Grayscale InDesign becomes Rich Black PDF

I have an InDesign CS6 file with 100K black-only line art placed as EPS from Illustrator CS6. The resulting PDF is rich black and I cannot find anywhere how to control the color at PDF export. I thought saving as an .AI file would fix it, I've tried saving back to every legacy version as both EPS and AI and that doesn't work either, so it must be something happening at PDF export. My only color options are all CMYK variants.
Anyone have any tricks to get around this flaw?
Thanks,
Glen

First of all, EPS from Illustrator is absolutely archaic. Save the Illustrator as PDF/X-4 or High Quality Print and place that PDF into InDesign.
Secondly, better check what color space is used in Illustrator. If the Illustrator document is setup as RGB as opposed to CMYK, your black-only line art will be actually RGB black. There is nothing you can do about fixing that in InDesign.
- Dov

Similar Messages

Blacks are becoming rich blacks when exporting to PDF in CS2

Im having a funny problem I have never noticed before where when I export to PDF from InDesign CS2 all blacks turn to rich blacks. I am verifying this by opening it up in Acrobat and viewing the separations.
I have narrowed it down to a single setting. I can replicate it by selecting the "High Quality Print" preset and then in the Profile Inclusion Policy selecting "Include All Profiles" then exporting.
This shouldn't be... Colour conversion is turned off so the PDF compiler should not be modifying the colour... just sending a tag along with it.

I understand the processes of colour management and in no way am I trying to turn it off. Can somebody please try it out and see if my original problem is happening to them. I'm only asking about one variable... The Profile Inclusion Policy.
I understand "No colour conversion" option does not mean turning off colour management... Its keeps all source files in their original colour space. I know this stuff.
I also know there is not a lot of different between the hight quality print preset and the press quality other than the press preset has the Convert to Destination option set for colour conversion which forces objects colour to that of the destination profile. However this is not important... And please dont argue about this point because I'm only looking for a solution to one problem and I'm not a novice.
I want to know why when I select include all profiles the black is converted to a rich black?

Placing native Indesign files - rich black

Guys,
I've been moving over to placing Indesign files for the adverts I have created into my magazine layout rather than exporting to PDF and placing them.
However, to my horror, I have discovered that if you do this indesign will output overprinting 100% black as rich black.
Why does it do this? Can I stop it?
If I take the advert file and place it, the black is rich, if I export the exact same indesign file as PDF and place that then the black stays 100% overprinting.

Confirmed!
The lesson here is when you are importing native InDesign files into InDesign, you must ensure the working spaces are the same, or convert policy as above.
Thanks guys.

How to achieve rich black in exported PDF?

InDesign CS5 on Snow Leopard. I have black set to display and output accurately (not rich black). Color settings are North America General Purpose 2. Proof Setup is set to Document CMYK U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2, so that I can see on the screen as accurately as possible what it will look like when printed.
A large, mostly black image covers my first page; it's an imported PSD. When I view the image in PhotoShop, it shows as 'rich black' - you know, on-screen 100% black. But when looking at it in InDesign, it appears a dull grey. It also appears a dull grey when exporting to PDF or printing it.
How do I get it to go to PDF and to print as crisp, perfect, 100% dark rich black?
If possible, I'd like it to appear on my screen roughly as it will in the exported PDF and the printed page.
Thanks!

Peter,
It isn't quite that simple. If you export PDF/X-4 or any PDF without color conversion at export, you may find that the subsequent printing system does in fact make some assumptions about R=G=B colors really being the equivalent of DeviceCMYK (0,0,0,K). This is often done at the RIP to resolve the problem of printing office documents, many of which produce only RGB colors where R=G=B is grayscale and the endpoints of (0,0,0) and (255,255,255) are the equivalent of DeviceCMYK (0,0,0,1) and (0,0,0,0) respectively.
Thus, my recommendation is that for any real control of black output using graphic arts software, do not rely on conversions from RGB to either give you pure black / grayscale or for that matter any rich black. It is too much of a crapshoot depending upon the rest of your workflow.
- Dov

