Posts by ldina

sazzle When doing things like this, it is critical to decide what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of. That suggests which tools may be most appropriate.

You wanted to keep the pink (magenta) and lose the very light grays. To me, that suggested an HSL Adjustment to boost the magenta and a Selective Color to boost the whites (i.e., lose the lightest grays). I added a Curves adjustment as a final tweak to the white (you can also use Levels). Here's a sample, including the Layers in the Layers Panel.

To keep the file size small, I'm also uploading a reduced size AF file (Affinity v3.2.3). This file is very low quality, low resolution, but you can copy and paste the three Adjustment Layers into your full sized document to preserve the original quality. Or, just look at the adjustments I made and do something similar in your own document.

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Hootowl Thank you!

Fair enough.

I hear you, but I suggest you try it anyway. What have you got to lose?

Try saving to your C: drive and see if that improves things. If not, then that's not the problem

Quote from komatös

I'm just waiting for the day when one of them flies right out of the screen.

That would be just one more reason/excuse to have a drink!

Hmmm...are you on Windows? I'm using Mac, so I'm out of my element with Windows. (it would be helpful to post your system specs in your 'signature', as I have done, to help others help you.)

Have you tried disabling Virus and malware scanners, at least temporarily, to see if that helps?

Are you opening and saving to your "main" drive, or are you using an externalUSB drive, network drive, cloud drive, etc? Affinity recommends opening, working and saving off your main hard drive (preferably a fast SSD drive with plenty of free space).

Do you have any 3rd party utilities that may be interfering?

That's all I can think of for the moment.

Cassel I assume you've tried closing and relaunching Affinity? And maybe rebooting your computer? Do you have many other apps open that might slow things down. I'm just throwing mud at the wall, hoping something sticks.

Quote from LebanonduFou

The textures are just exquisite, and the veins in the wing...

Thank you, LebanonduFou

The textures are partly from Procedural Texture filters, and partly due to using different Path Brushes or Pixel based brushes (spatters, grainy charcoal brushes, etc). These techniques help to provide a more organic, less hard vector-like look.

The veins in the wing are largely courtesy of Layer FX, primarily 3D, a bit of Gaussian Blur, and a soft Outer Shadow, or sometimes a Bevel/Emboss.

marce I work on a Mac. I just created an 8.5 x 11 inch document and set Affinity's magnification to Actual Size (i.e., 100% magnification). I got out a ruler and held it up to the screen of my MacBook Pro, being sure to line it up accurately. The width of the page on my monitor measures exactly 8.5 inches, which is what I expected.

It's the Operating System's job to convert pixels to physical dimensions, in the background. In Apple System Preferences, my monitor is set to the Default value of 1728 x 1117 pixels. If I change the monitor resolution (in Apple Preferences), with Affinity and my document still active, the measured dimensions change and are no longer accurate. This assumes Affinity remains open and I changed my display settings. I'm pretty sure Affinity works in "Pixels" in the background, so the conversion from pixels to inches or centimeters is handled by the OS. If I close and reopen Affinity, and create a new 8.5 x 11 inch document, the dimensions will be correct again...8.5 inches wide.

I assume this should work the same on Windows. My guess is that your issue has to do with the OS, or perhaps you changed your display resolution after your document was open, in which case, Affinity will be using the resolution that was in place when Affinity was opened. Try closing and reopening Affinity to see if that resolves it.

As a kid, my brother and I used to go butterfly hunting, and the "Blue-eyed Greyling" butterfly (also called a Common Wood Nymph) was one of our favorites. I created this illustration for him.

The butterfly itself was illustrated in Affinity v3. The background is a photo I took in the fields behind my brother's house. This illustration used a lot of vectors and also a lot of pixel painting and some Procedural Textures. Hope you like it.

Quote from Cassel

I have very few layers, and I experience this even if I have just a series of jpg images with no filter, no additional layer.

Thanks for the additional feedback. I'd play with some of the Performance Settings (Affinity > Settings > Performance on Mac). These are mine. I'd make sure that the RAM Usage Limit is at or below your total installed RAM, otherwise the App may use the hard disc for some operations. Mine is set to 100% of RAM usage.

Also, make sure File > Save History with Document is turned OFF, as it can slow things down.

Quote from Toblerone

In my experience, Affinity is fast after a fresh installation, but over time it becomes slower. That is at least the case for me on Windows. Starting the application also takes noticeably longer than just after installation.

I'm experiencing some slower than normal behavior at the moment myself, and I have a powerful MacBook Pro M4 with 48 GB RAM. I'm not sure why. I closed Affinity and restarted my computer and that helped some, but still isn't as snappy as it should be.

