Printing with Publisher (and Designer) changes colours

[Johannes]

Affinity seemingly sends RGB-Data to printers even from a CMYK document.

So all colors are converted just to sRGB and then to CMYK again. Everything becomes impure. Especially with colors within in the CMYK color space that aren't available within the small sRGB color space, this could get off.

Can you/I make it a choice, what gets sent to the print dialogue: RGB or CMYK?

When exporting a PDF/X1a and printing with Preview or Adobe Acrobat everything is OK.

 

(Attached image shows  the X1a-PDF from my printer which is very similar to a reference sheet (top) and the directly vie Publisher printed sheet from my printer (bottom) darker and less neutral)

 

 

 

 

[walt.farrell]

My home printer (or its driver, at least) expects RGB data. The driver then converts it to the appropriate set of colors (not CMYK, necessarily) when sending to the printer. My Epson photo printer, for example, has C, light C, M, light M, Y, light Y, and K. My other Epson printer has C, M, Y, K. Both expect me (or the application) to send RGB data.

So, for producing a document that I will print at home I must use an RGB color space.

I'm curious: what kind of printer do you have that expects or allows CMYK input?

Thanks.

[Johannes]

On 6/25/2019 at 3:50 AM, walt.farrell said:

I'm curious: what kind of printer do you have that expects or allows CMYK input?

it's a digital CMYK printing press - Xerox DocuColor 12 with Fiery XP12 RIP - quite old but very accurate in the ISOcoated v2 color space. It accepts every color space because I could load it on to the machine. converting the space is a loss though especially with everything besides photos. For example you don’t want 0 0 0 100 black 10 pt running text (body) to become e.g. 50 30 20 60. It gets rasterized and bold.

[Pauls]

It looks unlikely that we will support printing directly in cmyk to printers - as you have found exporting to PDF/x standards and printing that is the workflow for this occasion.

[Johannes]

2 hours ago, Pauls said:

as you have found exporting to PDF/x standards and printing that is the workflow for this occasion.

with open after export checked this seems like a reasonable solution since printing with preview works without a hassle

[fde101]

On 6/25/2019 at 11:15 AM, Pauls said:

It looks unlikely that we will support printing directly in cmyk to printers

This seems like a rather curious decision...

[Dazmondo77]

On 6/26/2019 at 5:03 PM, fde101 said:

It looks unlikely that we will support printing directly in cmyk to printers

Not the right decision, considering these are 'pro' applications and a lot of print houses do actually run many internally produced jobs direct to film/plate/digi press from InDesign or Quark - This is the first bit of feedback I've come across from the Affinity team that have addressed these concerns which I've been harping on about for a few years - I just assumed pro applications would send a CMYK job to a CMYK printer with less issues than a consumer inkjet - I've had my Xerox Phaser 6180DN for around 13 years which produces pretty accurate CMYK output and was shocked at how bad the print quality was from Affinity apps, all pure cyan magenta and yellow colour bars ends up with a noticeable dot of other colours when output from affinity plus vector information looks like its pre rasterised before it hits the printers postscript RIP - whereas when outputting from any Adobe / Quark / even an old copy of Freehand on an old mac gives pure CMYK colour bars and nice crisp reproduction of vector information  - My biggest concern here is it's another reason to hang onto Acrobat pro 9 , so in order to have faith in my workflow I still have no option but to stick with El Capitan - I've freelanced at a few print houses over the years and have found it frustrating how you come across production macs, that in some cases, still run mac OS as far back as Leopard which is too old for Affinity apps, yet they have complete faith in their 'old' workflows ---- As I would now describe myself as a Affinity Fanboy, I really hope the team eventually roll out professional print output - I just feel this could be a push for all those print-shops to upgrade 

[Tekl]

On 6/25/2019 at 5:15 PM, Pauls said:

It looks unlikely that we will support printing directly in cmyk to printers - as you have found exporting to PDF/x standards and printing that is the workflow for this occasion.

That's odd. Do you have changed your mind in the meanwhile?

