Gradients using black print very dark

Question

I created a number of documents using pages in pages 06, which I now use with pages 09. My problem is that gradients using black print much darker than they did before, indeed so dark they are unusable.
The gradients are generally made up of black and white, with the black transparency set somewhere between 30% and 50%. I have tried varying the black transparency and can acheive good results by dropping it to 2% to 8%, but this would involve an awful lot of work setting each gradient in multiple templates and would much prefer if I could just correct this issue by altering a preference or other setting somewhere.
When I use the term print I mean both to paper and to pdf, the results are much the same, however it would be difficult to include an example of the paper print.
Below is a screenshot of part of a document in pages.
This is a screenshot of how the export/print to pdf now turns out.
and this is a screenshot of some previous pdf's I had saved prior to using pages 09.
All suggestions are welcome.

Answer 1

I was sort of hoping I wouldn't need to change my documents as I have quite a few that are used as templates, but I guess this may be the only solution after all.
You should do as Magnus suggests. I'm a little iffy about the but, because if you don't delve into the depths of the Colour Picker there is no but at all.
If you use the Colour Picker as is, without digging into the defaults, you will be defining device independent CIE colours using a device dependent RGB interface for a linear colour space.
In a linear RGB colour space equal amounts of colourant render as neutral gray, just as if you were working in a CIE device independent colour space such as CIELch (lightness, chroma, hue).
The problem with the Colour Picker and the system as such is that it says, "OK, all these colour spaces are for RGB data, so I'll lump them together whether they are linear or not."
The ICC Specification doesn't have a separate category for linear RGB colour spaces (idealised RGB colour spaces) versus measured monitor spaces and (inkjet) printer spaces which are non-linear.
If you play with the Colour Picker, then next to the data model selector (Gray, RGB, HSB (hue, saturation, brightness) and CMYK) there is a button with a barely visible triangular Disclose icon.
If you click the Disclose icon, you will see a drop-down list of installed ICC profiles for that data model, including idealised and linear spaces as well as measured device spaces that are non-linear.
To make matters a bit more complicated, there are idealised and linear RGB colour spaces that serve as substitutes for a proper CIELch interface as in LinoColor/NewColor, but there are no idealised and linear CMYK colour spaces (well, not as near linear anyway).
/hh