Lighting filter not printing???

[Richard Liu]

When I print a document that uses a Lighting live filter, it prints as if the filter is deactivated, even though Affinity Photo displays the image properly and, when I export it as a JPEG and print it using Preview, the effect of the lighting filter is evident.

Background info:  Affinity Photo 1.7.1 running on macOS 10.13.6, viewing on BenQ SW271, printing on Canon Pro-1000 on Canon paper with Canon paper-specific profile.

I'm including _DSC1677_AFP_2.afphoto, the AFP document, and Archive.zip, which contains _DSC1677_AFP_2.jpg, an export from Affinity Photo to JPEG with the filter unchecked, and _DSC1677_AFP_2a.jpg with the filter active.  I have tried twice to print this directly from Affinity Photo, making sure that the lighting filter is checked.  Both prints are identical, and the same as _DSC1677_AFP_2.jpg when printed from Preview.

[Richard Liu]

More information on the problem:

• It doesn't seem to be related to the printer.  The thumbnail in the macOS print dialog is an accurate reflection of what will be printed, and the difference between _DSC1677_AFP_2 (without the lighting effect) and  _DSC1677_AFP_2a.jpg (with the lighting effect) are clearly visible in the thumbnail displayed by the print dialog in Preview.  It is very clear that the thumbnail displayed by the print dialog in Affinity Photo corresponds to _DSC1677_AFP_2 regardless whether the Lighting live filter is active or not.  This is independent of the color printer selected.
• The lighting effect is visible when the document is flattened and is reflected in the print dialog thumbnail when I print it.

As long as the thumbnail in the print dialog is wrong, there wouldn't seem to be much point in wasting paper and ink to print it.

What bothers me about this bug is, now, when I see some discrepancy between what Affinity Photo displays and a print, I don't know whether to attribute it to the inevitable differences between the two media, or whether some layer really is being ignored or processed improperly be the program.

Edited July 8, 2019 by Richard Liu
Shortened text to keep replies on topic.

[Richard Liu]

Hi @Murfee,

Could you please repost your valuable observations and recommendations in the thread that I linked to and erase your detailed post here?  I would like to focus this thread on the Lighting live filter and printing, which has elicited no response up to now.

It’s  surely my fault for linking to the thread.  The forum software replaces the simple link with a graphic that accords what I intended to be an aside a disproportionate amount of real estate.

Thanks

[Richard Liu]

Still more on this while waiting for some response from a moderator or developer.

I tried turning off Metal, but that does not seem to solve this problem.

[Chris B]

Hi Richard Liu,

There is a known issue where Live Filter layers will not print or export to PDF. We're working on a fix but for now, you will have to rasterise the layer that the Live Filter is nested with or merge down.

Sorry for the trouble.

[Richard Liu]

@Chris B,

All Live Filter layers that are nested in other layers?  That would explain why some prints don't look quite right, given that I usually nest the sharpening live filters in the Background pixel layer.

[Chris B]

23 minutes ago, Richard Liu said:

@Chris B,

All Live Filter layers that are nested in other layers?  That would explain why some prints don't look quite right, given that I usually nest the sharpening live filters in the Background pixel layer.

Yes I am so sorry.

[Richard Liu]

OK.  I don't mean to be "dense," but I assume that live filters in the Background group in this example

 

are not affected by the problem and will print, right?

[Chris B]

To clarify—any live filter that hasn't been rasterised will not show up when printed or exported to a PDF. So if the filters are nested or sat at the top level they will need to be merged or rasterised.  

[Richard Liu]

Oh, wow!  That's everything, then.  I'm no expert user, but where else can a live filter be placed where they are neither nested nor sitting at the top level?  So, in my example, even removing the grouping so that the highlighted live filters and three pixel layers below them pop up to top level, doesn't circumvent the problem.  It seems that the safest course of action for printing with the least impact on a future when this bug has been squashed is, export to anything but PDF and print with another program, e. g., Preview on Mac's.

[Murfee]

20 minutes ago, Richard Liu said:

Oh, wow!  That's everything, then.  I'm no expert user, but where else can a live filter be placed where they are neither nested nor sitting at the top level?  So, in my example, even removing the grouping so that the highlighted live filters and three pixel layers below them pop up to top level, doesn't circumvent the problem.  It seems that the safest course of action for printing with the least impact on a future when this bug has been squashed is, export to anything but PDF and print with another program, e. g., Preview on Mac's.

Hi Richard, leave all of your adjustments where they are, go to the top layer you want include in your print, turn off any proofing adjustments. I use merge visible, this will create a new pixel layer that contains all of your adjustments that are ticked. You can now turn on your proofing adjustments. I turn off all of my adjustments below the new pixel layer. This just improves performance on my system. I see no loss of quality in the print by doing this. 