PDF creation causes rich black colors to shift

I'm designing a book cover. There are three main areas: front, back and spine. Each area has specified the default "black" color in the swatches panel. This color uses 100% K in the CMYK color space. In the preferences panel, under "appearance of black", I have checked to print and display blacks as rich black. Everthing looks great on the Indesign file. My blacks are as specified. Everything has been double-checked on the swatch panel to be set to this black color, which is a non-editable color (always remains 100% K on the CMYK setting).It has been displaying just fine on the file, as a rich black, no color shifting ever whatsoever until doing the following:
When I make a PDF using the "Export" window, I select PDF/x-1A as my printer specifies. I create the PDF, and open it, only to see that my blacks are being shifted to a shade of deep brownish black.
On the first few attempts, only two of the three areas specified above did this. ON the next attempts, all three areas look the same. This is weird. I'm very disappointed with the strange issues present in Indesign, as I am trained with Quarkxpress and find it to work flawlessly in comparison, especially with something like color output.
What am I doing wrong?
When I change settings, for example, change the color management to "none" or leave it in the default for the PDFx/1-a, it doesn't make any difference in this glitch in the output.
Help!
Thanks.

The Appearance of Black setting to print all blacks as rich black ONLY affects printing or exporting to RGB devices (essentially printing to desktop printers or PRINTING to PDF with Composite RGB or Composite Grayscale selected). It has no effect at all on EXPORT to PDF.
>I changed my 100%K only blacks to genuine rich blacks of 100%K 25%C 25%Y 25%M and the problem is corrected.
You said this is a book cover. That implies that the output will be printed, not viewed on screen. For printed output it is ESSENTIAL that you set blacks to display accurately. You should also turn on Overprint Preview when judging color. You'll probably get away with your rich black in any type over 12 points or so where it might be applied, but it's generally not a great idea to use rich black for type in small sizes. Rich blacks also generally use slightly more cyan than yellow and magenta to compensate for ink impurities.
Do you have a high-end monitor? Is your monitor calibrated and profiled using a colorimeter? If not, you can forget what you see on screen. The odds that it is anywhere near accurate are similar to the odds of winning the lottery. Are you using the same color space in Acrobat as you are in ID? If you change the color space, the appearance of your colors will change.
When you export to PDF/X-1a you are converting everything to CMYK using a target color space. By default the conversion option is set to preserve numbers. If your imported art has an embedded profile that differs from the destination, that will be honored and color numbers will be changed to preserve the appearance of color, as much as possible taking into account different gamuts, and untagged imported art, along with native objects will all be presumed to be in the current working space in ID, and cmyk numbers for those objects will be preserved. If the destination space differs from the working space, thew appearance of these colors will shift, but 100% K native objects will continue to be 100% K in the PDF. A conversion to a destination that differs from the working space WITHOUT preserving numbers will result in 100% K being changed to a 4-color mix that mimics the appearance of 100% K output in the working space.
Knowing the destination space in advance is vital if you are doing a CMYK conversion. CMYK profiles are "device dependent" and CMYK-to-CMYK conversions are destructive, both in terms of potential loss of color (and you don't gain by going from a smaller to a larger gamut space) and conversion of solid colors to 4-color mixes which is particularly problematic for black type and thin rules.

100k black exporting to PDF as rich black

Hey guys,
I've rattled my brain for long enough over this issue, it's time to ask the wider community.
When I export a pdf with any of my export profiles, all overprint 100k (black swatch) blacks are exported as CMYK. It doesn't matter if it's text or a graphic, the whole document is CMYK.
My export profiles have been bulletproof for the past 2 years, I use numerous printers so I always export using a very generic profile. Within the last two days, something has happened with my settings and eveything I export has this issue. I've poured over my settings and none of it has led me to an answer.
My only solution is converting to my generic profile with numbers preserved.
This makes the problem go away but it doesn't answer the question of why it has changed after all this time.
Help.
Screenshot of doc open in InDesign with text selected with black swatch selected:
Screenshot of doc in Acrobat pro seps with black unchecked:

