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Color Formats and CMYK-Black in Publisher


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According to the Publisher help, colors within a Publisher document are defined by the color space of the document, and all pictures (and other elements) imported to the document are instantly converted to this pre-defined document color space. When I e.g. create a new document and choose "RGB/8" as the color format and "sRGB" as the color profile, then all imported pictures, text colors etc. are converted to the sRGB color space in 8 Bit color depth. But there is no way of checking if this really happens; I need to trust the software to do it correctly.

Whenever I want to change colors of already existing vector/text elements I would expect to see the color selector only for the color format the document is defined in (like RGB sliders für RGB or CMYK sliders for CMYK). But I can still choose betweens different color selectors and e.g. define a text color within a RGB document using the CMYK sliders. That doesn't make much sense to me - especially for texts and b&w vector graphic elements.

When I'm editing an RGB document and am inserting some running text in black, I'm tempted to just use the CMYK sliders and the color value 0/0/0/100 (i.e. only black ink - like it is standard for runnig text in CMYK printing documents). But when I switch to RGB just to check, I see that I unwillingly have created text with RGB color values 35/31/32. On a screen this would only be a dark gray instead of full black, an RGB printer driver would print it with mixed colors (instead of black only).

And there is an even bigger problem the other way round, i.e. when I'm editing a CMYK document and choosing the color with RGB sliders: From RGB values 0/0/0 (standard for black text in RGB documents) I get the CMYK values 62/67/68/88. If I send the exported PDF with this value to my print office, I get unsharp text with a strange mix of 4 rasterized colors (instead of sharp black-only print).

I tried one other thing: I exported a pdf file from my text editor (TextMaker in my case - but it would be the same with any other office software) and imported it into Publisher for further editing. Office programs tend to give out everything in RGB colors, so the black texts in this document are defined as RGB value 0/0/0. When I choose CMYK format for input, Publisher converts all the text color to CMYK value 62/67/68/88, i.e. the same unusable color mix as described above. The same thing happens when I stay in the RGB format while editing and only choose CMYK for export. My only chance to get it right is to manually change all the black text frames to CMYK value 0/0/0/100 before I export; in complex and long documents this can be a lot of work. (I didn't find any option to choose how the black color of text elements should be interpreted during import.)

It seems to me like the developers of Affinity Publisher believed that you can convert RGB and CMYK colors any time and in any direction and that wouldn't make much difference at the end, but that is not the case. Especially the Black in CMYK format can be mixed very differently depending on the purpose (e.g. black-only for small text and fine lines, mixed colors for bold headline text and graphic elements).

If you want to export pdf files in CMYK colors for professional offset printing, you need full control over the CMYK values at any time. I don't see this in Pubisher at the moment. Is it just me or are other users having the same problems?

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
58 minutes ago, Lagarto said:

there are no features like swatch auto creation and assignment, and "select same fill", "select same outline"

These features have been requested by users since the first version of Designer, as either method could potentially save hours on complex documents with loads of layers - currently my work around is to create a document palate before anything else and only use global swatches, the main problems always seem to be with black, I have had jobs created in illustrator that have a 160% density, CMYK, rich black (C20 M20 Y20 K100) that uses Fogra39 colour profile, and open in Designer using Fogra27 which turns into a black of around 350+ density, I'm pretty sure this never happened changing profiles in Illustrator of InDesign, although if it did it would only take a few seconds to sort as Illustrator has 'Select Same' and any vector work pasted in indesign instantly creates editable global swatches for each colour used - I've just got used to having to do it the long winded way in Affinity, just for the time being, as I'm sure we'll get 'Select Same' in the not to distant future, as I was reading on a post yesterday requesting 'Select Same' which is around 15 pages and very lively.  

- Soon, hopefully?  

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  • 4 weeks later...

I had the same problem with the export of text in 100% black pdf (cmjn fogra uncoated 27) for a professional publication ... I had to reuse my old PPX9 to be able to do my export correctly, which works it.   (sorry if my english is bad...)  I hope this bug will be corrected in a future version ...

 

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  • 7 months later...
  • Staff

Sorry.

Thank you for reporting a problem using 1.7.x . It appears that a member of the Affinity QA team didn't get round to fully investigating this specific report posted in the bugs forums. We are very sorry for this oversight. Yours is one of a number of reports that I am posting this apology to, using an automated script.

Now we have released 1.8.3 on all platforms containing many hundreds of bug fixes, and we hope your problem has already been fully addressed. If you still have this problem in the 1.8.3 release build, then the QA team would really appreciate you reporting again it in the relevant Bugs forum.

Each of those links above contains instructions how best to report a bug to us. If that is what you already did in this thread just copy paste your original report into a new thread. We appreciate all the information that you have including sample files and screen shots to help us replicate your problem.

This thread has now been locked as the QA team are not following the threads to which this automatic reply is made, which is why we would appreciate a new bug report if you are still have this problem in the current 1.8.3 release build.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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