Exported PDF converts black to gray

[_Sarah_Casey_]

Hello,

I am trying to export an InDesign CS3 document as a PDF, but all my blacks turn gray when previewed in Acrobat. I opened the PDF in Photoshop to sample the gray to make sure it wasn't a preview problem, but it is gray in Photoshop as well. I have tried using various PDF presets and various blacks (default black, CMYK build black, and Pantone black) with no positive results.

Any ideas would be welcome!

Thank you!

[Guest]

It may be because the single black ink at 100% is still not as dark as black plus additional inks (eg. all four CMYK inks at 100%, aka Registration). InDesign has a default preference (which can be turned off) to display 100% black as "rich black" on your monitor, but Acrobat and Photoshop don't do that, hence the difference.

Have you tried making a pdf containing a Black-only swatch next to a Registration swatch? I just tried it and in the resulting PDF, I can see the difference quite clearly.

Another thing to try when viewing your PDF in Acrobat is to use the "Output Preview"...when that's in use you can mouse over your document to see what the actual ink levels are. If your grey looking "black" swatch shows as 100% Black, then everything's fine...just try not to be bothered by the greyish appearance.

[_eve_florin_]

i have the same issue as sarah. i moused over the pdf document and despite it saying 100% black, it still prints gray. is there any more information on this topic? this is a problem for me with pdfs created from illustrator and indesign in cs3.

[_P__Marlowe_]

>this is a problem for me

Why is this a problem for you?
What are you trying to do with your PDF that you do not want your black to print accurately?
We need to know this to answer appropriately. A PDF that prints as dark as possible on your laser printer is (as good as) ununsable for offset printing.

[_eve_florin_]

thank you for the response, p. i would like it to print accurately. i've done some tests and the pdf prints accurately (100%k) on all printers but my home hp inkjet printer. on my printer, it prints 100%k from the native illustrator or indesign file but once i save it as a pdf, it looks gray on screen and prints gray to my inkjet. any clue how to fix this? is this a color profile issue with my printer? why would the pdf black appear so differently than the native file black on screen?

some other info that might be helpful, i have both cs2 and cs3 loaded on my computer (macbook pro). i have experienced this issue before and changed some settings in bridge (sorry, i don't remember what these were) that seemed to remedy the issue until i downloaded a business card template file from www.overnightprints.com. the file seemed to be built in the cs or cs2 version of illustrator.

thanks again for your help. it is much appreciated.

[_SuperMacGuy_]

This solution may not work for you. I have seen this as well, text or other 100% black objects become 92% black (grey). My solution was to disable InDesign color management, and then exported the PDF. My blacks were now 100% black.
If you are working in color or your image require color management, this technique probably won't be of much help.

Chris

[_eve_florin_]

hmmm... yeah, i need to be to work in color. thanks for the info though!

[Guest]

In Acrobat:

Advanced (in top menu bar) >  uncheck Proof Colors (pull down menu) > then if still gray, in same area roll over Proof Setup (menu will open to right) and check Simulate Ink Black

I just happened to be playing around with some of the options others have mentioned in this string, and got lucky. So thanks everyone.

BLACK - dark, rich, true black - is beautiful!

[rob day]

0|0|0|100 Black in offset printing isn't absolute black—adding CMY to the mix (aka rich black) produces a blacker black. Most CMYK profiles take this into account when there's a conversion to RGB (for monitor display or printing to an RGB driven inkjet printer), the assumption being you want to proof for what will actually happen on press.

ID has a preference for cases where you are not proofing for offset printing (the final destination is a monitor or inkjet printer). If that's the case, choose Output and Display All Blacks as Rich Black in the Appearance of Black preference.

[Jeffrey Dean]

I have been very interested in this. I work chiefly with text (books, in fact), and printers have had no problems with the PDFs I have generated in InDesign and sent to them. The difficulty arises with the voucher proofs I print out on my laser printer to accompany the PDFs -- these have been coming out with grey text instead of black, and this is NOT a desirable attribute in this context. A successful workaround I have discovered is to set the text color to Registration instead of black.