Actually, a better question might be how you avoided the rich black using what you believe are the exact same settings over the past two years!!
Simply stated, if you do a PDF export and the CMYK content in your document is in a different CMYK color space than that specified for your output and your export setting call for converting colors to the output color space without the preserve CMYK values specified, there will definitely be a CMYK to C'M'Y'K' conversion occurring. This has been true since at least the first CS version of InDesign (InDesign 3).
The problem with CMYK to C'M'Y'K conversions is that they are a 4-3-4 conversion. The CMYK values are not directly converted to C'M'Y'K' but rather, converted first to the color management connection color space by use of the input profile and then from that color space back to the CMYK color space specified in your export settings. Such 4-3-4 conversions do not preserve pure colorant values. Thus you have the possibility of ending up with rich black if your content's color space and the output color space differ. The preserve numbers option was put in to effectively ignore CMYK to C'M'Y'K' conversion entirely and only deal with the conversion of RGB color spaces to the output color space. (Another technology, known a “device link profiles” can be used for CMYK to C'M'Y'K color conversions, preserving pure colorants, especially black. Unfortunately, InDesign doesn't support device link technologies!)
Then we must come back to why things supposed worked the last two years without specifying the “preserve values” option?!?!? One possibility is that previously your default CMYK color space exactly matched the output color space, thus bypassing any color conversion at all!
- Dov

Can you clarify OverPrint Black in Indesign with the other preference of Rich Black

InDesign offers the option "Overprint [Black] swatch at 100%" and also offers Rich Black on RGB and Greyscale devices. Does it have a Rich Black conversion or should i change [Black] to be Rich Black
Thanks

When you print any color on a monochrome printer it is converted to a shade of gray (and this is why converting color photos to to grayscale can either really improve them when there is strong contrast but garish color combination, or make them nearly flat if the color values are all very similar). If your text is to be printed, making it rich black is likely to make it fuzzy when printed in color due to minor misregistration between the inks. The normal approach is to make black type overprint any background color to avoid trapping and registration problems.
If you set the preference to output all blacks accurately, as I said before, your 100% coverage on the monochrome printer will be reserved for objects that use rich black and your K-only objects will print as a dark gray (as they would appear in a full-color print when compared to a rich black object).

True black converting to rich black when importing one specific PDF

I am using InDesign CC. When importing one particular CMYK PDF file into my document, the black text is converting to 4-color rich black. I have InDesign 5.0 on another computer. Following the same procedure on that computer, the text remains 100% K. My settings are the same, as far as I can tell.
Other designers across the country using this same ad have no problem. The text remains 100% K. We are all using InDesign, but I am the only one using InDesign CC.
I do not have this problem with any other ads (so far), but I have been using CC for only two months.
Any ideas?

It has been over a month since I walked through her settings with her, Rob, and the minute details have been replaced in my brain. I do know that she built the ad in CMYK, used 100%K for text, left the layers unflattened, ensured she had a background layer. In her PDF output settings, she converted to destination, and her destination profile was CMYK SWOP 2. I had her try CMYK web uncoated v2, as well. I don't recall what her overall color setting was set to (North America General Purpose? Custom? Again, nothing that alarmed me).
Sorry I don't have more details. She isn't interested in helping me investigate this further, since I am the only one with difficulties.
As far as changing the assigned profile within InDesign, yes, I tried that. It didn't help. I believe I exhaused all possible combinations for output.
Good to hear (in a sick sort of way) about the problems with Acrobat. I had read about Acrobat having difficulties with preserving numbers, so I wasn't as concerned about the output preview. But on the other hand, I wasn't sure if it might be an "a-ha" symptom for this particular PDF.
So many possibilities, so little time. Your explanations have helped my stress tremendously. Many thanks!

Rich Black removal from PDF

Hi Team,
The PDF which we are supplying to prointer is reporting issue of rich black color used. Is there any way we can remove rich black from PDFs using acrobat professional.
Thanks in Advance!

Here's a previous discussion of the topic:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/851346?tstart=0
And here's another helpful answer from another forum:
http://acrobatusers.com/forum/printing-prepress/how-keep-total-area-coverage-under-240

Rich black needs to be designed?

In ID (CS5) preferences, it offers an option of "Accurate blacks" or "Rich blacks". As discussed before, "Accurate blacks" are 100%K and "Rich blacks" are a combination of CMYK. Am I assuming correctly that if you have designed a black box in InDesign and want it to print with a rich black, as well as choosing the "Rich black" option in Preferences, you also need to 'make' the black out of CMYK (such as 60C, 50M, 40Y, and 100K). You can not just choose the 'Print with Rich black' preference thinking it will change all of your blacks into rich black mixtures. Is that correct?