[Dazmondo77]

On 6/25/2019 at 6:56 PM, Johannes said:

with open after export checked this seems like a reasonable solution since printing with preview works without a hassle

Like Affinity, Preview can't print straight CMYK ?!?!?!?!?!? - Acrobat reader does and it's FREE it also retains Vector information on output rather than Affinity's feeble pre-rasterising - I really hope this changes in the future as it's an essential part of many workflows - just mind boggling that great software aimed at design and print professionals can't print a CMYK file to a CMYK rip or printer without first converting to RGB and rasterising then sending to a RIP to be rasterised and printed in CMYK - resulting in a total botched proof

[Elektroautor]

I've been a graphic designer for 25 years and I'm really happy to discover Affinity Publisher.
After several decades at Adobe, I am looking for some other new and innovative software.
Now I've bought Publisher and I'm in the process of converting my entire workflow from Adobe to Affinity.

What I read here, however, shocked me and for me, as a professional user, it was ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE.
Is it really the case that CMYK is rasterized in RGB and then back to CMYK. Why rasterize at all when I have vector data?

I very much hope that it is perhaps only one setting in the program, as I do not want to admit it !! Or hopefully there will be an update soon!

Otherwise I have to stay with Adobe again, which I actually don't want either.

I don't understand if you design such great software and then implement such no-gos. Simply incomprehensible.
It's a shame. 😞

[Dazmondo77]

8 hours ago, Elektroautor said:

What I read here, however, shocked me and for me, as a professional user, it was ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE.
Is it really the case that CMYK is rasterized in RGB and then back to CMYK. Why rasterize at all when I have vector data?

Although Serif are pretty tight lipped on this, I suspect that they just don't support Postscript devices, as I remember from the late 90's when I was working as a Graphic Designer/Illustrator/Drum scanner operator in Nottingham, we used to output films and run Matchprint proofs for Serif and way back then all the PagePlus and Drawplus box designs used to come on a floppy disk and were in a .PRN file format??? but output perfect to film on an Hyphen image setter - so I'm guessing theres maybe PS licence fees to contend with? - nevertheless, many users need this standard feature😖

[fde101]

On 6/11/2021 at 4:05 AM, Dazmondo77 said:

I'm guessing theres maybe PS licence fees to contend with?

You don't need to pay PostScript license fees to produce PostScript programs (as PostScript is a programming language and thus software which "prints" to PostScript printers is generating programs for the printers).

[Dazmondo77]

19 hours ago, fde101 said:

You don't need to pay PostScript license fees to produce PostScript programs (as PostScript is a programming language and thus software which "prints" to PostScript printers is generating programs for the printers).

Well many of us need this to do our jobs - it's not even a feature its a standard requirement that's always available in software aimed at professional design and print - I hate to say it but it's looking more likely that VectorStyler is the only viable switch for Illustrator users - 😒

[fde101]

5 hours ago, Dazmondo77 said:

it's not even a feature its a standard requirement that's always available in software aimed at professional design and print

It may be at the moment for many users, but overall PDF has been gradually replacing PostScript for these purposes.  Many of us are still using PostScript, and Adobe still licenses their implementation of it for printers and whatnot, but overall it is a slowly dying technology.  Adobe has already effectively put a kill order out on "Type 1" PostScript fonts, and I am led to wonder how much longer it will continue to support the rest of PostScript at the level it currently does.  I do think it has a few more years on it, and I believe the community overall will continue to support it for a long time if for no other reason than to interpret old files and to produce printer drivers for (eventually) older printers, but beyond that, we will see.

There are many utilities out there to convert a PDF document to a PostScript program and even vice versa, and a number of those are free.

[Elektroautor]

So here on my Mac I don't have the problem that the printout from Affinity Publisher is rasterized in black. Or has this problem been fixed in the new versions anyway?

I am printing on an HP Color Laserjet printer and the black is sharp and clean.
What I miss or can't find in Affinity Publisher, is there no print preview or the possibility to show / hide the 4 colors individually?

