Participating Frequently

Question

Rich black isn't rich black

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
February 21, 2026
7 replies
227 views

I got an PDF from a customer. I selected the black and gave it the value 30/30/30/100. and saved it back to a PDF.

After printing, the black was not black, but grey. When I opened the file in Acrobat, it was also grey. Opened back inIllustrator again, the black was as specified above.

What is going wrong?

You can check the file in the attachment, but only in version 30+. Lower versions import the PDF instead of opening it, and the grey wil show immediately.

Any help or suggestions are welcome.

finishboarding_3000x1000_PRINT.pdf

John Kallios

Participating Frequently

Do a test to strip away the pdf portion.

1. Open in Illustrator

Turn off color management
save as an Illustrator document with pdf compatibility off.
close document and reopen
Save as a pdf with preserve Illustrator editing capabilities
do not use a custom standard for the pdf and color management is still off

do you exhibit the same results?

The only way I know of to exhibit similar to what you are describing is to edit the color in acrobat creating a mismatch to the Illustrator editing portion of the file.

if you are creating a document from scratch, can you replicate the results. I cannot replicate the results on my end

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Since the 2 parts of the file differ there may have gone something wrong during saving.

Do you save on a server or in a synced folder? Is in Preferences > File Handling > Save in Background turned on?

N

NightwatchNLAuthor

Participating Frequently

See my answer below. But If I recreate the same situation at home, the same ‘75%’ error occurs.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Just be careful with save in background, there have been or still are problems with it.

John Kallios

Participating Frequently

30,30,30,100 will print a warm rich black. 30,24,24,100 is a neutral rich black. I cannot examine the pdf where I am at. I believe Brad zeroed in on the issue, there is a mismatch in the pdf saved portion and the Preserve AI editing portion. Typically introduced as Brad has mentioned. Btw, my personal rich black build is 35,25,25,100 cool black and hides if some pressman run their magentas hot. I am aware of a popular build, 60,40,40,100 which is also a cool build. I prefer thinner film thicknesses in production.

N

NightwatchNLAuthor

Participating Frequently

Speculations about what rich black is the nicest (ours are company specified), I’d like to know how such a mismatch can occur. The file ons only a few KB in size, so wether ‘save in background’ is selected or not, as if the file is saved to a file server or local, should not be an issue. But if I’m wrong in this, please set me straight.

PS: both ‘save in background’ and ‘save file to server*’ options are active in AI, since all our files are on company servers.

*) This option let you save your file locally and when completed, the file will automatically be copied to the server.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

The original file was created in 2021 in v26 Illustrator, so no other program, and then again in v30.0 before it was saved as v30.2 for this file.

My question is how did you change the colour? Did you just open the file directky in Illustrator v30.2 or something else.

When you saved, did you do a “Save As” > PDF (and what settings did you use), or did you do a simple “Save”.

I’ve tested a similar file all sorts of ways and am not getting the result you have experienced. Even if I started introducing color management in it (which it didn’t currently have)

N

NightwatchNLAuthor

Participating Frequently

I just edited it from within Illustrator, using the Color tab (F6).
Then ‘Save As’ and using our normal workflow settings (basic PDF without color profiles or any other bells and whistles).

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

The reason I asked is that Illustrator PDFs that have the AI part attached have two “sides”, and if someone edits the PDF side, say with PitStop, those changes only apply to the PDF side (PitStop warns you about this). But, that doesn’t seem to be happening here, Your situation is the opposite, where you’ve changed a value in the AI side but it didn’t carry through to the PDF side, so I’m at a bit of a loss. So, back to my original question, when you got the PDF from the client, what was the original colour? So, can you share the original PDF?

N

NightwatchNLAuthor

Participating Frequently

UPDATE
When importing the PDF into an older version of Illustrator (29.1), the black will be 79%. When changing the black to 100% and save it again, the black wil be converted to 79% again. 🙁

I’m beginning to suspect the PDF is not created with an Adobe product, and perhaps contains faulty PDF specs.

PS. The original customer PDF was already CMYK, so no RGB to CMYK conversion was applied nor necessary.

B

Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

When I checked the PDF file’s properties in Adobe Acrobat it says it was produced in Illustrator 30.2 for Macintosh. Under the Advanced tab it says Adobe PDF Library 18.00.

N

NightwatchNLAuthor

Participating Frequently

I too work on a Mac with AI v30.2, so that should rule out compatibility issues.

What then is going wrong?

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

I can see in Acrobat that the black is 30/30/30/79.

If I open your PDF in Illustrator, a profile is missing, and I can see 30/30/30/100.

Saving a copy as PDF keeps those values.

N

NightwatchNLAuthor

Participating Frequently

I Know. Even copy and paste the black background solves the problem. But I’m looking for an explanation of the original problem. If I can’t count on Illustrator to accurate save colors, it is not trustworthy.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

The file has no color profile embedded. If that was supplied by a customer then probably they have not set up their color management correctly.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

How did you save the PDF? Which color settings are set up in Illustrator? Which profile did you set when saving the PDF?

N

NightwatchNLAuthor

Participating Frequently

Fogra39, for this is an European standard.

I just opened the customer PDF, adjusted the color and saved it again. As you know, a PDF, opened in Illustrator will automatically saved als PDF again when saving.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

And your color settings are?

And also when you select “Save as” and then go through all the PDF options, what is set up in the color handling?

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