BobLevine wrote:
FWIW, my opinion is that anyone doing work destined for press should have both setting at accurate. For press you need to create and assign a rich black swatch.
I'm a print guy, and I disagree with Bob on this. I keep my dispaly set to accurate, becasue that affects what I see on screen, but the output setting has no effect whatever on exported PDF, which is the preferred file for handoff, so in essence the setting is pretty irrelevant for press.
That said, it DOES affect PRINTING to PDF using composite grayscale as the destination. If set to output accurately, 100%K is reserved in the output for rich blacks, and your 100% K type will print as a screen to reflect that it is lighter than a rich black. Small matter, and if you don't print to PDF or desktop printers, it really doesn't matter.

Semi-transparent block, pure black and rich black problems

Hi!
I'm new to inDesign, and I'm currently designing a book cover, for which I need some special effects. I'll try to explain as best as I can.
The background is rich black, on top of it I have a text in white (all over it). I applied a block with 80% opacity, in rich black color. I cut out some shapes in it. The point was to have the text in dark gray all over the book cover, but in white in the places where I have the shapes.
Everything is working exactly like I want, but a friend of mine told me if I apply rich black over white, I'll get a kind of magenta gray, so I have to apply pure 100 K to avoid that and get the dark gray I want. I tried that, and of course, applying some pure black block on top of my rich black cover gives all the cover a "grayish black" look. How can I work around that? I tried setting my semi-transparent block to "darken", but it didn't change anything.
I put the links to the pdf, I hope that's ok.
That's the one with rich black: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/68049919/coverlayout_print_richblack.pdf
and that's how it looks with the pure black: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/68049919/coverlayout_print.pdf
Thanks a lot!

There's no need to use transparency to create your background text color—just make a text frame filled with the rich black then select the type and fill it with an 80% tint of the rich black swatch or any other gray mix. Like this:
The text frame selected with its fill showing in the Colors panel:
Here the text is selected and the Colors panel shows the text fill as an 80% tint of the rich black. There's no transparency in this case.
In general it's bad practice to use transparency when you can get the same effect with color fills.
Also if you are worried about the neutrality of the gray check with your printer on whether the gray text should be 4-color (your 80% tint) or straight black (95% black).
The accuracy of the InDesign softproof depends on an accurate monitor profile and the assigned CMYK profile (Edit>Assign Profiles...). The assigned CMYK profile affects the preview including the profiled gray balance. For example the default SWOP CMYK profile previews your 4-color dark gray bluer and as a lighter value than US Sheetfed.
The preview of your 85% rich black mix with different CMYK asignments

Rich black from laser for positives

Hello,
I have a RICOH Aficio SP C811DN printer, and I am having the worst luck getting it to print real rich black. I'm using it to print film positives on polyester vellum for burning silkscreens.
Between the 30+ printer profiles and numerous other settings, there are over 20 million different ways to print one document.
[code]Illustrator Color Management:
2 Choices for Color handling
Let Illustrator determine colors
Let PostScript printer determine colors
30 Printer profiles including:
Generic CMYK
U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2
150-line Pantone
RICOH Aficio SP C811DN
4 Rendering Intent Choices:
Perceptual
Saturation
Relative Colorimetric
Absolute Colorimetric
Printer Dialog Color Matching:
ColorSync or In Printer
Which Profile for ColorSync? Printer profile?
Printer Features:
Color Smoothing: On or Off
Color Mode: Black/White or Color
Gradation: Fast, Standard, Fine
Color Setting: Off, Fine, or Super Fine
Color Profile: Auto, Photographic, Presentation, Solid Color, User Setting, CLP Simulation1, CLP Simulation2
Dithering: Auto, Photographic, Text, User Setting
Gray Reproduction: Black/Gray by K, Black by K, CMY+K, Black/Gray by K (Text only), Black by K (Text only)
Black Over Print: On or Off
CMYK Simulation Profile: Off, US OffsetPrint, Euroscale, JapanColor, PaletteColor[/code]
Add all these options up and you get[b] 24,192,000[/b] different, unique ways to print a document. I really don't have the time to try them all out. How can I make sense of it all? :?:
Do you have any advice? I'm stuck with dark gray printouts. :(
Thanks
-Dodd
Art Department
Calconix, Inc.
TimeZone ®
(888)256-2544
(610)642-5921
(610)642-5928 Fax

make sure your art is 'rich black (color space CMYK-assign new color 40-50-50-100)then...assuming that you have Acrobat--save illustrator file as PDF and print that from acrobat(high quality print setting)...or...further assuming that you have Indesign--save illustrator file as EPS and place in Indesign and print from there.