[Johannes]

51 minutes ago, Elektroautor said:

the possibility to show / hide the 4 colors individually

Yes. I would greatly need this too. I still use Adobe Acrobat Pro CS6 (Adobe Acrobat X 10.1.16) on a regular basis to analyse PDFs generated from Affinity products.
This is one of the reasons I'm stuck with macOS Mojave. Once I have to leave it behind I only can try to virtualise it (color management is no fun there) or buy the perpetual Adobe Acrobat licence 475 € +VAT or the Callas pdfToolbox 500 € +VAT (which provides the preflight engine for Adobe) 

Affinity generally generates better PDFs than Adobe, which is no excuse because half the problems are bigger ones if undetected.

[Elektroautor]

Thanks for the interesting information.
Is it still the case that Affinity Black rasterizes from RGB or creates more than one film?

[Johannes]

17 hours ago, Elektroautor said:

Thanks for the interesting information.
Is it still the case that Affinity Black rasterizes from RGB or creates more than one film?

I wouldn't know. I stayed with my above mentioned workflow of exporting a CMYK-PDF e.g. X1a or similar which auto-opens in macOS Preview.

Then printing is fine.

[thomaso]

On 6/11/2021 at 1:22 AM, Elektroautor said:

What I read here, however, shocked me and for me, as a professional user, it was ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE.
Is it really the case that CMYK is rasterized in RGB and then back to CMYK. Why rasterize at all when I have vector data?

Color conversion and rasterization are two pairs of shoes. Usually they are not related and are caused by / performed for different reasons. Rasterization is often required for certain file formats and/or by technical specifications of certain PDF versions. For physical output all vector content gets rasterized in the specific resolution of the device, even though some processes require vector data (e.g. cutout plot) they don't work steplessly.

When converting colors for printing, it should be noted that desktop printers (home) often require RGB input even though their inks are CMYK. In this case, it is advantageous if print data are already sent to the printer in RGB, as this avoids a conversion step. - Compare this answer from 2018:

[Johannes]

Hi all,

I seem to have created some confusion with using the word "rasterized". I’m sorry about that. By "rasterized" I didn’t mean converted from vectors to pixels but converted from using just one printing color at a 100 % (continuous tone) into split up cmyk colors combined from halftones. It’s all about colors. Continuous tone usually looks sharper (has higher accuracy) for example with black body text.

If you want a high quality print with accuracy…

On 6/25/2019 at 5:15 PM, Pauls said:

exporting to PDF/x standards and printing that is the workflow for this occasion.

 

[rumo]

Has this one been solved yet? Came across it recently and thought it would be my printer. Then prints from Apple Preview turned out to be fine, as always. So I ended up doing the same workaround as @Johannes.

[Johannes]

29 minutes ago, rumo said:

Has this one been solved yet? Came across it recently and thought it would be my printer. Then prints from Apple Preview turned out to be fine, as always. So I ended up doing the same workaround as @Johannes.

Speeds things up a little

 

[rumo]

Yeah, but that’s still a workaround, not a solution, right? Thanks nonetheless @Johannes.

[Rodi]

 

On 6/25/2019 at 12:59 AM, Johannes said:

it's a digital CMYK printing press - Xerox DocuColor 12 with Fiery XP12 RIP - quite old but very accurate in the ISOcoated v2 color space. It accepts every color space because I could load it on to the machine. converting the space is a loss though especially with everything besides photos. For example you don’t want 0 0 0 100 black 10 pt running text (body) to become e.g. 50 30 20 60. It gets rasterized and bold.

That right there is a very big issue.

I work in print. Yes there have been some challenges to .pdf files, black staying black and such.

I am not using it as much as I would like, but, I have yet to have the confidence that the final output will be professional (output correctly).

It does some things amazingly well. I have one job that is, no matter how one slices it, a lot of work, but with Publisher I have been able to cut the work down on these files from 20 minutes for 2 sided and 12 minutes for one sided to half that. Tricky file that should never come in as Illustrator, but it does. I have the Spot color on a masterpage and fit their file in. Works like a charm!

That being said, it's tricky sometimes the  pdf does not rip correctly after revisions (That SUX!). Sometimes the rip just bounces the file in normalizing mode.

On certain files black type does not come out as what you would expect. It's all really frightening.

Serif has issues they need to contend with to challenge the status quo in a print environment, but I think for the price, it does some great things. I have edited pdfs that would have otherwise been unable to get anything out of them.