If you’re outputting it for print (CMYK) it will appear dark grey (which shouldn’t matter too much as it will print as a true black). If you’re outputting it for screen (RGB) it will appear as a rich black.

I don’t have this problem at all. What PDF format are you using and are your CS color settings synced up? What color settings are you using and what is your desired output?

I hope these aren’t for print because if you send in registration black you are asking for a very angry printer.

peace

...simply set all my blacks to “registration”

Tyler, I know I shouldn’t but hahahahahahahahaha. That’s funny. RTFM, as they say. You fail to mention exactly how or where this grey-that-should-be-black is appearing, or which tips don’t work or rather why you think they don’t work.

Something like the Adobe Print Publishing Guide should sort you out.

I often find myself designing .pdf files intended to be downloaded and printed on laser printers—nothing demanding of pre-press workers. It’s not often that a printer needs a .pdf anyhow. So up until now, that absurd registration trick hasn’t been an issue.

anyhow, i’ve solved my problem. sometimes you just need to say things out loud to find the answers. Thanks for slapping me in the face.

> anyhow, i’ve solved my problem.

How?

yes, how did you solve it?

i often have this problem as well...

In Acrobat Pro you may turn on the overprint preview to see how it will look like in print. But as Conor already said: It’s just the way how 100% black in a CMYK document looks like on screen. Nothing to worry about.

Ralf

When exporting PDF to be printed on black & white printer, switch off color management in InDesign. Then the black will be black in PDF.

But as Conor already said: It’s just the way how 100% black in a CMYK document looks like on screen. Nothing to worry about.

No, it affects printing on (some) laser printers too.

When exporting PDF to be printed on black & white printer, switch off color management in InDesign. Then the black will be black in PDF.

Yes, this is what I did. But since CM is regarded as a must today, and on certain forums turning CM off is almost regarded as a bad “hack”, I wonder if there’s an official solution to this.  :)

Are we talking about PDFs for screen, offset or laser/inkjet printing?
And are we talking about black text or something like a big black rectangle. For large areas of black you may wan’t to add some cyan to your black to get a richer black in offset/laser printing. But don’t use this black for text.

Ralf

I have this same problem and have been unable to figure it out with the suggestions above? Any ideas?

Warren

Alrighty. I understand the PDF will appear greyish on screen, but the overprint preview also doesn’t look right. I guess I want someone to tell me that it TRULY will print as black, and if there’s any way to preview a print-ready file as black, on screen.

Check your InDesign (and Illustrator) preferences > Appearance of Black and amend them to display and output all blacks accurately, they will look grey (compared to the rich black). To preview a print-ready file you could print separations as a pdf and then open it in Photoshop or Illustrator and check the setting in the colour palette.

Tim

I guess I want someone to tell me that it TRULY will print as black,

Never trust the screen, trust the numbers. If it says 100% black it will print black.

Then again, black offset-ink on white stock isn’t really all that black, either. ;)

When you have a value of 0,0,0,100% (C,M,Y,K) as your black, it won’t show up as the deepest black in print (though it’s not bad). Acrobat reveals this fact, as it tends to be a print previewer of sorts (don’t quote me on that, but I do use the program to double-check if I missed a black value here and there). The printers I deal with usually would add 65% to the cyan values to make it deeper (when printing full color). If you want the deepest of the deep, just set all CMYK values to 100%, it’s just much more difficult to register, especially say, if you have type set in 6pt, light, in white, on top, of that.

Even if you add like 30 and/or 40 % of CMY to your black, it will look much better. That’s what I do if I really want something to be deep black.

As a previous poster mentioned, DON’T set your blacks to be 100c100m100y100k. Most printers have maximum density (dmax) value — the sum of all the percentages of the 4 process colors — somewhere in the low 300s.

“Rich” black recipes vary by printer — be sure to ask yours. Our magazine printers prefer a 40c20m20y100k blend.

