printer prep: all black

[paleolith]

My first project going to a print shop. I had the shop review a draft, and I got the reply "Only change is please covert all images and all text from CMYK to just 100% Black."

Not bad for the first try, I think.

The printed document is to be entirely B&W. I had hoped to keep the afpub file in RGB, on the assumption that would make it easier to insert color photos for a later export for the web. But I gather I should give that up and change the document to CMYK/8. I can deal with a web version after I get the print version resolved. (The only color will be placed images.)

After reading old posts here, I found that the Base style was defined as four-ink black. I have changed that to C0 M0 Y0 K100. That should be inherited by all my other styles. But just to be sure, when I look at the Color in a style definition and see a red slash on white background, is that the same as [No change] in other attributes?

OK, I had placed B&W RGB images and was counting on the Export option "convert image color spaces". Apparently that didn't work. What's a reasonable way to convert RGB images to CMYK? I see websites which claim to do it, but I've looked in AF Photo, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Irfanview ... I don't find anything.

And is there a way to check my own PDF to make sure all color is CMYK pure black?

[MikeTO]

37 minutes ago, paleolith said:

But just to be sure, when I look at the Color in a style definition and see a red slash on white background, is that the same as [No change] in other attributes?

No, the red slash on white background means "no fill". The checkbox beside it when deselected means no change.

If you were to select the checkbox beside the colour swatch for Text Fill then the style would be defined as having No Fill and would be invisible. When the checkbox is deselected, the colour chosen in the colour swatch will be ignored when you click OK. It's good that you asked because this is a bit confusing.

48 minutes ago, paleolith said:

OK, I had placed B&W RGB images and was counting on the Export option "convert image color spaces". Apparently that didn't work.

If you set a document to CMYK and place RGB images in it and export it to a CMYK PDF and select "Convert image color spaces" then the images should be converted from RGB to CMYK. That is the point of the feature.

52 minutes ago, paleolith said:

And is there a way to check my own PDF to make sure all color is CMYK pure black?

You should edit your Preflight profile before exporting. The Image Colour error is disabled by default so turn it on by clicking Error. Then Preflight will warn you if you have an RGB image in a CMYK document (or vice versa of course).

You shouldn't need to have to check the PDF but Acrobat Pro can do this of course. There are also some third party utilities that can do it so perhaps somebody else can recommend one.

[paleolith]

36 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

No, the red slash on white background means "no fill". The checkbox beside it when deselected means no change.

If you were to select the checkbox beside the colour swatch for Text Fill then the style would be defined as having No Fill and would be invisible

Ah-ha, makes more sense, thanks. That darned black-on-black UI tricked me again.

No text box visible until I actually click on it. I tried the Light UI again but gray-on-gray is mighty frustrating too.

37 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

If you set a document to CMYK and place RGB images in it and export it to a CMYK PDF and select "Convert image color spaces" then the images should be converted from RGB to CMYK.

But will it produce a K-only image, or will it produce 4-ink gray and black? I'm pretty sure the print shop's message meant they saw CMY non-zero in the B&W images.

37 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

The Image Colour error is disabled by default so turn it on by clicking Error.

Done, thanks much for this tip. Now I have 16 more Preflight items. 🤪 Yeah, I'm sure some or most don't matter, but I figure it's good stuff to be aware of.

Thanks,

Edward

 

[MikeTO]

8 minutes ago, paleolith said:

But will it produce a K-only image, or will it produce 4-ink gray and black? I'm pretty sure the print shop's message meant they saw CMY non-zero in the B&W images.

You have to select each image and click the K Only button in the Context Bar.

Note: there's a bug with the Light mode user interface - the K Only button doesn't show that it's selected when you use it so there's no way to know if it's selected. If you're using this feature you must work in Dark mode.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[paleolith]

10 hours ago, MikeTO said:

You have to select each image and click the K Only button in the Context Bar.

Thanks to both for the responses. I fell asleep at my desk last night ...

K-only is only available when the document color format is CMYK. (When I couldn't find the button, I searched and found old posts about it, then verified that I see it if and only if I change the color format.) I haven't found it explained in the Help.

10 hours ago, lacerto said:

original (sRGB) document and text in RGB 0, 0, 0 (or G0) and then at export time make sure that the Color space in export options is Gray, the ICC profile is D50 (or another grayscale profile if available),

I don't have a Gray option.

.

And I have no grayscale profile, at least not that I recognize as such. The items in the menu not shown in this screenshot are all web profiles.

I haven't found a combination that allows me to disable Embed ICC Profiles -- it's hidden in the screenshots above, but it's enabled and grayed out.

