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Rastafabi
Participant
January 13, 2017
Question

InDesign exported pdf have changed blacks

  • January 13, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 12628 views

Hello Community!

I have a really odd issue with InDesign. I made a booklet for an university-project with a black cover and back. However those black tones change when being exported to an Adobe-Print-PDF. Even stranger this only affects those too pages while other are just fine. I Already recreated those pages entirely, deleting the old ones and starting from scratch without any copying and pasting. I also repeated those to pages again at the end of the document to check wether only the very first and very last page is affected but this does not help either. I really need this to be working next Monday... I hope you can help me. The image is quiet self-explaining.

BTW: I'm on OS X Sierra using InDesign CS6

Best Rastafabi

–––––––––––––––––– image link corrected

4 replies

Randy Hagan
Community Expert
Randy HaganCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 13, 2017

My suspicion is that you:

1) Are using default settings for how InDesign displays and outputs blacks.

To make blacks appear "Black" onscreen, InDesign essentially creates a "Rich Black" effect, where in print terms a small percentage of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are added to the color build to give a deep, almost shiny black.

Go to the InDesign>Preferences... in MacOS/OSX systems or the Edit>Preferences... menu command in Windows-based computers and change the settings in the Printing/Exporting: option box to Output All Blacks Accurately. This will always export "Black" elements from InDesign with a 100%K build in CMYK terms.

2) If you want to create a "Rich Black" for your color builds in CMYK jobs, build a custom color in your Color panel, with the settings Cyan: 30%, Magenta: 20%, Yellow: 20% and Black: 100% to differentiate your color layouts from "flat" black to Rich Black. If you want to see the difference between the two, change the On Screen: options box to Output All Blacks Accurately as well. This will rat out the difference between the two blacks on your computer when you see them within InDesign as well.

If this fixes your problem, and I suspect it will, please mark this response as answered in your post. This allows Adobe to move it into archives where it will be available to help others who run across the same or similar problems.

rob day
Community Expert
rob dayCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 13, 2017
This will always export "Black" elements from InDesign with a 100%K build in CMYK terms.

Not always. If you export to a CMYK space that is different than the document's assigned profile without preserving numbers, or set the destination profile to an RGB space you would get a 4color black. Also if there's transparency on the page and your Transparency Blend space is set to RGB you could also get a conversion.

But if you look carefully at the link,  the OP is using Preview to check the values and Preview doesn't accurately sample CMYK objects

Randy Hagan
Community Expert
Randy HaganCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 13, 2017

Certainly if you export into an RGB space you will get a "Rich Black" in RGB terms. That's a likely result because his reported Rich Black is a really Rich Black -- like 288% total ink percentage, with less than 70% key color blacK. And it's conceivable that something got garbled in a problematic CMYK>CMYK translation.

And I totally agree that using OSX Preview will lie about color builds. I did miss that. So we may be chasing a problem that doesn't exist at all.

But the telltale for me is the color photo in the layout. If he's telling us that "black" exists as 100% Key color elsewhere, I suspect that he's got a problem with how his color form is separating. I still think the first place I'd check, from unfortunate experience, is in my InDesign preferences. A lot of problems like this happen downstream -- even if the rest of the color settings are absolutely correct -- from this underlying InDesign issue.

Please don't ask me how I know, because it truly hurts to remember it ...

rob day
Community Expert
rob dayCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 13, 2017

In your screen capture you are using Preview to sample the black values and Preview is not capable of reliably preflighting or sampling an object's actual values. You should use AcrobatPro's Object Inspector. Post the actual PDF and ID files and we can check them.

Here's Preview's reading of 0|0|0|100 vs. AcrobatPro's accurate Output Preview

macpawel
macpawel
Participating Frequently
January 13, 2017

Probably you used Convert to Destination option during Export to PDF

If your black is correct in InDesign, you can choose Convert To Destination (Preserve numbers) options during Exporting

It should helps you

You can find this settings in Output section during PDF Export

Pawel

    Eternal Warrior
    Eternal Warrior
    Inspiring
    January 13, 2017

    Hi Rastafabi,

    As a starting point:

    Perhaps you have an object style you are not aware of that is choosing that black colour instead of pure black?

    If not you could have accidentally applied an RGB pure black to those two pages which then converts to CMYK resulting in a different percentage mix?

    Have you tried enforcing an object style with either Pure Black or the CMYK Registration black (i.e. 100% C 100% Y 100% M 100% K)?

    If all else fails consider resetting your InDesign preferences as the programme launches as it could be a corrupted save/application error that is causing this potential "glitch".

    Close and relaunch InDesign, and IMMEDIATELY hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift (Windows) or Cmd + Ctrl + Opt + Shift (Mac), and then respond in the affirmative to the dialog asking if you really want to replace the preferences. You must be extremely fast on the keyboard (if you don’t see the confirmation prompt, you were too slow).

    R
    RastafabiAuthor
    Participant
    January 13, 2017

    Many thanks to all of you! I think in the end all of you were right. I reseted InDesign as starting today it started complaining about corrupted indeed files. After resetting everything went back to normal. Since, I also did not experience the bug that caused the "Save" and "Save as..." menu items being greyed out, which already resulted in data loss several times. (only option to save the work were exporting as eps). Great to have such a helpful active community!

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