Colourmanaged output will vary according to the outputprofile. Eg in newsprint dot gain (the amount that inkt will spread when printed on that specific substrate) can be up to 20% or more. That means that the original values of tints etcetera will have to be corrected to account for this. Outputting with a newsprint profile could lead to a full black being output as an 80% blacktint.

The same principle applies to other substrates and press techniques.

Re printing standards: In Europe offsetprinting has been standardized according to an ISO-norm, set by the European Color Initiative. More info here:
http://www.eci.org/eci/en/041_offset.php
Put simply: working with ISO-certified printers and the standard profiles from ECI guarantees satisfying results, irrespective of press profiles and such (those are used in house by the printers).

I don’t know what the situation in the US is nowadays, but a couple of years ago standardisation was strictly something done by the major printing companies (and publishers that use different printers).

___
Bert Vanderveen BNO

Circehouse - For the benefit of the forum, can you tell us your solution? I’m also having this problem! Thanks!

Why is everyone calling it a ’problem’? :)

It is not a problem; it is just the way CMYK or K black looks on screen.

If you chose black (K), it will print as black. If you don’t trust it will, check color separations in Acrobat (or photoshop). If your PDF is for screen only, you could make the black RGB.

And if you want a true, rich black in print; add some color to K, e.g. 0C 60M 30Y 100K (I think this will also look more black on screen. And is obviously only suitable for full color print jobs).

Why is everyone calling it a ’problem’? :)

Because it is a problem. If I need a client to sign off on a pdf, I need it to look on screen as close as possible to how it will actually print. Saying don’t worry it will print black requires a leap of faith in my clients and I don’t feel comfortable with that. I don’t understand why Adobe can’t fix this bug.

@Quincunx: The original question had nothing to do with Rich Black. The problem lies in the way pdf’s get generated with colormanagement on. Maybe my 14 Sept. post wasn’t very clear… : )

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

>>>If I need a client to sign off on a pdf, I need it to look on screen as close as possible to how it will actually print.

Then you should send them a PDF in an RGB color space.
Again, it’s not a bug, and there is nothing for Adobe to fix.

Ralf

I create my files in CMYK because I work in print. I don’t understand why black doesn’t look black. That seems like a bug to me. And I am clearly not the only one bothered by it, as evidenced by this thread.

I did change my preferences in InDesign for Appearance of Black to Rich Black, and am hopeful this will solve the problem but I haven’t tested it out.

> I create my files in CMYK because I work in print. I don’t understand why black doesn’t look black. That seems like a bug to me. And I am clearly not the only one bothered by it, as evidenced by this thread.

I did change my preferences in InDesign for Appearance of Black to Rich Black, and am hopeful this will solve the problem but I haven’t tested it out.

If you are going to let a client sign off on a pdf on screen, making it an RGB PDF is not even that strange? (since screens are RGB). If you want it CMYK, add some color to your blacks, and it will look better. I don’t think that’s such a big problem? ;)

> @Quincunx: The original question had nothing to do with Rich Black. The problem lies in the way pdf’s get generated with colormanagement on. Maybe my 14 Sept. post wasn’t very clear… : )

I know the original question was not about rich black, I was commenting on everyone calling K showing up as grey in PDF ’a problem’.

My point was, if you want a good black on screen: use rich black (or RGB). It will make black look more black in PDF. If you are working with black on full color jobs, in most cases it’s wise you use rich black anyway (all non-text objects). If you use only K, the grey in Acrobat isn’t even that far off from the way it will look in print (e.g. crappy greyish black).

if your running InDesign CS2 then go to >Prefenrences > The Appearance of Black.

It will give you options for the appreance of black on gray scale and RGB devices. Or have you already tried that?

Miguelzinho, yes I have changed that preference.

Quincunx, it still just seems odd to me that 100%K will not render as black in a pdf. I do use rich black for printing, but that’s beside the point. 100%K ought to look black, period. It does when you make a pdf from Quark.

