Overprint in FM not working

[Steffen Riek]

Hello to the community,

it seems, that FM - even FM2022 - does not correctly or even not at all overprint.

I use warnings in which black text runs over colored backrounds. I've tried everything, but couldn't manage, that the text is not knocked out. What me also wonders: When creating a new, blank document, the standard black color is set to knockout ("Aussparen" in the German version). This is fundamentally wrong - you would never set black to knockout. This color is mainly used for text - and you would never want text to be knocked out (except in some rare cases where you want a maximum deep black).

I created new colors (e.g. black overprint) set it to cmyk 0 0 0 100 or 0 0 0 99 and to overprint: but no success. I also set the text above boxes in the three cmy colors 100 0 0 0, 0 100 0 0 and 0 0 100 0: but always the same result: the text is knocked out.

I also tried many different PDF settings, without and with using Distiller within the "Save as PDF" process and also "Printing to PDF" - nothing helped.

Has someone the same experiences? Or maybe a solution?

I would really be glad to get help.

[Winfried Reng]

Hi Steffen,

I am not a CMYK and printing expert. Therefore I do not know, if I can  help. However, what we need to know: How did you create your PDFs?

Print to PostScript file with or without Acrobat data

Via the Publish command with FrameMaker's PDF engine

Via the Publish command with Distiller

Any specific settings?

If you used Distiller: which job options?

Best regards

Winfried

[Steffen Riek]

Hi Winfried,

thanks for your early response.

I tried all the ways you named. Usually I use the Publish command with the FM engine, without Distiller.
But I also tried the Publish process with Distiller and Print to PDF with and without Acrobat data.

And I tried various job options, default and own settings (high qualitiy print, prepress, standard, changing colors to cmyk, not changing colors, various color profiles).

Kind regards

Steffen

[LinSims]

Wait for @Bob_Niland. He's an expert on the color aspects of Frame. 

[Bob_Niland]

Well, thanks for the endorsement, but my knowledge of colors in FM is limited to what I needed to puzzle out for my own assignments & projects.

In particular, knock-out was never an issue in my workflows, so I have zero experience with it. I'm wondering if it's just a markup tag in the data structures that's expected to be implemented by the final rendering process, and not in any fashion by FM per se. If so, it would of course need to survive into the pre-render data structures.

[sharonh19759294]

Hi Steffen,

It seems like what you're doing should have worked. To eliminate a low-hanging fruit, have you doublechecked your paragraph and character definitions to ensure that they are using the new versions of black that you created?  The way you're describing the results makes me suspect that something in those formats didn't take.

[Steffen Riek]

Hi sharonh,

thanks for your help.

I double checked it several times - and I think I had the proper settings.

Please find attached a view screenshots showing all settings and results.

I just used here a blank new document without any further changes to eliminate any side effects from other settings.

Kind regards

Steffen

[StudioSm]

@Steffen Riek I tried making a mock setup to test and I do not get the same results. My test may differ though. I have done a small video to show how it worked.

[Steffen Riek]

Hi StudioSm,

thank you for the video.
Kann you tell me your Adobe PDF Printer Settings.

I am not allowed to select color separation because of wrong halftone settings.

And second: What happens, if you do not create the color separation PDFs but a compound PDF?

When open the Compound PDF in Adobe Acrobat, select the Print Production tool, and open the Output Preview and uncheck black from the color separations: will black then overprint or knock out? I added a screenshot.

Kind regards

Steffen

[StudioSm]

Hi Steffen. I think you are right that there is an error somewhere in the pdf print to separations. When I print to composite pdf and ask Acrobat to use the preview separations tool, the black over print is not there. Which is kinda strange! But also true it seems. I tried printing separations from Acrobat and overprint does not work. However.... printing to Postscript as I show in the video does work but I can't really figure out why the overprint settings do not come along in the composite pdf. It may be a pesky little setting in Distiller setup...

[StudioSm]

I did some digital archeology 🙂  You are not alone it seems. It does look like an old problem which has not been fixed. One thing I have not tried though... There are other ps drivers than Adobes PDF. Might be worth it trying an old compugraphic driver or another true postscript printer driver.

https://www.mail-archive.com/framers@lists.frameusers.com/msg70238.html

[Steffen Riek]

Hi StudioSm,

I also found some threads about that topic looooong ago - and couldn't belive, that after more than 10 years this still is an issue. I did some more tests and can confirm, that in color separations overprint works.

For me this is absolutely worthless - since so many years it is the standard to deliver composite PDFs for printing.

I will report this to the Adobe bug report and hopefully get some help from there. Maybe it is still me, doing somethings wrong?!

Kind regards

Steffen

[Winfried Reng]

When I read the relevant sections in the online help, I assume that overprint works only for separations. The online help is not really clear.

Yes. Very good that you created a Tracker report.

https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/FRMAKER-12852