my printer said my text is not black

[RCot]

I do a simple layout of a newsletter. It's all black and white. But the printer said that I need to change the text to black. It's black on the color swatch. What else should I do?

[RCot]

Thank you BofG. Is there any other suggestions? I tried that and my white is still not as bright as the printers proof. He has more contrast. Black is blacker and white is whiter. I'm stumped. He's been changing it in the proof but rightly, would like to not have to do that. 

 

 

[Alfred]

On 2/16/2022 at 2:55 PM, RCot said:

Black is blacker and white is whiter.

If black is blacker, the white paper will look whiter because of the contrast between the two. The actual whiteness of the paper will depend solely on the particular choice of paper stock.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, BofG said:

Random fact, for no reason: most "whiter" paper is actually more blue. One of the things you discover when you have a spectrophotometer. Also, quite a lot of paper has a UV florescent in, making it appear brighter.

I am a lot of fun at parties.

*fluorescent

I am also a lot of fun at parties. Or rather, I would be if anyone ever invited me!

[RCot]

Yeah I get that about paper. My PDF and his proof is what I'm comparing. His white is actually whiter (electronically and comparing side by side on my screen). I feel like that has to be a setting thing. I'll keep hunting. Thanks for input.

[Washishu]

Have I understood you correctly? You are comparing white paper (unprinted paper) to on-screen white and wanting to match them? The screen is RGB colour and the print is CMYK colour: the screen is electronic and paper isn't—it's paper. It will never be the same. As Alfred said, the white on a print will vary enormously according to the whiteness of the stock. I'm not clear when you say "My PDF and his proof is what I'm comparing". Is this a printed pdf? Printed how? Desktop printer?

[RCot]

Washishu,

I'm sorry I was unclear.  I would not compare a paper copy with an electronic copy. I am looking at two things (both electronic copies) side by side on my screen : 1)what I have exported sent to my printer alongside 2) the proof he sends me to approve. 

Even on my screen, side by side, his black is blacker and white is whiter. Any other thoughts? 

[Washishu]

A couple, yes. Different colour profile? A poorly calibrated monitor?

I'm guessing that the printer's proof is also a pdf? Your pdf was made on your system, his was made on his; they ought to the same, or at least similar, but if your monitor is different from his, which it likely is, they won't necessarily look the same.

It's one of the problems of electronic imaging—we have no idea of the quality of the viewer's devices. Ideally, if the colour is so critical, it might be best to get a printed proof, although that might cost. Otherwise we just have to accept these differences. I recently needed a very short-run poster. I produced the artwork, sent the pdf to the printer and when I collected the (digital) prints, some of the colours were not the same—some were actually better then I expected from my monitor. It was fine, colour was not that critical.

[kenmcd]

On 2/16/2022 at 6:55 AM, RCot said:

Is there any other suggestions? I tried that and my white is still not as bright as the printers proof. He has more contrast. Black is blacker and white is whiter. I'm stumped. He's been changing it in the proof but rightly, would like to not have to do that. 

Can you attach your PDF (or at least a page) that you sent to the printer? I would like to look inside at what is actually there for the text color. And your APub doc (page) too if possible.

The PDF proof fron the printer would also be helpful to compare what settings are in there. Did they modify/fix your PDF in Acrobat?

Yesterday I noticed in the Adopy PDF library docs a flag that can be set by the application when creating the PDF which tells the printer (hardware) this is pure black. So now I am wondering if this is the difference from ID generated PDFs which causes issues like this with printers. It may be possible to see this inside the PDFs when comparing them.

[kenmcd]

On 2/21/2022 at 7:35 AM, BofG said:

Do you have a source/reference for this?

Tried to find what I had seen - but no luck.
I was digging-up old Adobe PDF docs from Archive.org and was on a lot of pages.
Had done it all on my phone so had to use the limited history, etc.
Tried to redo my searches - no luck.

Also went thru the current SDK docs and the closest thing I found was setting the text to mono.
So maybe I just had "a senior moment" and am mistaken. Dunno.
If I stumble across it again, I will post here.

[firstdefence]

Black is actually quite subjective, some printers have their own recipe for black so, when printing in CMYK, its not always 100% K (C-0 M-0 Y-0 K-100), this comes out a slightly faded black. I've seen recipes for rich black such as C-60 M-40 Y-40 K-100 and a slight variation of C-75 M-40 Y-40 K-100, Rich black is commonly set at C-75 M-68 Y-67 K-90

You could try those or as BofG has mentioned talking to the printer which is probably the first port of call when dealing with printing, there are no stupid questions merely clarification of detail however simple that may be.