I’m with Patty, one of the major uses of Acrobat is for client approval and if it doesn’t represent the project accurately it isn’t doing the job. An RGB hack, while it might improve the appearance black, doesn’t necessarily represent spot colours and images well.

Tim

Just a couple of notes:

Setting black elements to “registration” will print as a 400% rich black (full CMYK) on color PostScript devices. As this is well over the total ink limit, it’s will look like crud (even on toner-based devices such as PS color laser printers).

I agree with the posters who are saying that the Acrobat PDF display is “not a bug.” Have you ever studied color management at all? For pre-press purposes, the whole point is typically to maintain visual distinctions and map the entire gamut of one device to another. If Acrobat displays a 0C-0M-0Y-100K black as the darkest possible black, what it is it supposed to do with a 100-100-100-100 black? (Okay, maybe it’s a 30-30-30-100 black, same idea - it needs to be darker than that previous black.) If you make the PDF in RGB, with the right settings, presumably you can get a 0-0-0 RGB black, and that’s the darkest black, period. It will display great on screen. It will print on color devices as a maximum rich black, though, which may or may not be desirable.

You could also try in Acrobat going to Preferences > Color Management > Conversion Options turning off “Use black point compensation, and see what effect that has.

Note also: If you are having a problem with your black looking grey *in print*, in many workflows the best solution when making documents in InDesign is to go to Edit > Color Settings and under “Color Management Policies” set CMYK to “Preserve Numbers (Ignore Linked Profiles)”. This essentially turns off color management for CMYK elements in the document, such as text.

With that configuration you can still place RGB photos and have them properly color managed (set RGB to “Preserve Embedded Profiles”), and Bob’s yer uncle. Leastways, this has always worked well for me in InDesign.

Regards,

T

Going back to the original issue, I’ve working on a newly installed version of InDesign CS3, and my 100% black is exporting as dark grey. it’s an issue with print because a black that’s not completely black screens the type and it compromises the legibility of thin copy. Contrary to everybody’s assumption that “if it says 100% black, it’ll print 100% black”, there’s something going on in my InDesign color setting that’s converting it, and I need to figure it out.

The oddest part is that, if I click on the color in my tool bar, the RGB samples at low numbers. If it were a TRUE black, those should all show up as zeros, right? If I convert it to 400% rich black, then it show RGB values at zero, but with CM&Y at zero, RGB is registering values, and that ain’t black.

Personally, I couldn’t care less how it looks on screen, but it has to print correctly. Converting it rich black is a good idea because this particular job is going on a copier, but it would be problematic if I were going to press and the Black plate showed up as a 90% screen.

I’ll tool around in other forums to see if I can’t figure it out. I wish I knew how that other fella fixed it.

Well, upon closer examination, it looks like the .pdf will actually plate okay. We’re running a short run on the copier, and 10,000 more in black ink on press, so we needed to make sure that the black exported at 100%. When we exported it and took to to the copier, though, we needed to print rich black (even though we weren’t printing CMYK) to get a 100% value.

Something to note for production, I s’pose.

You can also check the separations in either InDesign, Photoshop or Acrobat Pro. If everything in the rest of your workflow is right, you should see that 100K will plate just fine. If you have your apps set right, you should see 100% when you use the color picker in separations in Acrobat Pro for example (Advanced -> Print Production -> Output Preview with your desired color profile).

@kurt:

Looking at colour values in the RGB PDF is a distraction - you’re specifying your colours in CMYK and printing them in CMYK (or just K).

CMYK and RGB colours aren’t just different numerical ways of specifying a colour - c0 m0 y0 k100 does not equal r0 g0 b0, and you can’t just convert to and from RGB and CMYK.

As Quincunx says, separations make it clearer what your end result is going to be, because they show what ink is actually going to get laid down.

So I always send a composite CMYK PDF to the printers, and if there’s anything other than CMYK in the art, PDF separations as well.