Black colors appear as dark brown when viewing the PDF.

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
March 4, 2025
2 replies
1277 views

Hello,

I am designing a small book using InDesign that will be for print. I am using this color profile (requested by the print service): PSO Uncoated v3 (FOGRA52).

However, I noticed that when I view it as a PDF, all the black colors seem to appear as dark brown (both text and graphics). Why is this happening? Will it also look like that in the final result?

Due to my inexperience with print design, I'm not sure if this is normal or not.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

I loaded that profile and I am getting the same shift to warm blacks, but as said, if the values you see when you hover over your objects are still correct, you should be fine; you are still just getting 100K on the printed sheet.

My usual is CoatedGRACoL2006, so you can see the difference in the display here:

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Must be something to do with the paper/inks used to build the PSO Uncoated v3 (FOGRA52) profile.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Very definitely.

I have profiled our own presses for different paper stocks, and depending on the whiteness and surface, Blacks will appear differently when measuring Lab values off the printed sheet.

F

Flo_8580

Inspiring

This could be a simple display difference of the two programs. Check the InDesign preferences for Appearance of Black. It's likely set to Display all Blacks as Rich Black, i think that's the default. That would explain why you are seeing a darker color in InDesign.

Also, check the color seperation of your PDF in Acrobat via Use print production > Output preview.

Are you seeing a 100% black value in your text? You can hover your cursor over different parts of the PDF to get a color readout in the panel.