Rich Black in AI CS3

I'm a long-term Freehand user so please bear with me!
OK, I've got some experience with AI but have used Freehand extensively for the past 10+ years. Decided to give AI a try via the CS3 30-day trial, since I know it will handle Freehand MX files. I've come across a problem almost straight away, however.
I noticed, when I opened an MX file in AI CS3, that all my rich blacks had been changed into 0,0,0,100k blacks - and all the 0,0,0,100k blacks had been left as they were. I can't work with that - I need a rich black and I need a 100k black. Does anyone know why this is happening, and how I can solve the problem?

No, unfortunately that makes no difference. Basically, my work files always include two blacks: the basic 0,0,0,100k black and a rich black, which Freehand always composes as 75,68,67,90. Whenever I opened a Freehand file in AI CS2, it would respect the two different blacks as I'd originally set them in the Freehand document. Opening the same file in CS3, for some weird reason CS3 is altering ALL the blacks to the same: 0,0,0,100k.
When I look at the colour swatch in CS3, whether using a brand new AI document or opening one of my Freehand files, I see two blacks listed. One labelled "black", the other labelled "K=100". However, both have an identical makeup: 0,0,0,100. That's surely not correct? The colour named "black" should surely be a rich black, not just 100k. Otherwise, what's the point of the K=100 colour?
I have to say, apart from this issue I've been impressed with AI CS3. For a Freehand user, it's much easier to work with than previous versions. I'm very tempted to make the switch, though probably to CS4 now that it's available.

Similar Messages

Rich Black Color in AI CS3

Hi, everyone!
I am using AI CS3. I want to apply the rich black color to my name card as below. Please let me know whether it's good to apply a rich black color in this condition. If so, please tell me how to make it as a rich black color for CMYK Process ( C=? ; M=? ; Y=? ; K=? ).
Everyone helps me! I will be very pleased and surprised to get the fastest answer.
Luck

Are you printing digitally in colour? If not, then there is little reason to use a rich black. On an offset press you can use a custom black to get a very dark and saturated result.
If you’re still here, then I guess it’s four colour digital. I would use 40, 30, 30, 100 for by black. I would also add a process black only (0, 0, 0, 100) keepaway around the type. Select the text objects and go to the Appearance panel. Click on Add New Stroke and drag the stroke below the Characters line. Make the stroke 1 point (half will be hidden under the text) black (0, 0, 0, 100). Use Separation Preview to verify that the black stroke does not overprint. Do the same in Acrobat Pro using Advanced > Print Production > Output Preview.
Appearance panel…
Separation Preview with all colours…
Separation Preview with black off…
(See that the text looks bolder? That’s what you want.)

100K Black and Rich Black problem

When I create something in AI and save it as PDF document, all Blacks in AI
I see as Rich Black, but when I open this pdf in Acrobat8, all blacks are
displayed as 100K Blacks..
Why this is happening?
I'm usign AI CS3 and Acrobat 8.
Preferences in AI:
On Screen: Display All Blacks as Rich Black
Printing/Exporting: Output All Blacks as Rich Black
Thanks in advance,
Roman

The preferences of "Printing/Exporting: Output All Blacks as Rich Black" is applicable only for printing to RGB printers like the desktop non-postscript printers or when exporting to RGB file formats.
When you save as PDF with [Illustrator Default] preset, you actually create a CMYK PDF. Acrobat has no such "Rich Black/Accurate Black" preference and hence displays "light" black.
If you create an RGB PDF by selecting Convert to Destination and Destination as an RGB profile,say, sRGB from the Output panel of Save Adobe PDF dialog, Acrobat should display your desired jet black.

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?

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

Exporting CYMK Black as Rich Black

I continue to struggle with getting CYMK Black as rich black. I have Illustrator CS4.....
Settings that seem relevant follow:
The Document Color Mode is set to CYMK
The Appearance of Black is set to both display and export as Rich Black
When I do an export to JPG or Print to Adobe PDF driver, the black come out as dark gray
The object color appear correct 0,0,0,100
The black displays as rich black when I am working on it in illustrator
What am I missing here..... The way I work around it to send a proof to a customer is change the doc color mode to RGB.....but that really only is suitable for all black art......and it's seems to be a cludgy work around.
I guess the question is why isn't illustrator CS4 outputing rich black when I set ouput as rich black for export?
I have read other posts here on the subject but they seem to be work arounds as well.
Is there something I am missing here fundementally?? Perhaps another setting I am unaware of?
Thanks!

Rich Black is more like 100% Black 60% C 60% M and 60% Y there are all types of combinations printers use.
What you should do is to make swatches of your various rich blacks after discussing it with your printers as to their preferences and your needs and name them to correspond to the printer (vender) and then save it as a rich black library that way you won't even have thin about it in the future.

Rich black in Reader 9?

Every document I print from Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 comes out with rich black text. If I "Let the printer determine colors" the text in the PDF is printed in accurate black. Other people do not seem to have this issue. Apparently the default Acrobat Color Management being used on my system has rich black set as the default. Is there any way to change this? I would like to use the Acrobat Color Management, but I do not want rich blacks. I want accurate blacks. There must be a setting in the CMM, but I can't even locate the CMM. Any help would be appreciated.

Post your question in the forum for Adobe Reader.

Designjet that will not print rich black

I'm using hp premium satin photo roll 24x100. My poster is of a nebula and dark space with stars. When I print on 8.5x11 it looks wonderful. Very rich black. When I print the large version the dark areas of space looks milky. The black space clearly is not being printed correctly. The poster looks good, but when compared to the letter size (hp glossy photo paper) it's depressing to think how awesome it could look. Is it the satin paper? I don't think so. I managed to print rich black on it from a png.
There are so many dialogue boxes and options to define where the color conversion is performed. I tried every setting and used all my color ink trying to learn this printers protocols. I'm a student @ RMCAD studying graphic desing focusing on print. I'm trying to make money on the side with this printer to help pay for school. I've tried color sync both on and off, no printer conversion w/ acrobat pdf conversion when saving both on and off. I've tried rgb default conversion, and hp premium photo satin paper on the drop down menu. I use the maximum detail option. All this to no avail, I can tell when printing the poster within 3" whether or not it's rich black or not. Regardless of all the settings I've tried the results are always the same. So, I started darkening the image in photoshop with curves saved and still no luck. It looked worse.
Why is it printing so perfectly on the glossy letter size and so disappointing when the poster size is printed?

Can I ask are you based in the US?
Thanks, Ciara
Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.
Twitter: @Ciara_B_HP

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.

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 – Some kind of guideline / template?

Hi All...
There is an ongoing thread about what "Rich Black" AI uses:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/429978?tstart=0
From the posts, i gather that, forget AI, there are a lot of options based on print quality paper stock, surfacing and finishing(?).
D'you folks think it possible to put up a kind of broad charectorisation of black-ink composition depending on relevant parameters?
Look, it doesn't have to be absolutely precise but a working rule of thumb. Maybe it could be posted as a sticky faq.
JJ

Scott...
That's getting somewhere... I was thinking of a basic kind of reference chart for newbies (and others)... kind of like:
Paper
Screen
GSM
CMYK
Newsprint
xx
40 0 0 100
Newsprint
yy
40 20 20 100
Coated Stock
225
40 40 40 100
PDF for web / email
Monitor
50 40 40 100
Some kind of a generic thing that would help get people started and have the caveat to check with their printer before final output. Could be a sticky.
Think it'd be of any help or just a waste of time?

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 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 in AI CS3

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