Setting up a greyscale document is ...

[Joachim_L]

... a mess. I like Publisher, a lot. But setting up a greyscale document is (right now) a catastrophe ... to me. But maybe I am too stupid, so here is how I start:

1. File New, Colour = Grey/8, Colour Profile = Greyscale D50.

2. Typing in some text and creating a rectangle.

3. Nice there is a Greys Palette (Swatches panel), so apply Black to the text and rectangle.

4. Export PDF for Print and opening with Acrobat Pro.

Result 1: What is meant to be BLACK is C83 M67 Y51 K95! Sending the file to a print service will end as disaster.

5. Too bad, my fault? Going back to the document having a look at the colour panel. First shown is the RGB slider with values 0,0,0.

6. So I use the CMYK slider having black only with 100%.

7. Repeat Step 4.

Result 2: What is meant to be BLACK is C74 M63 Y50 K89! Sending the file to a print service will end as disaster+1.

6. Too bad, my fault? Going back to the document having a second look at the colour panel. Picking up Greyscale from the pulldown.

7. Seriously? The value of 0 at the slider means 100% black? Value 70 means 30% black and value 0 means white? So why not.

8. Repeat Step 4.

Result 3: See Result 1.

Final conclusion: If I ever want to send a greyscale document to a print service I have to set up the document as CMYK. From my point of view this should be fixed. While you (Serif) are at it, please give "colour management" a re-design = Switching between colour spaces (spot to cmyk to rgb to spot whatever) + Iconize the colours to make it visible what colour space they are + A colour manager before export or print like in Indesign where you can define aliases for spot colours for instance or some other helpful settings. I do know this is BETA, but a stable Affinity Designer 1.65 has the same problem.

[fde101]

RGB and CMYK are in two different color spaces.  I believe the swatch palettes are all set up in terms of RGB right now, so Publisher is trying to convert that RGB (0, 0, 0) through color management to the relevant CMYK value and landing on what you are getting.

The standard swatch palettes should really be made smarter about adapting to the different color spaces.

[Joachim_L]

In the end it means I am not able to produce a correct greyscale document? And this behaviour for the complete range of Affinity products? For products meant for designing a no-go.

 

[MickRose]

The problem only occurs here if I use a PDF/X compatibility. I'd guess these are purposefully designed for CMYK printing only. If I use a PDF 1.4 to 1.7 then these keep the PDF as greyscale. I think APub is working correctly.

[Joachim_L]

Good to know, but irritating. I don't mind creating a new export preset if my problem gets solved.

[Hud1ai2]

Thanks for this post!

Joachim - how did you check if the black is realy black? This is next big issue with Publisher, if it can't export black as a black  This is the next reason, why I have to redo whole my actual project in InDesign. It will be crazy and timeconsuming work, but now the final result is important and I can't afford to send this to the client with this. 

[Hud1ai2]

And one quick note. Try to swicht off the "overprint black" in export settings. 

If I leave it switched, export pdf and then reopen this pdf in Publisher, the black is something strange (all CMYK channels have some value), but after switching off this option, the black is C0 M0 Y0 K100. 

 

[Joachim_L]

On 4/20/2019 at 10:39 AM, Hud1ai2 said:

Joachim - how did you check if the black is realy black?

I (have to) use Acrobat Pro with the Colour Output panel, since there is no option (like previewing colour separations) to check this in Publisher right now.

[Palatino]

On 4/17/2019 at 10:21 AM, Joachim_L said:

1. File New, Colour = Grey/8, Colour Profile = Greyscale D50.

Amazing that nobody has noticed the fundamental error here yet. You try to use a monitor profile - D50 says it all! - to create a print template. That can't work, as little as with sRGB.

What you need is a "real" print profile just for the black ink. Try this in the appendix. You will be amazed.

Schwarze Druckfarbe - ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI).icm

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Palatino said:

Amazing that nobody has noticed the fundamental error here yet. You try to use a monitor profile - D50 says it all! - to create a print template. That can't work, as little as with sRGB.

Good point – but actually the document color space profile should not create the output problem, because a conversion to pure print greyscale can be done on export with an according profile (as yours for instance).

The major issue here is in my opinion that the default preset for PDF/X-3 does not respect the "Gray/8" "D-50" document color space.
It shows in its default setting no entry for an export profile and creates an Output indent "U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 (Custom)".

 

To get a real K-only grayscale PDF you need to manually select a grayscale profile for export :

– or, simplier of cause, indeed work already in the according document color space with no need to care about export profiles:

 

 

[Palatino]

47 minutes ago, thomaso said:

To get a real K-only grayscale PDF you need to manually select a grayscale profile for export :

You can also combine 4c and K. Or 4c profile and only K.

 

Farbe plus Grau.pdf

[thomaso]

12 minutes ago, Palatino said:

You can also combine 4c and K. Or 4c profile and only K.

Yes, of cause.

But in this thread the problem was to work with a grayscale .afpub and K-only export.

