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.

Similar Messages

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Rich black and pure white opacity overlays...

    Hey guys,
    I'm trying to design a business card that uses a subtle radial gradient from rich black (100, 40, 100, 40) to dark grey. Something like this actually:
    http://s3.envato.com/files/156075.jpg
    Anyways, I'm doint the gradient in photoshop because I figure the gradient will be smoother than doing it natively in Illustrator or Indesign. Anyways, when create the gradient, the dark grey appears redish because of the multi ink in the black. When I create in in RGB using a 0, 0, 0 value for black, and 230, 230, 230 value for the grey, it obviously renders fine. When I convert that RGB to CMYK, it still looks great. I rounded up the CMYK values that had decimals, and it looks good.
    Is this really bad practice to achieve a CMYK gradient? I imagine it is, but it's only going to an online digital printer. Just curious what you're thoughts are on this workflow.

    I think you are over complicating your workflow and relying too much on how the gradient is rendered on-screen.  The final determinator is the output device and how it is "printed", which involves  the RIP, haltone screen frequency, press, and paper.  The techology is very sophisticated and really makes full use of your understanding and expectations, not as a consumer, but of a professional.  I see absolutely no reason for generating the gradient in Photoshop and bouncing to and from RGB.  The bitmap is actually going to limit your file's effectiveness.  And, I see no reason why a gradient will display with a mid or low end color cast if it is built properly.  That could be your display and/or the file's preview.  Your sample exhibits a very subtle "Gray-to-Gray" blend, so I wonder if you'd consider lower numbers of your gradient's start ( i.e., 60C, 24M, 60Y, 24K ) and end with 6C, 2.4M, 6Y, 2.4K.  Also, because you are using 100C, 40M, 100Y, and 40K, your so-called "Rich Black" is going to print on the warm side and is not balanced in order to print neutral.  So, it could be that, as you ramp down from your original 100C, 24M, 100Y, 40K, the mids and highlights could render as brown or reddish brown.  A good way to check these numbers and how they print is to get an actual print ( book ) of process color percentages in different levels.  Check sites like publishingperfection.com for reference process color books.  That way, you can have more confidence in your percentages and actually see how they print using different percentage scales.  Now, you did reach your final destination whereas you got what appears to be acceptable color.  So, please share what your final percentages are and how the deviate from your original.

  • Creating a preflight check for rich black conversion

    What settings do I need to create a preflight check that will take all the blacks in a job and covnvert them to a set CMYK value?

    It's far more complicated than that - you need to define what you mean by "black", i.e. which plates are active, at what ranges of percent coverage, and what margin of error do you want on the matches. Is a 20/20/20 RGB object "black", or a 0/0/1/100 CMYK? What are you converting to?
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  • What "rich black" does AI use?

    If I set my prefs to "Output All Blacks as Rich Blacks" what is the CMYK breakdown of this black? I usually make my own rich black, based on what kind of printing I'm doing (and set the pref to output accurately), but I was just curious what AI uses and why.

    @Bernie X:
    Here's some "fact", not "theory". Your printer is not printing Registration… guaranteed. They fix it and don't tell you (and don't bother calling the sales guy since he would NEVER tell you the truth of it… another guarantee.)
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    And since you want to toss around credentials, I've been doing Prepress (conventional and electronic), running many different presses (web, offset, flexo, etc), and even bindery for 23 years,  and commercial art for 30 years. I'm the guy that fixes the files people like you send in - and as a pressman I would have kicked those plates back to PrePress the minute I saw them (if they happened to get through, and as any knowledgeable pressman would do).
    Just an FYI, the ISO standard for Rich Black is 50c 40m 40y 100k. This is also accepted in the GraCol7 standard though there is some anecdotal evidence that sub-Dmax Black values (ie. 93-97% Black) may actually visually appear darker in print.
    PS: Your PDF can prove nothing. It's the apple, not an orange. It is a distant cousin to the plates that were on press when your job was printed. And BTW, opening your PDF it's immediately obvious that the file needs to be fixed.

  • 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:
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    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?

  • Need help in design/framework of a project requirements

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    Take the statistics of the tables and check again.
    begin
    DBMS_STATS.gather_table_stats(ownname=>'syslog',tabname=>'logs');
    end;
    Regards
    Asif Kabir

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  • 100k black exporting to PDF as rich black

    Hey guys,
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    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.
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    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

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