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Designer export persona and spot color output


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Hi folks, I finally had a chance to get into Designer's export persona on a 2 color logo I designed for a client. I like it a lot and don't believe there's anything like it in the Adobe CS6 apps I had been using. I saved it as a jpg in multiple sizes and as a grayscale tiff for printing. What I don't know is how to save as CMYK and spot color which I would normally do as an EPS. It was originally designed in RGB because the client will mostly use it on the web but I also want to give her print-ready options.

Questions: Can spot color swatches be changed to 4 color swatches?
Why doesn't my spot color version appear to separate properly when I pull it into InDesign and check with the separations panel? 

There must be a different process than what I'm used to. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

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24 minutes ago, dcrosby said:

What I don't know is how to save as CMYK and spot color which I would normally do as an EPS.

You can export as PDF to get CMYK + spot colors.

25 minutes ago, dcrosby said:

Can spot color swatches be changed to 4 color swatches?

Unfortunately the spot and overprint properties of a swatch can not become altered after the swatch got created.

As a workaround you can create a new swatch with CMYK values via the Color panel:
1. Select the spot swatch.
2. In Color panel switch from the tint view to the slider view via the hamburger menu.
3. In the Color Model Selector pulldown menu choose "CMYK".
4. Save as new swatch via hamburger menu > "Add Colour to Swatch". It will appear in the documents palette but is not global.
5. To make the new swatch global right-click the swatch and choose "Make Global".

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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1 hour ago, thomaso said:

You can export as PDF to get CMYK + spot colors.

Unfortunately the spot and overprint properties of a swatch can not become altered after the swatch got created.

As a workaround you can create a new swatch with CMYK values via the Color panel:
1. Select the spot swatch.
2. In Color panel switch from the tint view to the slider view via the hamburger menu.
3. In the Color Model Selector pulldown menu choose "CMYK".
4. Save as new swatch via hamburger menu > "Add Colour to Swatch". It will appear in the documents palette but is not global.
5. To make the new swatch global right-click the swatch and choose "Make Global".

 

Ahh, PDF. Is that standard procedure these days? I know that InDesign can place a native PDF file, can Publisher do that as well?
Does a global color allow you to place it on different objects and mod the colors at the same time?

I'm away from my home computer just now but thanks for your help. I'll give that a try.

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Yes, PDF is standard these days and has various advantages over EPS. The most useful is its flexibilty.

Yes, Publisher, like all Affinity apps, not only can place a native PDF but also edit it.
Therefore the requirements and the workflow with PDF in Affinity apps are different to that in e.g. InDesign.

Yes, a global color is used to get changed together with all objects which have it assigned. In Affinity Publisher and Designer every spot color is a global color.

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Sorry I haven't gotten back sooner. I ran into problems off the bat regarding Spot colors and had to put the project down for a while. Solid colors separate fine but for some reason my gradients refuse to separate properly.

I have a line that gradates from color to transparent. Even though I apply the spot color to it, it disappears in the separation. I also have a solid color area over a shape with a gradient fill and the SOLID color knocks out of the shape below to white.

Thoughts?

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3 minutes ago, dcrosby said:

Sorry I haven't gotten back sooner. I ran into problems off the bat regarding Spot colors and had to put the project down for a while. Solid colors separate fine but for some reason my gradients refuse to separate properly.

Off the top of my head is the thought that spot colours are a separate printing plate and a transparent spot colour would mean the plate would go from 100% to 0% and require a screen to achieve this. Could you try rasterizing the object/layer with the spot colour in an attempt to force this screening?

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Off the top of my head is the thought that spot colours are a separate printing plate and a transparent spot colour would mean the plate would go from 100% to 0% and require a screen to achieve this. Could you try rasterizing the object/layer with the spot colour in an attempt to force this screening?

There's a thought. It's worth a try when i can get back to it. I'll let you know.

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59 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

the plate would go from 100% to 0% and require a screen to achieve this. Could you try rasterizing the object/layer with the spot colour in an attempt to force this screening?

I don't understand your reasoning. A plate for spot colour is the same as one for CMYK. Unless it's for varnish and other special colours that need 100% solid areas, you can have gradients.

What happens with a gradient from colour to white?

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10 minutes ago, Wosven said:

I don't understand your reasoning. A plate for spot colour is the same as one for CMYK. Unless it's for varnish and other special colours that need 100% solid areas, you can have gradients.

What happens with a gradient from colour to white?

It sounds like a workaround or hack to some extent. I haven't tried color to white because it would kill the transparency.

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31 minutes ago, Wosven said:

I don't understand your reasoning.

As dcrosby says

20 minutes ago, dcrosby said:

It sounds like a workaround or hack to some extent.

My 'reasoning' is that there is something broken with how Affinity is handling spot colours. I suggested trying the rasterizing as an attempt to force it to work properly. I don't have any idea why we can't have a spot colour fade to 0% or go from any transparency to another level. This inability to do so is in my opinion a bug.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

we can't have a spot colour fade to 0% or go from any transparency to another level.

I get some weird results (in AfPub beta):

1. I am able to export a gradient of Spot > White and also of Spot > Transparent.
2. two solid overprinting spot colors as FILL become exported in CMYK – whereas as stroke they export fine as overprinting spot colors.
3. a gradient of two spot colors gets exported as CMYK, both as fill and stroke.

1056752820_spotgradients1.jpg.cafbafab6b7e0294250d648bd8d6cfe9.jpg

259690642_spotgradients2.jpg.08972d4d8ded383dd65ace0a3ff33b3a.jpg

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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Thanks @thomaso

I'm away from work and don't have the proper tools for checking this.

And I'm not sure about Affinity TIFF format too, since it doesn't show spot colours as channels, and opening Adobe image files with spot colour as channel can be strange from earlier tests few years ago.

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I've had some success using spots simply by substituting multiply for overprint and screen for knockout, which works with gradients without converting to cmyk the downside is you have to export as PDFX-4 which supports transparency 

I've made a screen capture to demonstrate:

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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On 8/8/2019 at 1:00 PM, Old Bruce said:

As dcrosby says

My 'reasoning' is that there is something broken with how Affinity is handling spot colours. I suggested trying the rasterizing as an attempt to force it to work properly. I don't have any idea why we can't have a spot colour fade to 0% or go from any transparency to another level. This inability to do so is in my opinion a bug.

Yep, sounds like a bug. Disappointing. So rather than do the runaround, I guess I'll have to rebuild this (thankfully) simple logo in Illustrator CS6 and put an end to this project. My hourly rate is getting smaller and smaller the longer I fiddle with it. I'll report this as a bug when I get a chance if it hasn't been already. Thanks to all who responded.

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