I have also found it helpful, when sending printers InDesign-generated PDFs incorporating black-and-white halftones, to use Acrobat's "Convert Colors..." function (Advanced menu, Print Production sub-menu) to "Convert Colors to Output Intent", Profile "Gray Gamma 1.8" (or 2.2, if the printer finds that preferable; I am working on a Mac, so my monitor uses Gamma 1.8).

What I have not succeeded in discovering is what to do when an InDesign file incorporates a placed black-and-white line-art file. For instance, I am trying to produce musical scores intended for laser printing by end-users after downloading from the Web, not for proper printing by offset. TIFF files generated by Finale, Sibelius, or the like are incorporated in InDesign files to ensure superior typography of accompanying text (the text-handling sophistication of the music-notation software is rudimentary). When PDF is produced, the translation of black to grey means that musical staff lines, barlines, note stems, and the like print out on a laser printer as dotted rather than solid lines -- NOT a desirable result. I'd love to find out how to get black line art to print as black!

I attach one of my scores as an example, in case that is helpful.

[Kenneth C. Benson]

A successful workaround I have discovered is to set the text color to Registration instead of black.

This might be harmless in B&W, but don't print color with this "workaround"!

Registration prints on every plate. It's a special color designed to print crops, slugs, and other objects that you want to show up on every plate. Registration is *not* for text, because it will separate to every plate. If you print 4-color, and your text is colored Registration, it will print cyan on top of yellow on top of magenta on top of black. And if you have additional colors, it will print in those colors as well. You'll end up with all these colors stacked on top of each other slightly mis-registered, a very colorful, unreadable mess.

Ken

[Jeffrey Dean]

Thanks, Ken. Your point is well taken. My suggestion was for the very specific case in which no color is to be printed EXCEPT black. It is not a solution, but a workaround. I should be delighted to learn of a better way to achieve the result I'm after.

[Kenneth C. Benson]

Edit > Preferences > Appearance of Black > Output all blacks as Rich Black

This could also be an issue with your printer's toner-saving mechanism. My printer will print in "Economode" which is definitely not as black as the regular mode.

Probably not going to matter to me, but someone else might be able to help more if you told us what kind of laser printer.

Ken

[rob day]

The registration color works because in terms of color management it is the same as a rich black or absolute black, so it translates to grayscale as 100% black, while 0|0|0100 CMYK translates to something less than absolute black when you output to grayscale.

Have you tried setting your Appearance of Black preference to Output All Blacks as Rich Blacks?

For black & white projects you can also set your Color Settings CMYK space to Photoshop 5 Default CMYK. PS 5’s default CMYK profile did not distinguish the color of black mixes—everything was considered absolute black. With this profile blacks and grayscale get converted to grayscale with no change. For existing projects you may need to assign the profile via Edit>Assign Profiles...

When you print out of ID to a black and white laser printer, you can also try setting the Output Color to Composite CMYK rather than Composite Grayscale and prevent the conversion.

[Jeffrey Dean]

Thanks, Rob, for some pertinent questions. (1) Yes, I have "Display/Output All Blacks as Rich Blacks" set in preferences. I've tried it both ways; of course the "Accurately" alternative makes it worse. (2) Re-outputting PDF from InDesign CS4 using Photoshop 5 Default CMYK does not resolve the issue at all; the music score, which is entirely black text and black line art (no tint, no grey), still ends up grey rather than black. I cannot see "Assign Profiles..." under Edit in either ID or Acrobat (9.1.2). (3) I've never had this trouble printing out of InDesign -- only with PDFs generated by InDesign. So I generate laser-printed proofs in ID itself; but I need to print out the PDFs for voucher proofs. They have to show what the PDF contains, in case there is any discrepancy with the application that generated the PDF. And I need to make PDFs and not ID files available to other users who may not have ID.