[Richard Liu]

@Murfee,

What bothers me is the extra manual intervention required before printing.  It just creates other sources of operator error.  As it is, occasionally before printing I forget to uncheck the group of soft proof and out-of-gamut correction layers, or, assuming I do not wish to apply the corrections, mistakenly uncheck only the soft proof layer instead.  Using merge visible I have to determine whether an existing pixel layer so created is current -- yes, I know, the History tab! -- and remember to turn off all the layers below it -- not just in the interest of saving computing time, since we know that live filters in those layers aren't being rendered when printing or exporting to PDF, so who knows how they plus now the pixel layer created by merge visible will be.

"Venting" a bit here, I wonder how regression tests missed something so serious as live filters not being printed or exported to PDF?  In other threads that I read relating to discrepancies between what Affinity Photo displays and what it print, some contributors express views similar to this one by @BofG in this discussion:

He/she replies

Quote

@Less the development team just seem to have a lot on their hands. Expanded into iPad versions, Publisher, still plenty of things on the roadmap that are pending and have been for years etc. They seem to be spread too thin to make any big strides with any one of the Affinity apps at the moment.

One particular bug with printing, cmyk printer profiles not working in AD, has been around since Jan 2017. I've not tried the beta though so maybe that's fixed? I think a lot of people only create for digital use though, so print functionality probably isn't high on the agenda, and there are lots of features people are crying out for that will get the attention first.

It could be argued that if someone wants pro-level print output they should be looking at a standalone RIP anyway [italics added]

Of course, nobody printing at home is expecting "pro-level print output," only accuracy within limitations imposed the available equipment.  As @DianeF intimates, there's no reason to believe that Serif, with all the talent that it evidently possesses, cannot meet the high standards for print quality established by Photoshop.  Perhaps it's time for Serif to taking printing more seriously.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Richard Liu said:

 As it is, occasionally before printing I forget to uncheck the group of soft proof and out-of-gamut correction layers, or, assuming I do not wish to apply the corrections, mistakenly uncheck only the soft proof layer instead.

That confuses me a bit, Richard.

As I understand how the Soft Proofing process works, before printing you need to turn of the Soft Proof adjustment, but the others should be left active. They are what apply the corrections needed to get the image printed properly. If you turn them off, you're just printing the original image and there was no need to have done the Soft Proofing at all.

Have I misunderstood what you're doing?

[Richard Liu]

@walt.farrell

No, you haven't misunderstood.  I haven't made myself very clear.

I rely on the soft proof to tell me what is out-of-gamut.  Sometimes I will then add layers below it (not nested in it!) to bring those areas into the gamut of the printer profile that I have specified.  When I do, I turn off the soft proof layer, leaving the correction layers on, then decide how close the result is to what I had when I wasn't worrying about printing at all.  In order to make this iterative process more manageable, I group the soft proof and correction layers together, especially as, typically, I might have two Curves layers, one for RGB and one for LAB/lightness, and an HSL layer for lowering saturation and raising luminosity, and I am trying to decide which one(s) do the job best.  In the end, though, I might decide not to correct at all.  So, if that's what I decide, then of course I uncheck the whole group before printing.  Otherwise, I leave the soft proof layer and any superfluous correction layers unchecked, but the whole group checked.

I apologize for the confusion.

[fde101]

26 minutes ago, BofG said:

Just look at the bugs in the print dialogue, you cannot tell me the team tests the printing functionality but didn't notice that red overlay on the preview being there...

The red overlay is not a bug, it is intentional.

That is a warning to indicate that your print settings are such that something is unlikely to work in a desirable manner.  For example, trying to print a legal-sized layout on letter-sized paper without scaling it or otherwise breaking it up...  or trying to print a booklet from a document with a page count that is not a multiple of 4.

[Richard Liu]

@BofG

Quote

I've not printed directly from AD for a while, you made me decide to give it another try - after all, 1.7 is here now...

AD = Affinity Designer?  This discussion is being posted in Bug Reporting > Report a Bug in Affinity Photo > Photo Bugs found on MacOS

Quote

Setting "printer manages colours" now appears to do nothing?

I find no such setting in Affinity Photo or the the macOS dialog that printing from the application initiates.

If your replies pertain to Affinity Designer, I wonder whether they shouldn't be posted in a more appropriate forum?  What do the moderators recommend?

At any rate, and pertaining to the problem at hand, i. e., that live filters aren't being processed (properly) by Affinity Photo during printing, given the many blend modes with which they can be applied that greatly affect chromatic aspects of the final result, it is unsurprising that, absent such effects in the print, colors will be "waaay off."  Regarding the tangent in which I vented my frustrations over what appears to be a reduced concern on Serif's part for ensuring that printing works properly, if indeed that is the case, I have no doubt that other Serif products will also be afflicted by it.