I'm also not sure I should trust RGB black to convert to K100. When I switch back and forth between RGB and CMYK sliders in the style definition. neither converts to the other. (I find it odd that I can choose a CMYK color for text in the RGB document.)

Certainly seems safest to go CMYK as the document color space ... and hopefully most of the preflight messages about mismatched color spaces and profiles don't matter.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[PaulEC]

20 hours ago, paleolith said:

I had hoped to keep the afpub file in RGB, on the assumption that would make it easier to insert color photos for a later export for the web. But I gather I should give that up and change the document to CMYK/8.

Why not just duplicate the file so that you have one version in RGB and one in CMYK?

[paleolith]

12 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

Why not just duplicate the file so that you have one version in RGB and one in CMYK?

As a general rule (far beyond this domain), keeping multiple versions in sync is time-consuming and error-prone. Other parts of the document are not yet complete, so it's not just a matter of creating a fork and leaving the other behind.

However, the comments from MikeTO and lacerto have persuaded me that duplicating the file is preferable, and I have started down that course. More questions to come probably ...

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

 

[paleolith]

Is there any tool that will identify all CMY > 0?

I converted to CMYK and marked all possible objects as K-only. That left three for which the option is not available: an AI, an EPS, and a PDF. The AI was my own, easily fixed. I could not fix the other two, but was able to convert them to high-resolution PNGs, which I was then able to convert to B&W and mark K-only. (Oddly, marking objects K-only changes their appearance in AfPub -- lighter and maybe lower contrast -- but they look fine in the resulting PDF and printed from that PDF.)

I installed a trial of Foxit PDF Editor, which has a preflight function, though AFAICT it only searches one issue at a time. It has a "Rich Black (CMY>0)" search, which helped me identify two of the objects mentioned above. The third, however, it found only because I did a search for hairlines -- it found a hairline with CMYK all > 0, verifying that the "rich black" function has some parameter for identifying "black". I could not find anything in their long list to search for just any CMY > 0.

On 10/12/2023 at 9:30 PM, MikeTO said:

You should edit your Preflight profile before exporting. The Image Colour error is disabled by default so turn it on by clicking Error. Then Preflight will warn you if you have an RGB image in a CMYK document

Now of course all my images get warnings because they are RGB or Gray, and the document is CMYK. Is this meaningful, since I have them set to convert on export and K-only? This gets back to my OP -- I don't know how to create a bitmap object as CMYK (or convert one from RGB to CMYK).

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[GeirSol]

On 10/13/2023 at 10:41 PM, lacerto said:

Ok, I think this is related to another post I made to @GeirSol:

 ...so if you specifically need to use PDF/X-4, whether grayscale conversion option is shown and available depends on whether you have grayscale print profiles available for your Affinity app. Affinity apps on macOS (at least apps purchased directly from Affinity, and running on M1/M2 chips), do not read common color profile locations for available color profiles, so for me (running Sonoma 14.0 on M1 MacBook Air, using Affinity Publisher 2.2.0), I need to have something like Adobe grayscale profiles "Dot Gain 20%.icc", "Dot Gain 15%.icc" etc. installed under

/Users/<my account>/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher 2/profiles

to be able to use them from within Publisher 2 (the profiles need to be installed separately for each three Affinity app, and separately for 1.x and 2.x versions).

You would place non-Adobe grayscale profiles in the same location, as well. E.g., you can download a grayscale profile for ISO Newspaper CMYK (four-color process profile) e.g. here:

https://www.nada.no/english/supporte/download/colormanagenewsp.php

...which would allow you to pick a grayscale color mode and profile when exporting to PDF/X-4.

Personally I would rather use an alternative method, e.g. creating separate RGB (for digital production) and CMYK (for print production) versions of the document. Then for the print version, I would switch the document to CMYK mode, making sure that all black text is defined in CMYK color model (having mere K values, with C, M and Y set to zero), use "K Only" mode for RGB images needed to be in grayscale, and then export as instructed (using CMYK export color space and the recommended ICC profile).

This is because while I seem to be able to produce RGB to Grayscale PDF conversions easily on Windows, and also on macOS (when viewing results with Adobe Acrobat Reader), viewing these kinds of PDFs with e.g. PackzView I get erroneous and bizarre results, implying that something is wrong with the production files (PDF/X-4 is heavily ICC dependent so even when forcing conversion of color spaces, it is hard to verify how mixed color mode files are actually created and that everything goes as planned at rip, unless being able to check ripped proofs) .

Thanks! I'm on win 11
Separate versions for grayscale and color is last option.
I'll look into the options and links you mentioned.

[paleolith]

I got the issue to the printer, they like the file, and the proofs look good. Thanks for the help!