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PDF Export, wrong color printing


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I am using Affinity Designer on Windows and an Epson SureColor SC-T3200 for printing.

If I export (PDF) a file made in CMYK with 'perfect' pitch black, and try to print it, it is never opaque black as it should, only slightly see-through dark grey (not transparent, more rasterized). Anything I need to change at the PDF settings when exporting?

It's not the cause of the printer, it works totally fine with Illustrator PDFs, just not if the PDF is exported from Affinity Designer.

Hope you can help.

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  • Staff

If you are using K 100 for your black this can sometime be printed as dark grey you can try the following CMYK values for True and Rich black

True Black
75% cyan, 68% magenta, 67% yellow and 90% black

Right Black
60% cyan, 40% magenta, 40% yellow and 100% black

 

 

 

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I used 72/68/67/88 CMYK as my black so I dont't think that's the problem.

I've also tried different hues, it has to be something with the PDF file/export.

f.e. If i try the whole process in Adobe Illustrator everything works as it should, but doing the exact same settings and steps in Affinity leads to the black hue being printed in dots, not as an opaque black area

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I have a similar problem.

I want to publish a colorful black ad in a printed newspaper. export the ad file to PDF - CMYK - I specify a color K = 100% for text. When you open a PDF in another program, the text appears in color. Why is this happening and what I do wrong? There are no such problems with text color when you save black and white ads.The problem appears when you save a colored PDF  I can't get black text. Can anyone help me?

forumā problēma.png

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  • Staff

Hi Blackout

Thank you for the files, Illustrator is exporting the PDF with a K value of 100 while we are exporting as rich black values on all four channels, can you please try exporting your file as a PDF/X 1a rather than a Acrobat 1.5 and then print it to see if you now get all four channels printing rather than the K channel

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I tried that but it didn't change anything.

But now i sorted something else out. If I try to print the Affinity PDF, it gets printed 4 times instead of just 1. I thought this was a different kind of problem, but it's not happening  with other PDFs, so maybe the CMYK Channels get divided and somehow printed seperately? 

All prints have the dark but not black hue I explained, but some (of these 4) are just a little tiny bit darker than others, but still not a opaque black Color

Maybe this gives further detail about the Problem, or maybe you found the problem somewhere else in my process ;)

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  • 6 months later...

Puzzled as to how you find this settings window. My export options don't include overprin t ot spot colours, for example. Working in Mac v 1.7.3. I'm having trouble exporting true black in pdfs for my printer's too.

Screen Shot 2019-10-30 at 17.16.11.png

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo V2, Mac and iPad.

macOS Ventura 13.5.2; Macbook Pro (16-inch, Mid 2021); Apple M1 Pro, 10 cores; Graphics 16 cores; 16GB RAM;

iPad Pro 11 inch first gen

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7 minutes ago, tbaucells said:

Puzzled as to how you find this settings window ...

Press the "More" button on that PDF export panel to see another panel with more related options!

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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15 hours ago, tbaucells said:

Puzzled as to how you find this settings window. My export options don't include overprin t ot spot colours, for example. Working in Mac v 1.7.3. I'm having trouble exporting true black in pdfs for my printer's too.

Screen Shot 2019-10-30 at 17.16.11.png

you have to set the text or whatever u want to print black with color code c 0 m 0 y 0 k 100

then it should work. 

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19 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Press the "More" button on that PDF export panel to see another panel with more related options!

Thanks! How did I miss that.

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo V2, Mac and iPad.

macOS Ventura 13.5.2; Macbook Pro (16-inch, Mid 2021); Apple M1 Pro, 10 cores; Graphics 16 cores; 16GB RAM;

iPad Pro 11 inch first gen

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4 hours ago, Blackout said:

you have to set the text or whatever u want to print black with color code c 0 m 0 y 0 k 100

then it should work. 

That's exactly what I did in Affinity, but when I looked at it afterwards, the resulting PDF showed a dark grey rather than black: The CMYK sliders were incorrect when I re-viewed the file to double check.

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo V2, Mac and iPad.

macOS Ventura 13.5.2; Macbook Pro (16-inch, Mid 2021); Apple M1 Pro, 10 cores; Graphics 16 cores; 16GB RAM;

iPad Pro 11 inch first gen

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/31/2019 at 1:05 PM, tbaucells said:

That's exactly what I did in Affinity, but when I looked at it afterwards, the resulting PDF showed a dark grey rather than black: The CMYK sliders were incorrect when I re-viewed the file to double check.

Similar (but not exactly the same) problem here: Text was set in c0, m0, y0, k100. When I open the resulting PDF, Affinity Designer (and PhotoLine as well, for that matter) still shows the right values for the objects. The guy from the printer service however says it’s a “deep black” (with c, m, y NOT being zero). No idea what’s going wrong.

Screenshot of export settings is attached – sorry it’s in German.
Affinity Designer 1.7.3 on macOS Mojave.

Bildschirmfoto 2019-11-26 um 16.58.14.jpg

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  • 4 months later...

Hi, i have the same problem here, but no solution. I try every hint i found at the web, but nothing works. After reopen in pdf the black colour  is not black anymore. Other colours too. 
I work for two days at this export problem but nothing works. 
Is there any help there? 

Thanks 

the attachment shows the pure "black" after exporting to pdf. 

 

codes.jpg

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