Overprinting black text in cmyk

[Miltonc]

I am unable to export pdf's with black overprint text even when that option is selected

[walt.farrell]

You probably don't have your text set to true black, or didn't use a Black that's set as a Global color.

How did you set its color? Does that color swatch you used show that the color is global? What are the CMYK values for that color swatch.

If you can provide some screenshots of your .afpub document showing the color panel and swatches panel, and showing us how you assigned Black to your text, that would help in providing advice. Also, if you could, a sample .afpub (a page or two of your document, saved under another name; or another sample you create the same way as you did for your document) could be useful.

[Miltonc]

I'm using black from the grayness color swatch. Thanks for responding.Feature Pages.afpub

test page.afpub Test_page.pdf

[Miltonc]

I also tried setting the cmy sliders to zero and leaving the K to 100% and that didn't work either. I'm new to this so please bear with me. Thanks

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, Miltonc said:

I'm using black from the grayness color swatch.

If you mean the long swatch below the word Grays in the swatches panel, that's an RGB color swatch. The shorter swatch to the right of the word Grays will (I think) be a CMYK gray patch (Black, Gray, White).

I am far from expert in this area, but I think the following is correct. If an expert comes along, believe them instead

Beyond using the correct swatch, overprinting colors (from the Help) must be Global colors. To have a global color, you first need to create a Document Palette in your Swatches panel by clicking the hamburger menu icon to the right of the tab labeled "Swatches", and choosing Create Document Palette.

Then you can create your document swatch from your black (make sure it's CMYK 0/0/0/100), and make it global (make a shape, say, a rectangle. Click on the Black to the right of the word Grays. Then click the icon to "Add current color to palette as a global color" (should be two icons to the left of the black color swatch). That will add the black as a global color to your document palette.

Then, if you right-click that black swatch you just added, you can select Overprint. (I do not know if this is needed. It is possible that true black, if global, will overprint automatically. But it may be safest to set it to Overprint, anyway.)

Then, you can assign that color as your text font color.

(And, my apologies. I would provide some screenshots but my laptop PC seems to have forgotten how to take screenshots, and I haven't wanted to restart Windows today to see if that fixes the problem.)

[Miltonc]

Thanks. Didn't get everything you said but I did manage to create the black swatch and assign it to my text so I sill check with the printers in the morning to see if it works. Thanks again

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Beyond using the correct swatch, overprinting colors (from the Help) must be Global colors.

When using this Black swatch in the icon row of  "none / black / 50% / white"  then black will overprint if checked on export AND if the export PDF version is PDF/X. Then there is no need to use a manually created custom global overprint black swatch.

Unfortunately there is still a bug with the export preset "for print", one result is exporting this black as not overprinting even if the option was selected.

[Miltonc]

thanks

[thomaso]

6 hours ago, thomaso said:

a bug with the export preset "for print",

Actually the issue isn't in the preset but with any version from PDF v1.5 and above and occurs if "Embed profile" is activated. If unticked then also a non-X PDF will export with overprinting and with this certain black swatch as overprinting black. As compensation / replacement you can activate "Convert ..." to avoid unexpected results if the viewing or printing app uses a different profile.