Expert: Glen Demers - 2/4/2010

Question
QUESTION: I am using Indesign in a pre-press department for a printing company.  I am having a problem printing a PDF out of Indesign where the Black in placed images are seperating 4 color instead of 100% black only.  Text or art done in Indesign comes out correctly.  I have double checked the original files coming from Illustrator and Photoshop and everything is set to 100% Black.  I go to a different machine and it works fine, so it is just my machine.  I have reinstalled Acrobat Pro and thrown away preferenses for Indesign, Illustrator and Acrobat.  I have run Techtool on my machine and used the Disk Utility to fix permissions.  I have checked all my preferences and I am now at a loss. I have not had a problem until last week.  Please help!!!

ANSWER: Hi Jason,

Make sure the images are in CMYK color mode in Illustrator and that you are reading actual pixel information in Photoshop for the CMYK values and they are, as well, in CMYK mode.
In InDesign, under Edit>Color Settings, make sure your CMYK is set to Preserve Numbers (Ignore Embedded Profiles)
If these settings are okay then I would look into my Acrobat settings. Use PDF/X:1-a settings to force everything to CMYK or in the Adobe PDF options under output make sure color conversion is set to none or destination CMYK (PDF/X 1-a default).

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more InDesign tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/indesign.htm

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: All settings are correct and all files are saved correctly.  I opened one of the files I have been having problems with on another machine and printed a PDF and it worked fine.  I then sent that file to my computer and viewed it in Acrobat and it showed the separations correctly, which means the problem is in InDesign when it creates the PDF.  This morning I now am getting rich blacks instead of 100% black only seps on InDesign created text as well as on placed graphics!  I guess I will just reinstall InDesign and see if that helps.

Answer
Hi Jason,

InDesign will by default create rich blacks when printing or exporting to a grayscale or RGB device, you can change this in preferences under Appearance of Black.
When you export your PDF choose an Adobe PDF preset, Press Quality or PDF/x:1-a for CMYK conversion or High Quality Print for no conversion. If the blacks still come out rich then a reinstall may be the next option.

Good luck,
Glen Demers
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more InDesign tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/indesign.htm