ID to PDF Postscript Issue

Question

Having an issue with printing to postscript from ID for a book cover according to the following specifications required by our printer:
in the Print dialogue box's Color Management section, the Option Color Handling field should be set to "Let InDesign handle the colors" and under Printer Profile, "Document CMYK - US Web Coated" selected.
However, what I see in the Color Handling field is a choice of "No Color Management" or "Postscript Printer Determines Color" instead of the above.
If I return to the Output section and change it from "Color: Composite Leave Unchanged" as directed by LSI to "Composite CMYK", then it becomes possible to have the recommended choices back in the Color Management section ("Let InDesign handle the colors" and under Printer Profile, "Document CMYK - US Web Coated" selected.)
Perhaps this has something to do with the cover's design which utilizes only rich black and white?
Please advise. Thanks.
Appreciatively,
Luca
And the PDF from my end doesn't appear to have quite the deep blacks when compared with ID's, biut this could be the screen.
I've analyzed with the Output Reader in Acrobat, and all blacks are showing as 100% and white as 0%.

Answer 1

First off, are you using Rich Black on the cover, or only 100% K black? That makes a huge difference in the output (and cost). Rich Black is a four-color mix that is darker than you can achieve with 100% K alone. Earlier we were discussing how to make this output to black ink only (and that will not look as dark in print as a rich black). I had advised you to set the Appearance of Black prefefence to output all blacks as rich black for printing to PDF using composite grayscale, I probably also should have told you to set it to display all blacks accurately ID to render 100% K somewhat lighter than real rich blacks, so if you haven't done that on your own, it would probably account for the differnce you see on screen inthe PDF and ID.
If you are using RICH black, you don't want to output as composite gray, and the setting for outputting blacks becomes irrelevant. It also becomes irrelevant IF you output to composite CMYK or Composite Leave Colors Unchanged AND the only color on the page is [Black] or some tint of [Black] (i.e any art is either bitmap mode or grayscale, or CMYK with empty CMY channels) and anything added in ID uses only the [Black], [Paper] or [None] swatches AND you do not add automatic printer marks. In that case you will generate a PDF with nothing in the CMY channels, and a digital printer should recognize it as black-only. For traditional press the printer will simply not output the blank plates.