My True Black seems to display as Rich Black to the printer.

[naddi98A5]

Hey! So I am mostly a digital artist who rarely has to deal with printing but one of the rare occurences came up and  I am really struggling with understanding what could possibly be the issue.

I am working on a childrens book and I have recently sent my files to print. I followed instructions, one of them being that all my blacks should be True Blacks. So I made sure about that - but the printer keeps sending me the files back, claiming that I used Rich Black on the type. Here is the screenshot they send me:

However, I open the same file in my Illustrator and it just seems correct to me.

Therefore I have no idea how to fix it. Any idea where the problem could be?

Thank you for any suggestions, I have been googling all day and no luck...

[Monika Gause]

"True Black" should be 100% Black? Or what?

Is this an RGB or a CMYK file?

Exactly what kind of file do you send them?

[naddi98A5]

It is a CMYK file. If I understand it correctly, True black should be 100% black and 0 on every other value, as my document is saying, but it seems like the same document, opened on their device, says differently. So I wonder if there's something that could override my settings when I save it? Just guessing, I have no idea. I send it as a PDF file.

[Monika Gause]

OK, so this is about 100% black getting converted tosomething else.

You need tobe very careful withyour color management settings in the application and with  color conversions when saving the PDF.

How did you set it up?

[naddi98A5]

Hello, thank you for your reply! Can you tell me where exactly to look? I have not really changed the default settings; the only things I did do was setting my document color mode to CMYK and changing the appearance of black to display accurately, but I assume that one only has effect on my side anyway. I am at work currently so I can't post screenshots, but can you tell me which settings can affect it so I can check in the evening? Thanks a lot!

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

You have to check Edit > Color settings.

And you have to check the color management settings when saving the PDF.

And also you have to check the color profile that is attached to the dcoument.

If you don't know how color management works, you will probably not find the mistake.

You will have to learn color management. It's crucial for publishing work in any application (and has been for 20 years now).