PDF Export colors Flat/Dull

[Jamie Clark]

Hi All,

I have a photobook I originally created in InDesign, and am porting over (manually recreating) into Affinity Publisher.
I am having problems around color consistency while exporting.
When exporting to JPG, colors visually match between InDesign and Affinity exports.

I am having issues when exporting to PDF.
InDesign PDF colors visually match JPG exports, but for the life of me I cannot get the Affinity Publisher PDF colors to match.
I have confirmed visually by opening both PDFs in same reader side by side, as well as actually physically printing (3rd party) on paper.
They are washed out and dull in comparison.

I am attaching a page of the book from both. Please tell me what additional settings you need me to provide.

Cheers!

Affinity Publisher.pdf

InDesign.pdf

[Richard Liu]

Just taking a really, really wild guess here, because I use Affinity Photo but not Affinity Publisher.

In Affinity Photo there is a really bad bug that affects printing and exporting to PDF.  Live filter layers -- I don't even know whether such things exist in Affinity Publisher -- are not being rendered.  So, depending on what live filter layers I use and the blend modes that I use with them, the first thing that I will notice, say, in a print, is a difference between the colors displayed on the monitor and those of the print.  Exporting to JPEG and TIFF are not affected, but exporting to PDF is.

[mac_heibu]

Could you share the Publisher document too? There is certainly a color profile issue.

[MikeW]

14 hours ago, Jamie Clark said:

Hi All,

I have a photobook I originally created in InDesign, and am porting over (manually recreating) into Affinity Publisher.
I am having problems around color consistency while exporting.
When exporting to JPG, colors visually match between InDesign and Affinity exports.

I am having issues when exporting to PDF.
InDesign PDF colors visually match JPG exports, but for the life of me I cannot get the Affinity Publisher PDF colors to match.
I have confirmed visually by opening both PDFs in same reader side by side, as well as actually physically printing (3rd party) on paper.
They are washed out and dull in comparison.

I am attaching a page of the book from both. Please tell me what additional settings you need me to provide.

Cheers!

Your ID pdf is using the ProPhoto RGB ICC profile, the APub pdf is using the sRGB ICC profile. Likely that is all, or most, of the color difference. Try using the ProPhoto RGB profile in your APub document, then actually place the image you used into APub.

Because of how color works (or doesn't work) in APub, if that ID PDF is placed or opened in APub directly, the PDF from ID will have images converted to CMYK. Yeah, it sucks how it works.

Alternatively, if you have ID still available, you can actually change the ID document to output a truly RGB pdf and that may/should work as long as you are using the ProPhoto profile and your default color for new documents is RGB/8. Yep, that sucks too.

Affinity applications can have only one color model. And yes, that sucks too.

Edit to add an APub pdf that maintains the ProPhoto profile.

Untitled.pdf

[Jamie Clark]

I am attaching the Publisher file here - a scaled down version of course. To be clear, I copied the original document, and removed all the extra pages, and saved.

Regarding how I created this document, I am afraid I wasn't clear in the process, which sounds like it is an important part of the color management:

To get the image into the document, I create a picture frame using the picture frame tool, locate an image in Adobe Bridge, and drag that photo into the picture frame. Nothing "fancy" like importing PDFs.
I am using "Linked" instead of "Embedded", if that matters.  Although, template which I created and used for this book defaults to "Embedded", after I add 3 or 4 images it recommends to switch to "Linked", so I let it switch to "Linked".

Thank you all!

AF-Favorites.afpub

[MikeW]

As I wrote, set up the document to ProPhoto instead of sRGB.

[Jamie Clark]

45 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Your ID pdf is using the ProPhoto RGB ICC profile, the APub pdf is using the sRGB ICC profile. Likely that is all, or most, of the color difference. Try using the ProPhoto RGB profile in your APub document, then actually place the image you used into APub.

Because of how color works (or doesn't work) in APub, if that ID PDF is placed or opened in APub directly, the PDF from ID will have images converted to CMYK. Yeah, it sucks how it works.

