How to convert rich black to flat black?

I have some cartoons that are downloaded as CMYK. The black in them is rick black, and I need it to be flat black (100% black but not grayscale). What's the best way to do this?

MAssage each channel individually with a curves or level adjustment based on a selection created from the black channel.
Mylenium

Similar Messages

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

How to Convert to Black & White?

I am currently using Adobe Acrobat 9 Standard Edition. I have a .pdf document that contains colored font. I want all the font to be black but nothing is working. I have tried to "print" to Adobe, selecting the Black & White option, but the color will not convert. I do not want to have to save my .pdf as another file, convert, and then re-.pdf it. Is there a way to convert to black and white within Acrobat itself?

Thanks and blessings on you.
This worked for me when the "Convert to Composite gray" did not.
My starting pdf file was cmyk and the type was a 57% black boosted with 60-70% of the other process colors. Converting to composite gray gave me a medium dark gray type, not black; and "convert colors to black" worked for the type but blasted the illustrations.
Acrobat has so many damn settings and options; you suspect there must be one that will do what you want, but trial and erroring it can be a long and frustrating process. Bless you for sharing your expertise.

How to convert a black and white tif image to colour

I want to convert a black and white tif image to colour. I opened it in Photoshop, changed the mode to RGB colour/8, saved it as psd, but when I use the Replace Colour dialogue box, I just get my colour showing as grey-scale. What’s the correct way to proceed?
Thank you

What’s the correct way to proceed?
Joke?
In Photoshop there are often more ways than one to achieve a task and none of them need be considered »wrong« as long as the result fits the intention, so »the correct way« seems to be problematic terminology.
Anyway, one can use a Layer set to Blend Mode Color and paint on that with whatever colors.
Or one can use Solid Color Layers set to Blend Mode Color.
Or Hue/Saturation Layers …
To edit contrast if necessary Curves or Levels Adjustment Layers can be employed.
You could also have googled »photoshop colorize black and white« …

How do I convert to black & white in Layers?

I am using Scott Kelby's book Elements 6. He tells how to convert to black & white in the Layers palette. I must have something checked incorrectly. WHen I do as he writes only parts of the picture are in black and white. I have a gradient problem. I need to get the tool to the default setting.

Like Mark, I don't have the book so can only guess which method Scot Kelby is using in his tutorial.
Before you reset the took, press D to reset your tool box colors to the default black and white. You might have your tool box color chips set to colors which would result in gray being painted in the mask.
Unless the tutorial you are using gives a blend mode for the gradient tool, make sure it is in Normal blend mode.
Check if you are getting the expected results.
If not...
Reset Tool instructions can be found here:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pselements/ss/10tipspse7_9.htm
Are you dragging a gradient in a layer mask or an adjustment layer mask?
Keep in mind if you are masking: Areas with black paint will be hidden (effect... black and white in this case... will not be seen); areas in white will be revealed (effect...black and white in this case...will be displayed or shown); areas that are gray will be semi-transparent (the amount of transparent is dependent on the brightness value of the shade of gray...think feathering.)
Here's another tutorial about how to make a black and white with a splash of color:
http://www.alibony.com/pse/061608bw-convert.html
The above tutorial I have linked below uses a clipping mask/clipping group...same thing; different name. If you have PSE 9, you can just create a mask beside the black and white conversion without doing the clipping mask step(s).
If using the smart brush, there are instructions in this thread:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3012798

Converting from rich black to flat black

We have a syndications service from which we download CMYK .jpg files. Sometimes the files are flat black and they print in color just fine. Other times the .jpgs are rick black and the printing result is muddy, if not downright illegible.
Is there a way to take those CMYK .jpg files and convert them to flat black instead of rich black? I'm wondering if there is an easier way than having to go in and change all the values individually to achieve a better printing result.
Using:
Windows
PC
PS CS4.
Thanks in advance.

Create a selection from the black channel, subtract that info from the cyan, magenta, yellow channels. Takes 10 seconds. May not always be correct, though.
Mylenium

How do you get black to look "dark black" when converting to PDF?

Some times when I convert my document to a PDF, the blacks show more as a grey. Sometimes ill see both gray and actual black on the same PDF. I know this has something to do with the "appearance of black" in the prefernaces but I cannot figure out what the proper settings are for this.

Well, Appereance of Black has sure something to do with that but it´s not the whole truth. If you are making RGB or Grayscale PDF, and you have your Print/Export Appereance of Black set as Rich Black, InDesign converts all your K100 Blacks to Rich Black. That doesn´t happen if you target Color Space (in PDF export or printing) is CMYK.
You can do that manually too, also for CMYK PDFs. Simply create new swatch, for instance C30, M0, Y0, K100 or if you want even deeper black, use C30, M30, Y30, K100. All the elements you color with this new swatch will be darker.
I wouldnt use that kind of rich black for text for printed documents, at least if text is small size. InDesign doesn´t overprint by default any other black than regular K100 black. And there might be some convergence issues too.

How can I get rich black onto only black plate

I do layout for an advertising magazine. Much of the content is received from others (the advertisers) and much of that is amatuer (created in Word, etc.).
I place the ads into an ID (using CC) and export to PDF. My printer has me using a PDF/X-1a:2001 standard and for color conversion has me using Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers) with Destination and PDF/X Out Intent both Document CMYK. These settings work well for getting the RGB images in these documents output to CMYK as we need.
The problem is that often there will be text, or other fine line graphics, etc. that are actually rich black, printing on all plates, and the printer wants only a black plate to avoid registration problems.
We are printing on newsprint on a newspaper press.
Is there anyway to export to PDF and get these rich blacks to print only on the black plate (the copy also contains color images; usually RGB which the profile converts to CMYK)?