[elk]

On 7/23/2019 at 4:14 PM, Palatino said:

Amazing that nobody has noticed the fundamental error here yet. You try to use a monitor profile - D50 says it all! - to create a print template. That can't work, as little as with sRGB.

What you need is a "real" print profile just for the black ink. Try this in the appendix. You will be amazed.

Schwarze Druckfarbe - ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI).icm

How do you add a ICM profile?

Found it out: I first thought it is a cmyk profile 🙄 and the profile didn’t show up. But using it with Grey/8 brings really perfect result! Thanks a lot!

[thomaso]

29 minutes ago, elk said:

How do you add a ICM profile?

In the same way as an .icc file, they appear to differ only by the suffix, not by content.

Quote

ICM comes from Image Color Management, which is a shorter way of saying that it's Windows' component that handles color management. (...) color profiles can also be stored as ICC files (ICC comes from International Color Consortium). They're the same as ICM files and you can change their extension to either one. Windows 10 treats both ICM and ICC files the same.
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/what-and-how-install-color-profile-your-monitor-windows

So in macOS you might need to rename the suffix to .icc to be able to e.g. import it in AfPhoto via menu "File" > "Import ICC Profile".

What me confuses is that I already do have a profile named "Schwarze Druckfarbe – ISO coated v2 (ECI)" (without "300%") in my export options profile menu but I am not able to detect an according file on disk, even the APub app package doesn't seem to contain this profile. – Additionally odd: this profile does not appear in AfPhoto (but I can add the 300% version via import). – Maybe anyone can shed more light on this?

[Stes]

On 7/23/2019 at 8:05 PM, Palatino said:

You can also combine 4c and K. Or 4c profile and only K.

Farbe plus Grau.pdf

How?! 😮 I've been trying for about two hours to achieve this. Grayscale bitmap turns to rich black at every export. I've run out of ideas.

mercury.afdesign test.afpub Parker_M_B&W.afphoto

[fde101]

On 10/27/2020 at 12:37 PM, Stes said:

Grayscale bitmap turns to rich black at every export. I've run out of ideas.

If you select the image layer (double-click on the picture frame if it is in one) do you see a "K Only" option on the context toolbar?  If you do, make sure that is checked.

[Stes]

2 hours ago, fde101 said:

If you select the image layer (double-click on the picture frame if it is in one) do you see a "K Only" option on the context toolbar?  If you do, make sure that is checked.

No, I don't see this option.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Stes said:

No, I don't see this option.

It is only available, I believe, for documents setup in CMYK/8 color format.

[Stes]

19 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It is only available, I believe, for documents setup in CMYK/8 color format.

My document is in CMYK/8 format.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, Stes said:

My document is in CMYK/8 format.

And, it seems that it is only available for placed raster images, not placed documents or vector files. If you export your .afphoto as a TIFF, PNG, or JPG file and use that in your document instead, you should have the K-only option.

[thomaso]

On 10/27/2020 at 5:37 PM, Stes said:

I've been trying for about two hours to achieve this. Grayscale bitmap turns to rich black at every export. I've run out of ideas.

Appears to work here for the large 'M' logo (.aphoto). Attached the .afpub exported with default PDF/X-4 preset.   test 100K-logo.pdf
Note the logo in your .afdesign is a pixel layer, not made of K only.

EDIT: Just curious: What platform & APub version are you using? Your screenshot of the resource manager shows file's detail text more useful than mine, which appears heavily cropped. (Though none of both screenshots tell the entire profile .icc file name)

Edited October 29, 2020 by thomaso

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Just curious: What platform & APub version are you using? Your screenshot of the resource manager shows file's detail text more useful than mine, which appears heavily cropped. (Though none of both screenshots tell the entire profile .icc file name)

On Windows, that panel is expandable by dragging the right edge. Perhaps that works on Mac, too?

[thomaso]

> On Windows, that panel is expandable by dragging the right edge. Perhaps that works on Mac, too?

Yes, the panel is expandable – but that doesn't influence this details section which always keeps its width + odd text layout.

[Stes]

18 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

And, it seems that it is only available for placed raster images, not placed documents or vector files. If you export your .afphoto as a TIFF, PNG, or JPG file and use that in your document instead, you should have the K-only option.

Thank you.
With TIFF works just fine.
It doesn't make sense for me. Why can't I place .afphoto in Affinity program to have this working? It's like PSD wouldn't work properly with InDesign.

[Stes]

6 hours ago, thomaso said:

Appears to work here for the large 'M' logo (.aphoto). Attached the .afpub exported with default PDF/X-4 preset.   test 100K-logo.pdf
Note the logo in your .afdesign is a pixel layer, not made of K only.

EDIT: Just curious: What platform & APub version are you using? Your screenshot of the resource manager shows file's detail text more useful than mine, which appears heavily cropped. (Though none of both screenshots tell the entire profile .icc file name)

OK. I got it. I was choosing preset PDF (press ready) and it uses colour space CMYK, no matter which compatibility is chosen. Changing colour space to "As document", like in PDF/X-4 preset, works as I needed.

Thank you.

I use 1.8.5.703 Publisher on Windows 10.