Colour export question (grayscaling)

[Interior Book Design]

Hi,

I've read similar posts concerning CMYK and Rich Black versus 100 K Black. I've learned that you should start your project with CMYK settings to receive 100 K Black, starting with RGB leads to Rich Black, unfortunately. (I don't understand, why. Body copy text should always be 100 K Black, never Rich Black.)

No matter whether I used 100 K black in my document or not, different settings lead to different results

• Exporting with Grayscale D50 without any ICC profile embedded, leads to Black with 83 % K (not 100 %), an object with 50 % K becomes 40 %
• Exporting with Grayscale D50 with ICC profile embedded, leads to Rich Black. Why?
• Exporting with Grayscale Black & WhIte without any ICC profile embedded, leads to 100 K in any case (even RGB colours), hurray, however, gray objects get 100 K, also. So, it converts everything to 100 K
• Exporting with Grayscale Black & WhIte with embedded ICC profile, leads to Rich Black, again. Oh Dear!
• Exporting to CMYK with ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) without any ICC profile embedded, seems to do the trick, however, it does not grayscale and my 50 % K object stays 50 % K
• Exporting to CMYK with ISO Coated v2 300% (ECI) with embedded ICC profile seems to mess up everything, again
• Exporting to CMYK with Euroscale Coated v2 without any ICC profile embedded creates Rich Black, again. So does FOGRA39.

This is not what I expect. (I'm testing with Acrobat and Callas Toolbox.)

How to grayscale your document, grayscaling all images and preserving 100 K text? What is the best practice?

(I remember very similar issues with PP. You got 83 % K Black instead of 100 %. Solution for PP was, to set primary colour mode to RGB instead of CMYK, don't ask me, why.)

Best solution in all cases seems to be to use a different PDF printer driver, such as Acrobats PDF driver or BullZip or similar tools.

Thank you!

 

 

[R C-R]

I think the answer for why you get different results is explained fairly well in the Rich Black Wikipedia article: there are several different "rich black" ink mixtures & which one produces the blackest blacks depends on the paper & printing process.

I don't do enough printing to help with the how part but there are other contributors who should be able to do that.

[Interior Book Design]

Hi R C-R, thanks your your answer. The Wikipedia article explains it pretty well, by the way. I'm producing in InDesign and I do a lot of printing. Some of my clients, however, are using Publisher.

My takeaway is, that, in Publisher, you have to be very careful about black texts, finding your best way to export them and don't mess around. (Presently, Publisher for Window just seems to convert 100 K black into rich black merely when changing the CMYK profile! )

However, Publisher is very attractive for beginners and beginners should not have to worry about 100 K or rich black. It should be absolutely foolproof:

If exporting as CMYK for professional print, black text should always render as 100 K black text unless indicated otherwise. Full stop. Rich black might be fine for covers, for some headlines, for text on an image, never ever for body copy. Not matter which profile you had selected at the beginning of the project. Well, I have Adobe Acrobat DC and Callas Toolbox, I can measure the black value, spot and fix problems, most people can't.

InDesign is very complicated for beginners and does not look as attractive as Publisher, however, in InDesign, black text has always been rendering correctly! No matter if you work in RGB or CMYK mode. I wish Publisher would behave the same way.

Kind regards

Johann

 

[v_kyr]

If you can constantly reproduce this color management related behavior, you should file in a APub bug report with some reproducable samples!

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Interior Book Design said:

However, Publisher is very attractive for beginners and beginners should not have to worry about 100 K or rich black. It should be absolutely foolproof:

Well, what they say about "foolproof" is probably true: that no matter how foolproof one tries to make something, all that does is promote the creation of bigger fools. 

But more seriously, I think what they had in mind for this is to define either a character or paragraph text style for 100% K & 0% CMYK; & to apply that wherever 'non-rich' black text is desired. However, to be honest about it I have no idea if that (or anything else) is foolproof enough for anybody, beginners or not. 

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

no matter how foolproof one tries to make something, all that does is promote the creation of bigger fools. 

Not bigger just smarter and faster. Maybe even more handsome.