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I have a GS1 bar code that has to be in 100% black. The PNG supplied by GS1 is coming out as rich black in ai. I have tried everything (10 hours trying and counting) but cannot get the black to change correctly.
We have tried changing it to red, to see if we can do that but no luck.
So, how does one change a rich black PNG into a 100% black?
Thanks!
p,s We are using the latest Adobe Illustrator.
Thanks, I downloaded your PNG, placed it embedded (although you can embed it afterwards using the, Control, Links or Properties panel), selected it and went to Edit > Edit Colors > Convert to Greyscale.
I checked it by opening the Window > Separations Preview and turning off black to see if any other colors were present.
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Good to hear that helped!
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Much appreciated Ton. It's a small thing to the outside world - quite rightly so - but it parlaysed us for the whole of today. Tomorrow we go again. Thanks for the help :).
We make a football game (link removed by moderator), if football or tabletop games are your thing, let me know by private message and I'll get a copy sent to you as a very small thank you.
Be well and thanks again.
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Thanks, glad I could help. I appreciate the offer, but I am not really a games player, thanks anyway!
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Hello @scottpigeon33,
Thank you for letting us know that the solution provided by Ton worked for you. We're glad to hear that your issue has been resolved. To help other users with similar problems, would you mind marking the answer as correct? We appreciate your contribution to the community. Let us know if you have any more questions or concerns. We're always here to help.
Thanks,
Anubhav
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While you were able to create a work-around, you should really modify your workflow in the future.
PNGs are always RGB, although you were able to force it to (black-only) grayscale in AI.
Color images (RGB, CMYK, and GS) will process as an image and will be screened and anti-aliased.
For this type of art, you really need a high-res (1200-1500 ppi) image, save in Bitmap mode, and saved as TIFF.
Since you already have a PNG, I'm assuming it is about 300 ppi. You could up the resolution using the nearest neighbor setting in Photoshop, convert to GS, convert to Bitmap, save as TIFF.
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David, greyscale PNGs do exist.
As long as you don't scale the barcode that was shown (300ppi) the lines will print perfectly clean.
The text will be screened because it is already anti-aliased.
If you really want a bitmap, you can do that in Illustrator. Object > Rasterize... will let you create a bitmap at the resolutions you mentioned 1200-1500 ppi.
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Thanks Ton. I stand corrected (well... sitting actually!)
However, it will still print as a photo-type image--either color or grayscale. A monochrome bitmap image is the best thing for this type of black-only art.