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Question

Black Crop Marks

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
February 5, 2020
7 replies
6854 views

When exporting out of InDesign is there a way to make crop marks only 100% Black. Mine come out 100% of all colors and if I am running a 4 over Black job it sees page two a full color becasue of the crop marks? Thanks for any advise.

Print and prepress

Gusgsm

Inspiring

Hi,

The trouble you are having seems simple but it has no simple solution inside Adobe Suite. As it has been pointed, print marks are created as "Separation All" color, that is more like a command ("Print every plate") than a real color.

You might try what Uwe points to by making two different PDF: One grayscale and the other CMYK and then tell the printer which set of pages is grayscale and which one is CMYK.

But, if you have to assemble both in one PDF, you revert to the initial trouble as the whole PDF will be considered CMYK and so the print marks will print in every plate.

What rudo123 points to would be an excellent solution (the easiest one, you can even change a whole page to grayscale if you tweak it a bit) . However, the trouble is that Acrobat fixes, at least up to now, do not work for page ranges (see this thread). So, back to the start if you have to send one PDF with all the pages assembled.

So, couldn't you just tell the printer which pages print as grayscale and which ones print as CMYK and send them the two sets, (applying the Acrobat fix to the grayscale PDF)?

Just my two cents

PS. Well. I correct myself. You might apply the grayscale fix in acrobat to the grayscale pages and then (afterwards), merge both PDF to expor the whole set as a PDF/X.

That should do the trick if you have to send one PDF.

rob day

Community Expert

However, the trouble is that Acrobat fixes, at least up to now, do not work for page ranges (see this thread). So, back to the start if you have to send one PDF with all the pages assembled.

Hi @Gusgsm , Why would you need to apply the fix to a page range? Seems like there would be no problem with having the crop marks black only even when there is color on the page.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

@rob day

I think that having print marks (crop and registration) just in one plate in a CMYK would defeat their purpose, wouldn't it? Just my guess. But they might be asking for them just out of tradition and then it would be no trouble even not having them.

The only reason for having crop marks on a digital print is to align the cutter, and there is no way to adjust the registration between colors on the fly as there is on a press, so having only black marks should not be a problem. The point is to not incur a color click charge on K-only pages just becasue you've included marks, and not having full color marks on color pages won't affect the cost at all.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi seanmmccormack,

did you consider to export to PDF with the conversion of colors to a grayscale color profile?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

B

Ben__P

Known Participant

Really wish this was an option to select 100% K crop marks when exporting. Work arounds are not really good in this as you lose all the simplicity of what should be a very simple check box. I have a variable job, I could export and literally just drop it in a hot folder for our digital press but because it will see the crop marks as colour and does not convert to grayscale. Keeping it registration colour is no issue for offset as you only plate the colours you want. Hopefully someone from Adobe finds this request and looks at implimenting, would be a worth while feature that I am sure many people would want.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

Crop marks typically must appear on all color plates. To want them only on one plate/color is a specialized use, and thus needs special attention at the design level.

B

Ben__P

Known Participant

Yes, which I did mention in my post. This is a digital age and many if not all print shops are both Offset and Digital. I would say most print shops running digital are on some sort of "pay per click" plan. This means they have a price for CMYK prints and a price for 1 colour black prints. The black prints are much cheaper, sometimes under a penny per click. Colour prints (again plans will vary) will be around 6 cents or more. So if sending a job direct with crop marks from Indesign you are triggering the CMYK in the printer and getting dinged for a CMYK print despite using virtually no CMYK toner. Yes there are work arounds, but how hard would it be to simply throw in an option to select 100% K for crop marks for digital jobs? It would be super helpful to a huge number of people in the print world.

Geоrge

Legend

What stops you to add your own "only black" marks on master-page?

Remember, never say you can't do something in InDesign, it's always just a question of finding the right workaround to get the job done. © David Blatner

John Mensinger

Community Expert

If you're running in an automated-read black-only-or-color click-charge environment, and you need those marks, and they must be K only, you'll have to set them manually.

rob day

Community Expert

No. The PDF cropmarks’ Color Space in Acrobat is Separation, All