Color Separations View

[tnichols]

I would love to see a Separations Preview in Affinity Publisher.  I work for a commercial printer and need to see how the plates will separate, also being able to overprint is needed as well, I haven't seen how to enable that.

[ronnyb]

It needs to be a Pre-Press Persona...

[marcoborghesi]

On 2/24/2019 at 12:44 PM, tnichols said:

I would love to see a Separations Preview in Affinity Publisher.  I work for a commercial printer and need to see how the plates will separate, also being able to overprint is needed as well, I haven't seen how to enable that.

I agree it would be fantastic.

Overprint works with the colours. You set a colour as overprint and then you'll get that.

I think there are still some bugs but it works pretty much

[Ealbert]

Agreed. It is one big thing missing that would go a long way on putting this app above others and near-par with ID.

Very useful for determining if files are set up properly.

 

Edited March 4, 2019 by Ealbert
spelling

[Pariah73]

+1 for this

[Rob Luxford]

OK. Workaround. 
Just had a proof come back where the cmyk conversion went very wrong. Some touch ups in images look like they flew in from outer space.

About to print 60,000 copies. 

So. Tried this. 

 

Opened the PDF in Affinity Photo. Left as default RGB to open file. 

All pages open and appear as separate spaces. Looks exactly like the document in publisher.

Converted colour to CMYK (under Document/Convert Format) and all pages changed and lo and behold the alien conversion errors faithfully appeared. 

NOW THE FUN

In Photo open Studio and open Channels panel 

Viola!

Separations. 

 

 

Thank you, thank you, no photos please, you are too kind. 

 

[Rob Luxford]

And then if you want to go Pro you can:

Open file in Affinity Publisher, switch persona to Photo, open Studio/Channels panel and FMD, there are your separations. 

Haven't tried it with spot colours.

[Rob Luxford]

Sorry mate but I have no idea what's happening there. Can't tell if its the program or your art. Troubleshooting a diagnostic tool can't be done with what you have there. All I can say is run your art through a number of tests to find where the issue is. Looks like white set to overprint to me but thats just a starting point. 

[Rob Luxford]

Sorry man, cant tell if it's the software or the art. Either its knocking out of the background incorrectly or it has none of those colours in the type. or something else. Its not clear to me. 

[Old Bruce]

I do believe the problem is that you are not really comprehending the definition of the word Composite in the Channels panel. It is showing you everything. If you were to rasterize all the layers and then view them one at a time in the Text Layer, Colour Layer etc layer with the Channels Panel you would quickly see that the solid rectangle Colour Layer remains solid and the text only has black.

[Old Bruce]

And the colour layer is solid in Publisher. The composite is not really real.

[prophet]

On 2/24/2019 at 2:53 PM, ronnyb said:

It needs to be a Pre-Press Persona

That is a brilliant idea. You could see separations, overprint, even preflight could move there.

[Rob Luxford]

Pre-Press PERSONAAAAAAAA!!!!!

[Peter Maas]

don't want to go back and forth with personas. Because that would enforce a 4th product to be bought in the bundle. Just need an improvement in the interface for Publisher. And why not in Designer as well? The export persona which you have there might be suitable for that. Or have an export persona added in Publisher as well. But make it better by allowing a colorseparated preview. 

[prophet]

6 hours ago, Peter Maas said:

don't want to go back and forth with personas. Because that would enforce a 4th product to be bought in the bundle.

Can you explain more what you mean by this? What 4th product?

[Peter Maas]

Since Designer is specific software that needs to be bought, and Publisher and Photo are too (nice to be able to switch back and forth between them) I wouldn't like to see that for checking prepress quality there would be another program added to that. I just saw that Designer has an additional export persona, and that was integrated in the software of Designer. So when you call it a Persona: do you mean a separate piece of software that needs to be bought and installed?  I hope not. The money is not a problem for me, but it might have a negative effect on the Affinity product line and market position. 

IMO it should just be part of the already present software. Today I found a document with overprint applied in it, and I have no idea where to visualise or even set the overprint. I get a bit frustrated with that. I am investigation the Affinity products and want to be sure that what I see on screen is what I get in PDF.

[Old Bruce]

I have all three applications. Designer and Photo have Personas which are accessible without having to purchase additional software. Those Personas are not accessible via the Designer or Photo personas in Publisher.

17 hours ago, Peter Maas said:

So when you call it a Persona: do you mean a separate piece of software that needs to be bought and installed?  I hope not. The money is not a problem for me, but it might have a negative effect on the Affinity product line and market position. 

 

[robboxxx]

This is a big bummer for me. I had a “free” version of indesign but that is not working anymore. A “payed” version is beyond my budget (I do a lot of work for non profit and volunteer services). publisher is affordable for me, but now I am hesitated because of the lack of a good separation check.

[Rob Luxford]

The Photo preview option is surprisingly good. Give it a try and see if answers your needs. 

[thadeusz]

Guys, there are dozens of threads for this topic. As long as Affinity is so unprofessional in this specific field, there are only workarounds. I hope, but don't belief a separation preview is coming soon, as many of us where demanding this from day 1. I'm using a little program called PACKZVIEW, which is free and does the job:(https://www.packz.com/downloads-info/

Especially when using spot colors there are problems keeping colors as spot and not converting to CMYK. Keep an eye on a consistent color profile and only using multiply, transfer or normal as layer blend mode. I've wrote about my way to this quite stable workflow in this forum. So please don't be shy and have a look... 😎

[loukash]

On 12/2/2022 at 4:02 PM, robboxxx said:

good separation check

Ghostscript works fine. It will produce TIFF separations from PDF, incl. spot plates.
You can then actually preview them in Affinity by colorizing them in CMYK (plus spot if necessary) and setting the blend modes to Darken.
More on that in my post – plus a few more additions further below – here: 

The instructions are for Mac. No idea how it works on Win.

[NotMyFault]

You can preview color separation in Publisher and Designer:

 

[rizzosan67]

I think that an interactive in-app preflight tool that exists e.g. in InDesign would be a must for the next major version of Publisher.