Rob Day wrote:
The problem is that often there will be text, or other fine line graphics, etc. that are actually rich black, printing on all plates, and the printer wants only a black plate to avoid registration problems.
The text in the PDFs you are placing could be 4-color rich blacks, but it could also be black only and you are getting a CMYK-to-CMYK conversion on output (4-color blacks) because of conflicting profiles.
I don't think you've mentioned what your document's Color Mangement policy is, but to avoid profile conflicts when you place PDFs with CMYK color, the CMYK policy has to be either Off or Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles). Note that for existing layouts the policy is set on creation.
Also, the export dialog's Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers) can be misleading, that setting preserves the documents native colors, but not the colors of placed images and PDFs. If a placed PDF's profile conflicts with the ID document's profile, black will get converted—it's the opposite of the Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles) CM policy.
My color settings are as follows:
North America General Purpose 2
Working Spaces:
RGB sRGB IEC619660-2.1
CMYK US Web Coasted (SWOP) v2
Color Management Policies
RGB Preserve Embedded Profiles
CMYK Preserave Numbers (Ignroe Linked Profiles)
For the export dialog, I am using Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers) because that it what my printer told me to use (remember that besides the black issue we are also dealing with making sure all images are CMYK and not RGB).
Any insights you have to this would be appreciated.

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!

How to convert a PDF's Process Black to spot color

We have been asked to build InDesign templates for a two-PMS-color math book. The design calls for two PMS colors: a dark blue for most text and red highlights.
Because our Math plug-in doesn't work easily with PMS colors (it defaults to Process black), we hope to create all the “blue” text in Process Black. The press PDFs will have two inks: Process Black and PMS red. On press they will print the black plate in our blue PMS color.
This plan works on press, but for non-press use, we also want the PDFs to visually match the blue and red printed book. Ideally we would convert the Black Process ink to a blue spot but I'm not sure if this can be done.
Question 1: Does anyone know of a way to convert Process Black in a PDF to a spot color? Pitstop can convert spot to process, but we want the reverse.
Question 2 (which I may also post in the InDesign forum) Do you know of a way to redefine (or alias?) the indesign black swatch so that it functions as a spot color?

1 - yes, you can do this with Preflight in Acrobat Pro, but it's not on the default set of fixups.
Open Preflight, select "Single fixups" - the wrench icon
Options > Create New Preflight Fixup
Give it a name (e.g. "process black to spot")
Choose the Color category in the upper right
Choose 'Convert to spot color' in the upper left
Define the source parameters in the main panel (in your case, CMYK%, 0-0-0-100 with tolerance 0)
Define the spot color to change this color into, and the alternative space for rendering (i.e. your blue color)
If you wish, add a check to limit the conversion to certain things (e.g. text, vectors, etc.)
Click OK to save the fixup, then click FIX to apply it. To verify the result, use the Output Preview dialog in Acrobat.

Help with rich black color for print project, please

We are using CS5 photoshop to create a 3ft x 8 ft vinyl banner. We've never created something this large for print before. Included layers are a black to white gradient, a black filigree graphic from DigitalJuice, and black text (that was created in Illustrator by someone else). We set the project up using CMYK. The printer informed us that we need to change the blacks to rich black (C50%, M40%, Y40%, K100%).
How is this best done? I can see how to change the color picker to the rich black %, but this doesn't appear to change the blacks in the project. Is there a way to change them, or to export the project with rich blacks?
Do we have to begin from scratch - and if so, how do we get the graphics and gradients to the rich black color settings.
Any help will be greatly appreciated -

In RGB mode I can't create non - rich black. For example if I set the color palette to CMYK, choose C=0%, M=0%,Y=0%, K=100%, fill the canvas with this color, and then measure the color with the eyedropper, the color reads C=70%, M=68%, Y=64, K=74%.
This means that if your document is in CMYK mode and you have blacks that read C=0%, M=0%,Y=0%, K=100%, converting the document to RGB and then back to CMYK these blacks will become rich. Though the numbers of the rich black my vary depending on how your color management is set.
Have in mind that the numbers above preserve the tonal intensity of non-rich black when converted to rich black. If you want the numbers your printer suggested they will be fine for elements like text and flat colors but for things like photo images this will intensify the blacks and will alter the tonal balance appearance which may be not what you want.

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).

Rich black gray images

I want to create a rich black, CMYK gray image. The colors must blend CMYK to make a nice gray image. It would be nice to apply GCR to remove some of the CMY and reduce the TAC. So far, I am able to make this happen. However, as a result of the GCR, the highlight areas in the photo are made up of mostly CMY. I would like to have the highlight areas made up of mostly black only. So, I want to use GCR in the mid-tone and shadow areas, but I'd like to use mostly black only in the highlight areas. Any thoughts as to how I can make this happen?

You are misunderstanding GCR. CMY in the highlights is not the result of GCR, it is the ABSENCE of GCR in those tones.
GCR is the substitution of blacK for CMY when there are combinations of the color inks in ratios that would simulate neutral gray (generally, equal amounts of C & M, and about 20% of those percentages as Y). The theory being that blacK alone can substitute for the gray that CMY can give. In practice it doesn't quite work out that way, but using black where neutral gray appears in the CMY mix up to about 50 % replacement is a good compromise.
If you are converting from RGB to CMYK, in Color Settings, set the working CMYK space to Custom CMYK, then use GCR and varying amounts of black generation to force more black replacement up into the light values of the image.
If your image is CMYK already, you'll have to do a "manual GCR by using Curves. Or, you could convert back to RGB, then control the conversion as above back to CMYK.
In either case, it's a crap shoot and you'll have to experiment and fine tune with Curves.
Rich

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

How to convert rich black to flat black?

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