to spot?


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Hey guys,

I can't seem to find a way to convert process colours to spot in Affinity Publisher Beta. Not quite sure if there is a way yet.

When I'm doing a print job that has a die-line, perf, fold line, etc, I usually set them up as a spot colour. In InDesign I usually convert one of the colours (either cyan, magenta, yellow, black, or whatever) from Color Type: Process to Color Type: Spot and then assign a name to each (like die-line). 

Is there a way to do something like that in Affinity Publisher at the moment?

Thanks!

Screen Shot 2018-09-07 at 11.43.03 AM.png

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Why that? Do you think, you will find a spot color for every of the millions colors (256 x 256 x 256 x 256) you can define in CMYK?

What you can do, is simply assigning a new spot color to the element, which replaces the process color..

The other way round (spot –> process color) works by deselecting „Honour Spot Color“ during PDF output.

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New Global Colour, spot, name it as you need to. Your screenshot looks okay.
In the Swatches panel, use Document to (hopefully) show the created swatch.
When exporting make sure Honour Spot Colours is ticked. Its the same process as ADesigner & I've used that quite a bit for contour cutting.

Windows 10 Pro, I5 3.3G PC 16G RAM

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  • 1 year later...
On 9/7/2018 at 5:55 PM, mac_heibu said:

The other way round (spot –> process color) works by deselecting „Honour Spot Color“ during PDF output.

I think this is in fact not satisfactory as I REALLY like to have the option to change/convert a given spot colour to its correspondent global CMYK colour – so to speak on a colour swatch basis – within the swatches pallette.

Often when you're doing a print layout (here: in Publisher) you receive logos from a client which are to be used there and which (from their original "ideal" design) contain spot colours that you definitely will NOT use in printing then and in the future as it is all going to be pure CMYK (mainly because of economic reasons as spot colours tend to be quite expensive in everyday printing). To avoid any problems beforehand(!) when preparing PDFs for giving to the printer it has over the years been very useful/effective for me in InDesign to be able to change any spot colours to global CMYK from within the swatches pallette. I really DO wish this were possible in Publisher as well!

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  • 9 months later...
On 1/9/2020 at 1:08 PM, Lorox said:

I think this is in fact not satisfactory as I REALLY like to have the option to change/convert a given spot colour to its correspondent global CMYK colour – so to speak on a colour swatch basis – within the swatches pallette.

Right Lorox, the ability to change color technique is a basic function of any serious graphics program. Same as when you copy over elements, they must come with their defined swatch if it is not already in the document.

Why that? Dumb question. There may be hundreds of objects in a document, using a defined color. Usually one assumes it gets printed CMYK but It happens that a customer later decides to print Pantone spot colors. Not be able to change the color technique of a swatch means you have to select all the hundred of objects with that color and change all of them. Even more difficult when there are color gradients and shades present.

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34 minutes ago, Thomahawk said:

Same as when you copy over elements, they must come with their defined swatch if it is not already in the document.

Exactly! This is such a basic feature for the efficient management of a document's colours that still having to request it seems quite strange actually (especially for a program that's set to rival InDesign...)

There isn't a feature yet for the swatches palette like "List (or add) unnamed", is it? (I hope I haven't missed it) This one has served me very well with InDesign and Illustrator in the past to gather all the colours actually used in the document...

While we're at it:
being able to "Select unused" in the colour palette (and then deleting them; like it's possible in ID and AI) is also a very useful means for slimming down the palette and getting rid of all those colours you don't use anyway.

Last but not least:
deleting a colour swatch from the palette and being given the option to replace it with another given one while doing so is another very helpful feature to efficiently deal with a document's colours. Again, in InDesign you have been able to do so for 10+ years...

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  • 1 year later...

It is TWO YEARS later and still, I can not find how to change a cmyk color swatch to spotcolor. 

I have precisely the case I described back then: A document with two cmyk swatches, applied on hundreds of objects. Now the customer wants it to be printed two colors, and I see no way how to change the existing swatches. 

For those of you with the same problem: I solved this by changing one swatch to 100% cyan, the other to 100% yellow and told the printer to use each to print with a specific Pantone color. (He was wondering which primitive graphics app I was using that does not allow to change the colors properly).

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8 hours ago, Thomahawk said:

It is TWO YEARS later and still, I can not find how to change a cmyk color swatch to spotcolor. 

 

The big problem is that Spot colours can be made only when the Swatch is created. An existing Swatch cannot be changed into a Spot colour.

In this case with two colours, write down the CMYK/RGB/Lab/HSL/Pantone swatch name and number values from the client. Be sure that nothing is selected, make a new Global Colour and tick the Spot option. Apply this to the first set of soon to be spot colours by selecting one of the objects and then choosing Select Same Fill from the Select menu in the Designer Persona of Publisher. Delete the old Swatch that was CMYK process colours.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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31 minutes ago, Thomahawk said:

It is TWO YEARS later and still, I can not find how to change a cmyk color swatch to spotcolor. 

Although not ideal - I've used this workaround in the past (making sure I've saved the original)

Be so much easier to adopt the InDesign way of doing things - or something similar

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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Spot color handling in affinity is GENERALLY VERY POOR. I have tried to do a shadow over a spot color. No matter what I try, shadow effect, black with transparency, black spot color gradation, multiply mode, that part is always rendered as CMYK.

 

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I can only confirm, what has been said before... The whole way colours are handled in Affinity MAKE ME CRAZY!

I do DTP since 20 years and NEVER before had that kind of trouble. I do not understand what is so difficult here to have it as simple as... - InDesign!
Of course designers want and need to make definitions what kind of colours should be on the paper. Really every company has it's own blue, green, yellow (whatever) and that is to be printed EXACTLY in that values. Affinity Publisher makes it nearly impossible to achieve that very basic thing. I need to spend far too much time to get back into that software, have to find strange workarounds and finally check everything in an external application, what Publisher has "cleverly" done to my colours.

I guess it isn't really made for professional use in a workflow with offset printing...

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, vincent_berlin said:

I do not understand what is so difficult here to have it as simple as... - InDesign!

You're perfectly right! Although I'm happy to have left the A****-universe behind and to have found a very decent alternative with the Affinity apps I find myself despairing over the Affinity UI (and the workflow implied by it) times and times again.

The handling of colours is certainly not the only but a prime example. Having worked in InDesign for many years I do know from that experience that you obviously can get colour handling right. Swapping a global CMYK colour to Spot (PANTONE or self assigned) couldn't be much easier – also InDesign’s feature to just pick a replacement colour when you delete a colour swatch is so helpful and intuitive.

Unfortunately I have often got the impression that the guys at Affinity/Serif wanted to make certain things different from the A****-apps for the sake of just being different while not really caring for a smooth and intuitive user experience, which, however, should be the very foremost objective when designing a professional app. Which designer would object if Publisher's handling of colours were actually similar or even identical to InDesign‘s? It's a proven concept that WORKS and I cannot really imagine that a general way of doing things like this can actually copyrighted...

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On 6/22/2022 at 10:35 AM, Thomahawk said:

Spot color handling in affinity is GENERALLY VERY POOR. I have tried to do a shadow over a spot color. No matter what I try, shadow effect, black with transparency, black spot color gradation, multiply mode, that part is always rendered as CMYK.

An ongoing issue being discussed in another thread at the moment

 

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