Cassel IF you are using Live Filters, especially a lot of them or in a large, complex document, that can slow things down substantially. Live Filters need to recalculate their effect and update the rendering on a regular basis, which uses a lot of RAM (and GPU) resources. A fast, supported GPU usually speeds up rendering of Live Filters. If you are using one or many Live Filters, try turning them off temporarily while doing other operations, then turn them on again afterwards. This will reduce constant recalculation while working.

There are probably other things to try, but if you are using Live Filters, try this first and see if it helps.

Wim No such conversion exists or is likely possible.

Sony, Canon, Nikon, etc, all capture RAW data and have their own proprietary algorithms to convert the collected light intensity (I.e., photons) into RGB color. In fact, each company provides more than one “recipe”, each yielding a different color interpretation, for example, portrait, landscape, neutral, vivid, etc. Your chosen camera settings will control this conversion if done “in camera”. If you are editing a RAW file, this will be handled by the RAW conversion software (in Affinity, that is the Develop Studio).

Also, each RAW processor will usually result in different color and there are often multiple profiles for “different flavors” of color output. There are dozens of sliders and settings in every RAW processor, so it’s up to the user to alter the settings to their liking.

I just created a CMYK/8 Fogra 39 document and placed a Fogra 39 photo, created text, etc.

I see your concern. When viewed in Finder or Graphic Converter (Mac), the PDFX1a document does look darker than the Press Ready exported PDF.

So, I opened the PDFX1a exported document in Affinity and compared it to the original document (in its original AF file format). The two files look identical and the color numbers match between the two, so I think the exported PDFX1a file is fine.

I believe the file viewer (in my case, Finder or Graphic Converter) is displaying the "untagged" PDFX1a file using a default ICC profile, which results in a color/density shift on the monitor. When you look at the Resource Manager in the re-opened PDFX1a file, you will see that the placed image is shown as CMYK, but WITHOUT the Fogra 39 profile, (the profile was stripped on export to PDFX1a), since PDFX1a bases color interpretation on the Output Intent and the image tag is no longer relevant. That's the way PDFX1a was designed for Press. Most of the basic PDF viewers don't know to use the Output Intent for color management and display, so they use some generic profile (usually sRGB or US Web Coated SWOP v2). You need a Full featured PDF Analysis tool for Press (Acrobat Pro, PDF Toolbox, etc). One of those tools, (or re-opening the PDFX1a file in Affinity) displays the file correctly, because they are designed to support Press workflows. I am pretty sure that's what you are seeing.

The other PDF Export modes (for Print, Press Ready, etc) are fully color managed workflows and as such, embed ICC profiles into the exported PDF. Most decent PDF viewers will see and properly apply those ICC profiles and color manage the files when displayed on your monitor.

I haven't been doing any Press work for a while, so perhaps one of the more actively involved Press folks can weigh in and confirm what's happening. I think this is the answer to why your PDF files display differently.

PDF/X-1a does not support color management the same way PDF/X-4 does (I.e., image by image using tagged ICC profiles). It expects the designer to ensure all components in the file are already in the destination color space, in your case, Fogra 39. If they are NOT, the X1a file assumes they are the same as the Output Intent written to the PDF file, in which case colors will shift.

Can you provide a screenshot of ALL your PDF/X-1a export settings?

joopvos PDF/X-1a is a very restrictive specification. See attached writeup.

First, when setting up your document, be sure to specify CMYK/8 and Fogra 39 as the document color space. Second, when you place any CMYK images, make sure they were edited and saved as CMYK/8 and Fogra 39 as well. This will keep all elements in your document CMYK and Fogra 39. Any text or other elements (lines, shapes, etc) you add should also be CMYK. If your document space is set to Fogra 39, those shapes and text will also be defined as Fogra 39.

If the image you placed is not currently Fogra 39, open your image separately and convert to Fogra 39 and resave the file, then place the new version into your print document. PDF/X-1a assumes everything is in your final output color space and ready to go, without the need for color correction or conversion.

Hopefully, the above will solve the issue. If not, please report back and provide as much information on your setup and file color spaces as you can.

EDIT: if you always, or almost always, send Jobs to Press using Fogra 39, I'd probably change my "default CMYK color space" in "Settings" to Fogra 39 instead of U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2. This way, new documents will be assigned Fogra 39 when you initially create them.

Here's a sample mockup (screenshot only...file was too large to upload, plus I was using Affinity v3)

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JimCricket If you own another mouse, give that a try (especially a hard-wired USB mouse to rule out bluetooth issues). And I'd also play with the mouse settings (double click speed, etc) to see if that helps. From a previous post you said pressing hard and holding seemed to help, so it could well be mouse related.

When I click on a Macro, it usually runs the first time, but not always, so sometimes a second click is required. But I've never had to try 4 or 5 times.

Just for kicks, try selecting the Move Tool, or selecting a layer in the Layers Panel, or even deselecting ALL Layers first, then click the macro. Perhaps if some filter or other process was run previously that confuses the program, waiting for some other action.

This suggestion qualifies as a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess ).