B&W Photo becomes rich black on a CMYK page

[Stephen Babb]

Hello, I publish a monthly 40-page newspaper, with both B&W pages and 4-color pages. I've spent the past 2 months trying to convert from Adobe products to Affinity products, but I keep having trouble with CMYK pages.

When I place a black and white (grayscale) photo on a page that will output to CMYK, the black and white photo is rich black instead of 100K. This is a HUGE no-no for newspaper printing. This happens each time, whether or not the photo is a Photoshop file, or Affinity Photo file.

I always have color pages that have both black and white advertising, and 4C advertising, and with photos both BW and 4C.

1. In Affinity Photo2 I have converted the photo's "Convert Format/ICC Profile" to Gray/8, Greyscale D50...

2. In Affinity Publisher2 I place the photo into my page layout which uses CMYK/8, U.S. Web Uncoated V2

3. The photo is rich black. 

I have had other problems with rich black showing it's ugly head from time to time, but I've been able work around most of these issues. I just can't seem to figure this one out, though. Any insight on this is appreciated!

P.S.: Affinity is a GREAT suite of programs and I really want to convert.

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, Stephen.

When you have Placed your b/w image, if you have it selected and the Move Tool active, you should see a K-Only button in the Context Toolbar. That's what you need.

 

[Stephen Babb]

19 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

When you have Placed your b/w image, if you have it selected and the Move Tool active, you should see a K-Only button in the Context Toolbar. That's what you need.

 

OK, I see that now, but i only see the K-Only button if I drop in a .TIFF photo. It works for TIFF, and that is great. But the K-Only button does not show up if I place a .AFPHOTO file, or an EPS file. Should I always export to a TIFF? I have always used EPS files for photos (27 years of archives, yikes).

[walt.farrell]

It also works for JPG, and probably also for PNG.

I'm not sure why you'd use a vector format like EPS for photos. I wouldn't think that's it's primary purpose.

[Stephen Babb]

Thanks for the quick response. This gives me some options now, and I'll play around with different exports and see what works best for our workflow. 

[Slammer]

What workflow are you using? 

I noticed you are using U.S. Web Uncoated V2, so I take it you are in the US.

[pbasdf]

If you apply a Black and White Adjustment layer to your photo, it will be rendered as Pure K.  Note though there are various posts about pure K being converted to rich black at export time.  To avoid the conversion, ensure that your export profile is the same as your document colour profile.

[Stephen Babb]

5 hours ago, Slammer said:

What workflow are you using? 

I noticed you are using U.S. Web Uncoated V2, so I take it you are in the US.

U.S., yes. 

35 minutes ago, pbasdf said:

If you apply a Black and White Adjustment layer to your photo, it will be rendered as Pure K.  Note though there are various posts about pure K being converted to rich black at export time.  To avoid the conversion, ensure that your export profile is the same as your document colour profile.

Great tips, thanks. I didn't realize that the black and white adjustment rendered 100K, even when the photo document is set to CMYK/8, U.S. Web Uncoated V2. This should alleviate most of my rich black issues.

[Slammer]

1 hour ago, Stephen Babb said:

U.S., yes. 

Great tips, thanks. I didn't realize that the black and white adjustment rendered 100K, even when the photo document is set to CMYK/8, U.S. Web Uncoated V2. This should alleviate most of my rich black issues.

That´s fine. I asked because you find a lot of European printers using US profiles with a densi set to status E and wondering why their inkcover is all wrong.