Exported PDF: CMYK still beeing RBGish

[Laryllan]

Hi there everyone!

First of all: I really like my user experience with Affinity Publisher so far and used it, to design our schools annual yearbook. And – as I knew before – I started it to be "CMYK" from the scratch.

I worked with all the pictures provided by my pupils an colleagues – obviously everythin in RGB – the same way I used to do it in "that other software, that should not named".

Unfortunately I encountered a problem with exporting the whole project, when everything was set and done. No matter what kind of settings I choose for PDF-Export the printing shop insists, that all the pictures in the PDF are still in RGB. As they are pretty nice people, I don't think they tell me, if it wasn't so.

Of course I could use my AF to convert every photo manually. But I really hope, that there might be a better way to do it. Maybe some of you already user AP to publish a yearbook and is able to give me a hint.

For export I tried the following settings: "PDF (print)" with and without additional setting "color space" to "CMYK". 

I really hope my English is good enough to describe my problem properly. 

Would be great to get a clue or two.

Sincerely greetings from Germany's norther shore,

Laryllan

 

[thomaso]

Use preset "PDF/X1a", this seems to force RGB to become converted to CMYK.

Indeed it is a pity that PDF export doesn't work yet as expected.

[postmadesign]

I think I found what causes this problem. When I output as PDF for Print and leave the color setting on "as document" and profile on "as document" the images are indeed RGB when I check these in Acrobat. When I set it to CMYK but leave the profile to "as document" the images are not converted even though they should be, which is a bug, I would say.

But when I define both the color setting as CMYK but choose a specific profile from the list (it does not seem to matter which one) they are correctly converted. It is a small workaround, and they do need to fix this, but at least it works!

[Laryllan]

Hi there,

first of all: Thank you a lot @thomaso & @postmadesign.

You're answers helped me, because I already doubted myself.

@postmadesign : Your idea sounds absolutely reasonable. I already tried this (setting the document as well as the color setting to CMYK) – but my printing shop still insists, that it is RGB anyway.

@thomaso : I will try that "PDF/X1a" thing, for sure. 

All in all it seems to me, that it SHOULD be working, but it doesn't. As it is a "beta" I'm fine with it, but really hoping, that the "store version" will be able to handle this whole RGB/CMYK-thing properly. Would be a shame if it wouldn't.

[postmadesign]

That is strange, as I checked and compared the files created with various setting with the output preview and ink manager in Acrobat: the conversion with specified color profile does not contain any RGB data, whereas the other do. I am not an absolute prepress master, but to me this indicates the images are correctly converted. It would be interesting to see you file to be able to compare it. 

[Laryllan]

@postmadesign : It absolutely is. Otherwise my printing shop never tricked me – these are pretty nice guys (and we worked with them for years – they even converted my RGBish PDF for free ... so this problem is no issue concerning the publishing of our yearbook) – if they say it is RGBis, I believe them. As I have no more Adobe Stuff on my Mac i cannot "check" it on my own. 

Due to Europes new laws concerning personal data, I cannot provide my fukk PDF to you for a check – I know that's kind of (insert bad word here), but getting into legal trouble over this, is not my cup of tea. I took the starting page, showing nothing but our school's logo (for which I have the copyright).

I absolutely thank you anyway.

Jahrbuch_2018-2019 Seite 1.pdf

[postmadesign]

You are indeed correct, and so is your printer. There are problems which I did not notice at first. Though the ink manager shows no RGB data, the transparency blending data is still in RGB, not CMYK. Only when I convert it to x-1 as described above these transparency issues are resolved. However when checking the images these are in a generic CMYK profile, not the profile I chose... This is a pretty nasty problem in some situations I think and I hope this can be addressed!

[MikeW]

5 minutes ago, postmadesign said:

...the transparency blending data is still in RGB, not CMYK...

When I open that Jahrbuch PDF in Acrobat and pdfToolbox, the blend space is CMYK:

And digging deeper into the PDF, there are two transparency groups, both in CMYK:

So while the other pages may have had RGB data, this PDF does not.

[postmadesign]

16 minutes ago, MikeW said:

So while the other pages may have had RGB data, this PDF does not.

You are right. I was doing test with a personal file to check the differences in the settings. I cannot find any consistency in the color conversion, sometimes it is still RGB, sometimes DeviceCMYK, I never get it to become a profile like you see above. This has me completely confused...