Problems with printouts - black prints a grey

[Passenger John]

I am new to Affinity products, migrating over from Illustrator. When I colour text as 100% black and it appears black on screen, but when I try to print it out it comes out as grey. Also applies to imported PDF files (ex Illustrator). This is happening with both my Apple Mac computers and also on both an HP laser and an Epson inkjet. Am I being stupid over something small or can anyone give me an idea what I am doing wrong.

Thanks in advance.

[stokerg]

Hi Passenger John and Welcome to the Forums,

 

Can you put 2 simple shapes on a blank page and fill one with this colour:

C75, M68, Y67, K90

This is known as true black.  

 

The 2nd shape, fill with K100

 

If you print that, which one matches black more?

 

You might also want to see about setting a printer profile for the printer as that may help improve how the colours are handled.  Also, if you publish one of your designs to PDF and print from the PDF viewer, how does the print out appear?

 

Feel free to share a test .afdesign file and i'll be happy to do some test prints here and see what happens.

[firstdefence]

I just did this for fun on my HP and the true black is a definite black, the k100 is grey by comparison, even on screen when you overlay the two boxes without strokes its a marked difference. You learn something everyday. 

black example.afdesign

[firstdefence]

I was still curious about the true black thing, so I thought I'll whack all the sliders on CMYK up to 100 and I couldn't see any discernable difference between the black on screen nor the printed black.

I thought I would test this by using the colour picker tool and watching for movement between the C75, M68, Y67, K90 and the C100, M100, Y100, K100 and as far as I can see there is no shift in colour difference on screen and none that I can see on the print. I also did a C50, M50, Y50, K100 with no discernable difference.

I made a short video...

is black really black.flv

 

 

[Passenger John]

On 4 January 2018 at 11:33 AM, stokerg said:

Hi Passenger John and Welcome to the Forums,

 

Can you put 2 simple shapes on a blank page and fill one with this colour:

C75, M68, Y67, K90

This is known as true black.  

 

The 2nd shape, fill with K100

 

If you print that, which one matches black more?

 

You might also want to see about setting a printer profile for the printer as that may help improve how the colours are handled.  Also, if you publish one of your designs to PDF and print from the PDF viewer, how does the print out appear?

 

Feel free to share a test .afdesign file and i'll be happy to do some test prints here and see what happens.

 

Black Test.afdesign

Black Test.pdf

[Passenger John]

stokerg

 

Thanks for your help, have attached my test files, which when page setup is set to Print (for press) and I am using CMYK colour palette print out grey on both my HP mono laser and colour HP laser jet M750 come out as grey, have also attached both an afd file and a PDF. Am i just being thick, or just missing the point. BTW if I set page set up to Black and White of course that is no good for pre-press. I am worried that a black appearing on afd will not profuse a solid black on a 4 colour print press.

 

Best regards

John

Black Test.afdesign

Black Test.pdf

[Passenger John]

2 minutes ago, stokerg said:

 

How did they print out for you?

 

I'm not in the office till Monday so don't have access to a printer until then

 

[Passenger John]

Just tested both printers and both HP Mono Laser HP 400MFP and HP Colour Laser M750 both print as grey.

[R C-R]

On 1/4/2018 at 5:33 AM, stokerg said:

Can you put 2 simple shapes on a blank page and fill one with this colour:

C75, M68, Y67, K90

This is known as true black.  

I apologize if this is a bit off topic, but what the the difference between "true black" & the (I think) more generic term "rich black"?

 

Almost all my web searches on "true black" result in articles about "rich black," for example this Wikipedia one. They all say about the same thing about different amounts of CMY added to the K component for different papers & printing methods (& most often it is K100 rather than a lesser value). I am far from knowledgeable about such things but it is my understanding that there is no such thing as a universal "true" black, in no small part because (for example) modern inkjet printers may have considerably more than 4 ink cartridges, including two black ink ones formulated differently.

[stokerg]

46 minutes ago, Passenger John said:

Just tested both printers and both HP Mono Laser HP 400MFP and HP Colour Laser M750 both print as grey.

 

I posted that before you had added the info, so deleted the post so the thread made sense, seems you spotted it before i deleted it  

 

Correct me if i'm wrong, but a CMYK black on a Mono printer i don't think would work.  But it should on the M750 as from what i can see thats CMYK.    But as we have seen @firstdefence got a black print out when using true black, so i'd expect the same on your colour laser.  Do you have a printer profile loaded, as i wonder if that's causing the issue? 

 

It's annoying as i've been meaning to pick up a printer in the New Year sales, as printing and colour profiles is one area i need to improve my knowledge on.  I'm big into taking photos but never print anything.  Once i'm back in the office Monday, i'll do some prints and post the results here if no one else managed to help over the weekend. 

[stokerg]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I apologize if this is a bit off topic, but what the the difference between "true black" & the (I think) more generic term "rich black"?

 

In all honesty, i've no idea.  I had to ask one of the other Tech guys @Lee D about this as he has a big interest in printing and printers and he suggested trying the true black method.  From a quick Google i've just done, i've found reference to true black, rich black and true rich black    

 

I always thought black was K100 but it seems i'm wrong.  This is the reason i'm about to spend my afternoon looking for a printer in the online sales.  Its something where if i don't lock myself away for a weekend with a printer, maybe a 4 pack of beer and just play around with printer profiles and colour profiles i'll never get my head around  

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, stokerg said:

Correct me if i'm wrong, but a CMYK black on a Mono printer i don't think would work.

As I understand it, a monochrome laser printer only has one toner cartridge, so the only possible variation in the 'grayness' of its output is dependent on how much of it can be fused to the paper.

 

9 minutes ago, stokerg said:

Its something where if i don't lock myself away for a weekend with a printer, maybe a 4 pack of beer and just play around with printer profiles and colour profiles i'll never get my head around  

Only a 4 pack for the entire weekend? Even though my beer consumption has tapered off in my old age (& the US craft beers I usually drink are stronger than typical UK brews), I doubt a 4 pack would be enough for me for a project like that. 

[stokerg]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

As I understand it, a monochrome laser printer only has one toner cartridge, so the only possible variation in the 'grayness' of its output is dependent on how much of it can be fused to the paper.

 

Only a 4 pack for the entire weekend? Even though my beer consumption has tapered off in my old age (& the US craft beers I usually drink are stronger than typical UK brews), I doubt a 4 pack would be enough for me for a project like that. 

 

I said 4 pack in order to seem a little professional  Thankfully i live within walking distance of a number of off licences.  As for craft beer, i'm very partial to a Oskar Blues or a New England IPA.  Great thing about Nottingham is it has a number of craft beer bars, so we have a good mix of craft lager and ale's to select from.