Expert: Glen Demers - 1/29/2011

Question
I am a journalism teacher and we just got CS5. We exported pdf's of our newspaper and sent them to the printer. The use four color processing. The printer called us and said that our files have black on all four layers. I have no idea how to fix this.  They said it was a problem with the text.  I tried to make sure everything was black and re-exported it, but it was still no good. I am thinking I have the presets wrong and need to change them, but they couldn't tell me to what.  Can you help?

Answer
Hi Stephanie,

In InDesign make sure that the text is Black by selecting the text and making sure the colored swatch is 100% black without other colors.

A common culprit is the "Auto" color that is often imported along with some Microsoft text files. Delete the Auto color from your swatch palette and replace it with black.

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