4 colour black

[_Karl_Smart_]

To be honest I nothing about scripting. But we have an issue when artworking illustrations in illustrator CS3 where the colour black is represented using 4 colours rather than being 100%. Of course we could use actions and manually change the stroke weights and fill colours individually to 100% black but when items are different shades of 4 colour black it can be very difficult and often time consuming to spot them all. I was wondering if there was some kind of script that I could use that would identify all black colours (stroke and fill) and automatically convert them to 100% black. This would be a great help.

If anyone has any ideas I would be most greatful. Thanks.

[try67]

It's possible to create such a script, but you'll need to better define what you call "4 colour black". Is it always the same combination of colours, or are there multiple options? You don't want to just go around changing every color to 100% black, do you?

[_Karl_Smart_]

Hi Thanks for replying. The issue is with colours that look completely black to the eye on screen but on closer inspection of the cmyk colour pallette are made up of CMYK colours instead of just black. The problem is that this black looking colour is not always made up of the same shade of colours they often vary slightly. An example of a 4 colour black would be; C: 92.5, M: 87.5, Y: 88.6 K:79.6. This looks black to the eye but we can't use it in print publishing.

A script that I could run in illustrator to turn all shades of this and similar to 100% black (eg. C:0 , M:0, Y:0, K:100) would great.

Thanks again for any help

[try67]

So let me help you out defining the procedure, because "looks completely black to the eye" is not something a computer can understand (yet):
If a color spec is C>80 AND M>80 AND Y>80 AND K>75 THEN
Change it to C=0, M=0, Y=0, K=100.

This is the basic logic of the script (you can play with the values to achieve a better result).

I don't know of any existing script that does this. If you want, I can write such a script for you (for a price). Contact me by email for more info.

[_JohnDArmstrong_]

I think your problem can be solved without scripting.

I'm going to make some assumptions here.

You don't want to print 4c black because - your printing your job 1c, I assume this because frankly 4c black is richer than 1c black - so you must be doing a 1c job.

Since your whole illustration will then be all sets of greyscale - select your entire illustration, ensure your document color mode is CMYK, then Run, Edit > Edit Colors > Convert to Greyscale

Your 4C mixes will all bet set to tints of Black.

hope that helps.