Rich Black

Hi. I am a black and white photographer and I'm trying to print some greeting cards. I know that I need to convert the image to rich black in order to get the richest blacks. I really don't know how to exactly do this. I've gotten the CMYK values from my printer for what their rich black is, but I'm not sure if I'm just supposed to convert my grayscale image to CMYK in photoshop and make the conversion in InDesign or if I'm supposed to do it in Photoshop? I just converted it to CMYK in photoshop and placed it in InDesign and had a test printed. The image came back with a blue tint that was not very attractive. Any help on how to exactly do this would be much appreciated, thanks!

lauren,
Often, the printer's choice was probably a blue-black (that is a black with a lot of cyan in it) is a visually attractive way to print large solid black areas. That may not work so well for photographs, unless you want a cool tone in the grayscale.
In Photoshop's cmyk color mode, the default black (when you reset the color patches in the tool palette) is a good "safe" rich black. But you can customize the kind of black you want fairly easily.
Get a hold of one of the Pantone books that shows color formulas in CMYK, such as their fanout color formula guide which gives you side-by-side comparison of pure mixed pantone colors with their closest CMYK equivalents. This is a good reference to have anyway, as you can see which Pantone colors will and which won't print properly in commercial CMYK offset printing. In any case, you can choose a black you like (warm, cool, greenish, reddish, etc.) and use the CMYK formula provided adjacent to the swatches.
You should also be using a carefully calibrated color monitor and color managed printer so you can preview results.
Now a couple of points about where to apply the color. You can, of course, do it in Photoshop. But it is a lot easier to save a greyscale .tif file. Place it in InDesign, and play with the color there. It is VERY quick and easy to swap out the color there, or run color tests from InDesign, before turning over your final art to the printer.
Hope this helps.
Neil

Importing PS tranparencies and Rich Black

Hi
Im having a problem importing photoshop files containing transparent backgrounds.
Evertime I place one on a black background and publish ,the background appears dark grey
Output all blacks as rich blacks is defined
and my PDF present is Press quailty
Indesign cs3
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

The user has sent me the files, and her settings, and I think I've finally found the problem.
You are printing to PDF, which is OK, but exporting is simpler, and less prone, I think, to problems. I was finally able to reproduce the rich black by printing to PDF and using the "standard" joboptions in the printer properties (though it wouldn't be limited to just that particular option set). Those options do an internal conversion to RGB, which is then getting converted back to rich black.
Make sure you click the setup button in the print dialog to access the printer driver, then change the default settings to something that either converts to CMYK or preserves color, and you should be fine, or export and set the color in the export dialog.
Peter

Print quality of grey text on rich black background

I've been working on various print materials that require me to use a lot of grey text at various shades set on a black background. My understanding is that this can easily look terrible due to the misregrestation of the four colors. Here's an example of the kind of text I'm working with:
This is how I have things set up right now:
Rich Black Swatch: C70 M50 Y30 K100
All text uses the same swatch at various tints in InDesign (15% tint for headlines, 25% tint for body text)
Body text size is 8 pt/10.8 pt, headlines are 14 pt
These are being printed on an offset press and the printer isn't local, so we don't get proofs. Is there are better way to set this up or is this the best I can hope for? Thanks for any help!

I wonder what type of paper are you planning on using for these pages? Your total ink amount is 250. What you should be concerned about is dot gain and ink spread. Oh, nice rich Black on screen isn't so nice on press for a number of reasons. Have you thought about using a Spot Black? Why use process if all you have is Black? Unless, ofcourse, you have other elements that use process colors. You have to know the press and the paper before you can make a judgement about the effectiveness of rich Black with screen tinted variants. You could bite the bullet and let the file fly. Or, you could use just Black with screen tint variants to lesson problems on press and with readibility. No proofs? No press check either?

Grayscale InDesign becomes Rich Black PDF

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for