I have been posting this over at MBP, but thought it might be good here too as the question came up for how to work with inkscape and Affinity designer to get pdf that work with Tayda.
I'll try to start writing some up of my workflow using inkscape to do the actual design and then do the rendering to pdf in Affinity designer.
First of all, for inkscape to find your way around the program or find out about how to do certain fancy designs, shapes and stuff I found this channel amazeballs:
I start in inkscape by having the design template from Tayda loaded up for the right size, I usually do 125B and I'll try to upload a basic one I start with here, feel free to grab it as a starting point and mess around (see below posts).
Note that I use three layers, I called them emboss / color / white. You'll find that in the layers menu.
To start with I only work on the colors layer, so make sure there is nothing on the emboss or white layers and hide those layers, like this:
Then I do my design stuff until I have all my font, labelling, design stuff on there, still only in color layer.
When I'm happy with how it looks, then important steps:
1) Highlight everything, un-group everything and you will have to do that several times so that all sub groups are un-grouped.
(did I mention press save your work all the time, the program or computer might crash if the design is complicated... saving is good, ask me how I know.)
2) Then go to Path menu (top bar), highlight everything on color layer and hit 'object to path' several times until everything is converted to path. At this stage the font of labels is not a text anymore, it is an vectorized object.[/li][/list]
3) Then go to Path menu (top bar), highlight everything on color layer and hit 'stroke to path' several times until it should also make sure that any strokes are vectorized objects.
4) To make sure do the un-group everything step above again. You can't overdo those steps to make extra sure evrything is un-grouped and converted to path/object aka vectorized.
Save it.
Then highlight everything, hit ctrl+D, which duplicates everything, so now you have two identical designs vectorized on one and the same (color) layer.
Right click mouse, drop down comes and select 'move to layer'. Select layer 'white' and what you have just duplicate will swish over to that layer. There is still the original artwork on color layer.
Repeat:
highlight everything, hit ctrl+D, which duplicates everything, so now you have two identical designs vectorized on one and the same (color) layer.
Right click mouse, drop down comes and select 'move to layer'. Select layer 'emboss' and what you have just duplicate will swish over to that layer. There is still the original artwork on color layer.
So now there should be three identical artworks on each layer emboss / color / white.
You can check that by hiding two of the layers and see that the artwork is on the active layer. Check that for each layer, and then activate each layer to be visible.
Everything should be vectorized.
Don't add or change on artwork any more at this stage. If you find you want to change something you will have to first delete everything on white / emboss layer, work on color layer until you have what you want, then repeat all the steps above of un-grouping, vectorizing, duplicating into layers.
Don't forget to save...
That's what I do in inkscape, then I open the file in Affinity Designer.
When I open the file in Affinity I first check under File / Document setup two important things:
that the document dimensions in mm are correct as per Tayda requirements, should be this:
and then select under color CMYK, really important, like this:
check that all layers are present and active, like this:
Then really important: upload the Roland swatches from Tayda site for RGD white and RGD gloss (I called it in my layers emboss because they offered the option in the past instead of gloss, but that doesn't matter same thing).
Activate the RGD emboss (uncheck white and color layer) layer highlight all and click on the RGD gloss Roland swatch to give it that specific color. It will appear greyish, but that's fine, don't panic.
Activate the RGD white (uncheck emboss and color layer) layer highlight all and click on the RGD white Roland swatch to give it that specific color. It will appear greyish, but that's fine, don't panic.
Activate all three layers, it will still look greyish, don't panic. Check and uncheck each layer to see that you haven't mixed things up. Ask me how I know. If all apeears good, have all three layers active and (tada):
Let's export is to print ready pdf.
I go on File / Export and this comes up, I chose these setting to export to pdf:
Save it as pdf.
Open the file as pdf in Acrobat Reader (or whatever you use I spose), and it should look like this:
Note I have opened the layer icon on left bar which shows me three separate layer RGD emboss / color / white. It all looks grey, don't panic, because the RGD emboss is top layer.
If you uncheck RBD emboss in Acrobat Reader view you should see the color layer, if you uncheck that as well you should see the also greyish looking white layer.
Curiously I never had the problem going with this procedure that other people reported, that the layers collapsed into one layer only in final pdf.
This is just how it works for me and the pdf files I sent to Tayda have come back fine unless I goofed up, which of course happened, but I can't blame that on the software, that was me goofing.
Hope this works for you as well!