Alternatively, if you have ID still available, you can actually change the ID document to output a truly RGB pdf and that may/should work as long as you are using the ProPhoto profile and your default color for new documents is RGB/8. Yep, that sucks too.

Affinity applications can have only one color model. And yes, that sucks too.

Edit to add an APub pdf that maintains the ProPhoto profile.

Untitled.pdf

So changing the ICC Profile to ProPhoto RGB made a huge difference, and as you said is probably the issue.

I have to admit I am fairly confused around all the various color settings in Affinity - color management in general is already seriously complex - perhaps Affinity is just exposing some of that complexity. 

Assuming that switching to ProPhoto RGB on export seems to work - does that mean I should change my Document Settings to use ProPhotoRGB as well and use that throughout? 

When I export using sRGB - the original problem - is there a relatively simple explanation as to why the colors are so dull? Is this due to the color space I chose (RGB/8)?

Thanks!

[Jamie Clark]

1 minute ago, MikeW said:

As I wrote, set up the document to ProPhoto instead of sRGB.

Was not ignoring your comments - just replied to your post

[MikeW]

5 minutes ago, Jamie Clark said:

So changing the ICC Profile to ProPhoto RGB made a huge difference, and as you said is probably the issue.

I have to admit I am fairly confused around all the various color settings in Affinity - color management in general is already seriously complex - perhaps Affinity is just exposing some of that complexity. 

Assuming that switching to ProPhoto RGB on export seems to work - does that mean I should change my Document Settings to use ProPhotoRGB as well and use that throughout? 

When I export using sRGB - the original problem - is there a relatively simple explanation as to why the colors are so dull? Is this due to the color space I chose (RGB/8)?

Thanks!

No worries. We were evidently composing replies concurrently...

ID/QXP have no Document Color Space per se. Affinity applications do. ID/QXP can use mixed image color profiles and they can be ouyput as such or converted at output. Affinity applications cannot do this.

The net takeaway is document color models have to be determined up front at document creation before images come into the publication rather than any conversion that may happen at the output stage.

So in your case, if you need/want the colors to pop and/or your images actually have the ProPhoto icc profile embedded in the images, your document has to use the ProPhoto profile from the beginning. You likely should be using RGB/8.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, MikeW said:

ID/QXP have no Document Color Space per se. Affinity applications do. ID/QXP can use mixed image color profiles and they can be ouyput as such or converted at output. Affinity applications cannot do this.

If you statement about the Affinity applications is true, then what is the purpose and effect of this option in the PDF Export process?

Perhaps naively, but certainly from reading the Publisher Help, I would assume that with it off the images would be embedded in the PDF in their original color spaces:

Quote

• Convert image color spaces—when checked, all placed images will convert to the color space chosen on export (as set in the Profile option above). When unchecked, the color space of the imported placed image is honored.

 

[MikeW]

53 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

If you statement about the Affinity applications is true, then what is the purpose and effect of this option in the PDF Export process?

Perhaps naively, but certainly from reading the Publisher Help, I would assume that with it off the images would be embedded in the PDF in their original color spaces:

 

Try it and check the results in Acrobat. 

[walt.farrell]

18 minutes ago, MikeW said:

Try it and check the results in Acrobat. 

I can't do that.

But since it's documented to work, if someone who can check it can demonstrate that it doesn't work, I hope they report it as a bug.

[MikeW]

But you could make the pdfs via the different pdfs, beginning with the few various document setups, etc, and I would be happy to check them. However, you could also just view the results in Adobe Reader as it is a color-managed pdf viewer.

Point is, like in ID/QXP, could you take Jamie's image that is a ProPhoto image, put it into APub and export a cmyk pdf and maintain the appearance as with the ID pdf provided? You should be able to see any differences in Reader.

One can, with the setup I mentioned above, produce a pdf that maintains appearance, but only as an rgb document...at least I believe that to be true. I've attached the image extracted  from the pdf. The main issue with that procedure is that for professional print, that also means text will be rgb black. 

jamie-clark-image.zip