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Inspiring
October 15, 2022
Question

Misleading preflight check for rich black text and searching for K<100% text

  • October 15, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 2198 views

I'm afraid that the Preflight check Text uses Rich Black in Acrobat misidentifies K=100 text as "Rich Black", although in my case C=0, M=0 and Y=0. This may mislead you into believing that there's something wrong with your document (in cases when you don't want any rich black text). At least that's my experience. So the question is am I right about this or am I missing or confusing something?

 

You can try it yourself: just run this check on some document or create a new one in Indesign. It can be just a single white page with some text on it in default black (it can be just one word or even just one character).

 

This preflight check is described in Acrobat as: "Text Objects are using Black and at least one of the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow channels is not zero". I clicked "edit" there and from what I saw there it seems that the factory settings for this check are wrong or something (I've never changed them). Please take a look at it and tell me am I correct.

 

I needed this to check whether I have some rich black in my text. Previously, Indesign's preflight caught some instances where C, M or Y plates were used, like some words or characters here and there. I fixed that, but just for the case I wanted to doublecheck that in Acrobat as well.

 

And one more (related) question: how to search for a black text that is less than 100%? In this case the CMY plates are not used. This text might be dark gray or something, so you can't notice it so easily.

 

Thanks for your advices and opinions

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 15, 2022

Do you include File Info in your marks when exporting the PDF? All marks are rendered in Registration color.

Community Expert
October 15, 2022

Can you share your files with us?

I don't see the same issue

 

 

 

sd5e8aAuthor
Inspiring
October 15, 2022
quote

Can you share your files with us?

I don't see the same issue


By @Eugene Tyson

 

Thanks, @Eugene Tyson, but I was talking about the Text uses Rich Black preflight check, not about List Rich Black Objects, which can be seen in your screenshot. And there's no need to share files, you can simply create a new document. A plain white page with just one word like "test" would be sufficient (at least in my case  that's sufficient).

 

Thanks, @Peter Spier, but I'm not including any marks, printmarks or file info in the document. As I said, it can be just a white page with one word on it.

 

I think that this is caused by the settings of this preflight check. Here'a a screenshot of that, please take a look at it. Maybe that's why it sees "rich black" even where there isn't any. Note that I've never modified this setting. I only recently learned that this check exists.

 

 

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 15, 2022

Hi @sd5e8a , What were your Output settings for your test Export? I also am not seeing the problem with a default PDF/X-4 export—Output>No Color Conversion