Change color on b/w TIFF-graphics

[Jula]

Hi! I hope you can help me w this. In InDesign I used a lot of Tiffs and to change their color I would transform them into a greyscale TIFF and was than able to change the color of the lines and background. Can I do the same in the Publisher? if so, how? I tried to change the filling, but the graphics remained b/w. THANKS so much! Jula

128842.tif

[R C-R]

On 8/3/2019 at 9:29 AM, Jula said:

Can I do the same in the Publisher? if so, how?

Assuming you mean adding color to a greyscale image, step one in Affinity is to convert the document to a color format in the document setup, for example to RGB/8.

If you only have Affinity Publisher & not Affinity Photo (so you can't use the APub Photo Persona's pixel based tools via Studio Link) you are going to be limited to layer adjustments, effects, & such but there is still much you can do with that. tiff variations.afpub shows a few quick examples of that but I am sure you can do much better.

Edited August 4, 2019 by R C-R
Added screenshot of varients

[Palatino]

21 hours ago, Jula said:

… and was than able to change the color of the lines and background. Can I do the same in the Publisher?

Please don't ask how and why this is possible - it works.

[Lorox]

On 8/4/2019 at 2:31 PM, Palatino said:

Please don't ask how and why this is possible - it works.

Thanks a lot! This feature – while so intuitively to apply in InDesign – is certainly well hidden in Publisher... I'd never have looked there!

[mapiki]

I think many functions are well hidden in Publisher.

[mapiki]

@Palatino Where did you find the "N only" feature? I found it the other day and can't remember my way to this menu. Thank you

[lacerto]

K-Only is only available in CMYK document color mode.

a) When placing a true grayscale, "K-Only" button is automatically turned on so that the image behaves like a regular grayscale image and can be tinted with any color. 

b) If "K-Only" is turned off, a grayscale image behaves like an RGB image and assigning a color to the image causes the composite gray to be used as shades of the color. 

c) When placing an RGB image, "K-Only" turned on makes the image behave like a grayscale image, and leaving it off allows using the image channel values to be used as shades of the color.

d) When placing a CMYK image, "K-Only" uses only the K channel of the image.

 

In an RGB document grayscale images behave like RGB composite grays and assigning a color uses tones of the image as shades of the color. An RGB image can also be used as a shader but the effect is stronger. Tinting and milder shading can be achieved by using colored shapes with blend modes on top of a grayscale image.

 

Monochrome images are not suppored in Affinity apps, so you cannot assign colors to fore and background colors (1 and 0 bits) similarly as e.g. in InDesign. 

EDIT. Note that to be able to assign colors to raster images, they must be "Image" layers. Pixel layers cannot be colorized this way. In Publisher, you can convert a pixel layer to an image by using Layer > Convert to Image Resource. Unlike changes to a pixel layer, these are all non-destructive colorings.

[ashf]

Another way:
1. Invert(Cmd+i) the image.
2. Right click on layers panel then "Rasterize to Mask."
3. Add it to an object(such as rectangle vector or fill layer) as mask.

This works in RGB mode as well.

But I wish colorizing a B/W image worked in RGB mode also like Adobe...

UPDATE: I see the tiff file already has the mask. so R C-R's method is faster.

[mapiki]

Thank a lot!

[lacerto]

On 1/28/2022 at 8:23 AM, ashf said:

But I wish colorizing a B/W image worked in RGB mode also like Adobe...

Grayscales without background can be colorized for partially transparent pixels also in RGB mode:

 

...or a grayscale with grayshades (including transparent background):

 

In CMYK mode, using K-Only and removing background, it is possible to use transparent grayscale images with colored shape in the background to simulate 1-bit colorizing in InDesign (this cannot be done in InDesign with transparent grayscale images). The grayscale can have shades, too.

Here the image above (without white background) has been opened in Affinity Photo and just saved back to grayscale TIFF with transparency, and placed in a CMYK document so that it automatically openes in K-only mode. The foreground has been assigned a fill color and the background gets a color from the underlying shape.

 

By using fx filters and blend modes, it is also possible to (non-destructively) color completely black and white images in both RGB and CMYK color mode (which in RGB color mode cannot be colored at all by using simple fill color assignments):