Expert: LizaL - 3/15/2005

Question
I am using photoshop CS. My question is how can I change 4 color blacks in a CMYK document to 100% black without changing the rest of the document. For example a client emaild me a jpg of their website. For our presses I need all the blacks to be one color, not 4 color. Is there a way to select the 4 color black text(not a text layer, part of the image) and change just that to 1 color (grayscale). I have yet to find a way to make part of a CMYK document into just black without changing the entire document or piecing it together in Quark.

Thanks

Answer
Hi Kristin,

I need some clarification here, mostly to make sure I understand what you're saying.

Are you asking me if it's possible to change just part of a CMYK document into grayscale, in order to make the text that's embedded into the page 100% black?

Or are you asking if it's possible to assign a 100% black just to that text portion of the page?

If you want to make just a portion of an image grayscale, no, you can't do that.

The only thing I can think of as a solution, based on just what you've told me, would be to select that black text (even though it's part of the image), copy it to a new file, and make that new file grayscal. Then drag it back into the original file, and then merge layers.

BUT -- as I'm sure you're aware, this could be a tedious job, based on the nature of the text involved (i.e., is it a headline? is it a lot? is it roman or sans serif, and what's the size?), and also due to the challenge of making the grayscale layer fit correctly, back into the original document.

So anyway, if it answers your question, no, you can't make just a part of an image grayscale, not unless you do it the way I've suggested, which admittedly, could be problematic. It's might be a little bit better than piecing it in Quark, though.

Now if I've misinterpreted your question in any way, please post back and let me know! But in the meantime, I'll check around and see if I can come up with any fixes for this. I'll post back and append this question if I do.

Also, you could send me the image and I could take a look at it and see if I can figure out a solution. My email address is lizal@little-works.com.


Lisa