Black overprinting should NOT be on by default

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 27, 2023
4 replies
1883 views

Is there any way to automatically turn off the "Overprint [Balck] Swatch at 100%" on every file as it is opened? I work at a commercial printing company and too many "designers" send in artwork with black boxes that form or crop an image. Sometimes the image goes half way through the box and with black overprinting on it causes problems. This really should not be a default, many times we get PDF files and it can be more difficult to fix. See the examples, one showing how it looks with overprint preview on and one without and how the designer intended for it to print.

Feature request

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

As someone who has also worked at a Commercial printer, for over 30 years, I am in total disagreement with your wish; the number of sitiations where a defaut black overprint is necessary (and desired) FAR outnumbers the opposite.

rob day

Community Expert

Hi @ILSSTR8 , To set the default, close all documents closed uncheck Preferences>Appearance of Black>Overprint [Black] Swatch at 100%. For existing documents the preference would have to be changed for each document, which could be scripted:

This really should not be a default

This is the reason Overprint on is the default:

Large areas of black should be set to a 4-color black

Peter Spier

Community Expert

I'm with Bob on this.

There are any number of ways the "designer" could have avoided this problem -- cropping the image, using a rich black or making a "knockout black" 100K swatch come to mind.

BobLevine

Community Expert

It's a document-specific setting. And it most certainly should be on by default.

BTW, for a block that size a rich black should have been used. That "designer" could use some education.

I

ILSSTR8Author

New Participant

I agree that a lot of designers could use some education. Unfortunately we get files from many sources and are not able to get the information back to the people creating the files. You could say the same for manually overprintiing small text, it has to be on by default because of lack of education. I have been in printing for over 35 years and it has only gotten worse. We see files on a weekly, if not daily, basis that should not have black overprinting on. It causes many more problems than not having the black overprint. With the proper trap settings, the RIP can handle most small text just fine. The RIP cannot fix these overprint issues.

BobLevine

Community Expert

I understand what you're saying but black overprinting at 100% has been a default setting forever. Think of the qualified designers (no quotes this time) that would be thrown by changing that now.

Dumbing down applications for the untrained users is a horrific idea.

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