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SimonLinden
Inspiring
March 28, 2018
Answered

Apply overprint to black text (on many pages)

  • March 28, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 7562 views

For some reason I can not start a new discussion in Adobe Acrobat so I put it here in Illustrator instead.

Another person made a book full of illustrations and graphs - each page was made in Illustrator and then exported to PDF. I was sent the PDFs and combined them all to one continuous PDF of 202 pages ready for print. However, the printer came back saying that we forgot to apply overprinting for black text. I don't know much about this since I mostly work with InDesign which to my knowledge always applies it correctly by default. But I ran a preflight in Adobe Acrobat and this was the summary:

First of all - which of these warnings should I worry about? I think "small black text set to knockout" is a bad one. But what about black objects and strokes? Should they be overprint as well? And white text or objects shouldn't be overprint right?

It seems like some basic setting in Illustrator was wrong for black colors, (and also for white?). I tried opening the PDF in Illustrator and the text seem to use standard black, which means it should be overprint by default right? Doesn't Illustrator handle this by default? I saw I could go to "Window>Attributes" and check overprint fil for the selected object. This seems to solve the problem but is there anyway I can do this quickly? Preferably in Acrobat just on all pages at once. But if I must open each page in Illustrator - is there a way to automatically apply overprint to all black text?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Monika Gause

    You can use Edit > Edit colors > Overprint Black

    This can be used on all selected objects at once. The settings will filter accordingly.

    Use 100% Overprint black Strokes and fills to overprint all black strokes at once

    Use 0% Remove overprint (I'm not sure about the English wording) Strokes and fills to remove overprinting from Process white objects.

    4 replies

    S
    SimonLindenAuthor
    Inspiring
    April 3, 2018

    Thanks for taking the time to explain this in detail! The preflight functions are certainly something I should be learning more of both in Acrobat and InDesign.

      S
      SimonLindenAuthor
      Inspiring
      March 28, 2018

      I ended up selecting only text by going Select menu>Objects>Text Objects and then Edit > Edit colors > Overprint Black. This last option was useful since I didn't have to make sure to deselect all white text. Thanks for your responses both of you!

      Kurt Gold
      Community Expert
      Kurt GoldCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 28, 2018

      In Acrobat you can do that with a custom preflight profile that would set black type objects and/or other black vector objects to overprint.

      S
      SimonLindenAuthor
      Inspiring
      March 28, 2018

      Thanks for the advice Kurt. I have already done it the hard way in Illustrator but it would be really useful to know how the preflight tool works Acrobat. I very rarely use it.

      Kurt Gold
      Community Expert
      Kurt GoldCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      March 28, 2018

      Acrobat's preflight may be a bit confusing if you just rarely use it, but I'd recommend to use it for that kind of task, rather than using Illustrator to edit your .pdf files.

      Creating a custom preflight profile that sets all 100k black text objects to overprint is pretty easy.

      In Acrobat, open the Preflight application. At the top right there is a dropdown menu called "Options". Open it and choose "Create Profile" (remember that this term and some of the following terms may be slightly different, that's because I don't use the English version of Acrobat).

      In the left column there is a main item called "Custom Profiles". Inside that main item select "Custom Correction" (or maybe "Custom Adjustment").

      In the right column there is a long list of various adjustments. At the top of the right column there is a search field. Use it and search for "overprint". Now you should see about a dozen of predefined adjustments. One of them is called "Set black text to overprint". Select it and – at the bottom of the right column – click the arrow that points to the left. Give the new profile a useful name, then save it and click "OK".

      In Acrobat, open a .pdf file that contains 100k black text objects that are not set to overprint. Go to the Preflight application and choose your custom profile. Click the "Check and correct" button at the bottom.

      Now all black text objects should be set to overprint in one whack. You can verify it by applying the default preflight profile called "Potential overprint problems".

        Monika Gause
        Community Expert
        Monika GauseCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
        Community Expert
        March 28, 2018

        You can use Edit > Edit colors > Overprint Black

        This can be used on all selected objects at once. The settings will filter accordingly.

        Use 100% Overprint black Strokes and fills to overprint all black strokes at once

        Use 0% Remove overprint (I'm not sure about the English wording) Strokes and fills to remove overprinting from Process white objects.

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