Ken, there's a difference between what might be described as "faint black" produced by toner-saving settings on a printer and the undesirable half-toning that I am experiencing, which is caused by the printer's attempting to interpret the presentation of black as grey in the PDF. Again, I've tried it both ways, and find that turning off toner saving doesn't help. If it can help anyone in any way, I've tried printing out of both Acrobat Pro and Adobe Reader, on an Epson AcuLaser CX11NF and also on a Brother HL-5250DN (using both the CUPS driver and the BR-Script3 driver). Same results with all combinations.

I'm grateful for your feedback, but I don't feel I'm getting forrarder...

Jeff

[Kenneth C. Benson]

I'm grateful for your feedback, but I don't feel I'm getting forrarder...

Don't despair, we're just getting started. You always have to start with the easy stuff (because 95% of the time, the problem is something easy).

I want to take a look at the PDF you attached, but it's still in the queue, and likely to be there for at least another hour or two. Sometimes they sit there for days...

Meanwhile, I wouldn't mind looking at an ID file and linked graphics if you could attach them too. Even better would be to zip up the ID file, linked graphics, and PDF and post the whole file somewhere public, and then I could look at them right now.

Ken

[Jeffrey Dean]

Good idea! The ZIP archive is at http://bit.ly/MltvS. The TIFF files will need to be re-linked, as they were originally in a different folder.

Jeff

[HeyMikey]

Hey Jeffrey,

Just downloaded your file, and when I print the PDF, all the blacks are true, solid black, and all lines are crisp and beautiful. I'm printing to a Ricoh Aficio 2510 laser, and there are no grey screens on my output. I also printed to our inkjet printer, an Epson SP3800, and the blacks are solid and rich. It sounds like it might be the particular printer you're on.

Cheers!

Mikey

[Jeffrey Dean]

Very strange, Mikey. I can SEE in Acrobat that the blacks have been desaturated (Chris a year ago said 92%, and that looks about right by eyeball). My laser printers (at an earlier stage of my attempts, when I was still setting text to black rather than registration) made a very clear distinction between the grey text and the black crop marks and file info (when these were written in to the PDF by ID and not just added in printing out of Acrobat). And both laser printers have no trouble producing black text out of InDesign directly. I've tried two laser printers from different manufacturers, one of which has two alternative drivers. I'm confused: how can Ricoh be giving the kind of results I want when BOTH Epson and Brother don't?

Jeff

[rob day]

Mikey, are you printing from Reader or Acrobat Pro

[rob day]

Try printing out of Acrobat Reader where there's no color management. When I print from Reader the lines output at 100%.

Printing out of Acrobat 8 I see your problem when Acrobat's Color Management is at its defaults. If you have to print out of Acrobat Pro try setting your Color Management CMYK space to Photoshop 5 Defaults, or if your printer lets you print separations, click Advanced and set the Color to Separations and print the black plate.

[Jeffrey Dean]

Rob, I'm getting exactly the same result from Adobe Reader as from Acrobat Pro. As I said to Mikey, I can see that the black is actually a dark grey when I zoom to a high magnification, and both applications gave the same difference between grey text and black registration marks when I tried to print earlier files. My laser printers are half-toning what they see as a tint, so the fine lines come out as dotted lines, and the text and music characters are coarsened.

No luck with the Print command -- only "Composite" is enabled for either laser printer. I've tried all the Color Handling alternatives too, but all give the same result.

I'm about to shut down for the evening (I'm in England), but I'll be back tomorrow...

Jeff

[rob day]

If you run your cursor over the black in Acrobat with the Output Preview panel open, does the black read as 100%?

[Mr. Met]

Print as postscript to grayscale or black sep and distill to maintain 100% black. I know I've had trouble printing bw to offset and postscript > distill worked for me.

[rob day]

The text in the PDF Jeffery posted is reading as 100% black in Acrobat 8.