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carlijayne
Participant
October 4, 2017
Question

Grayscale PDF but with one color overlay

  • October 4, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 1156 views

Hello!

I have a question about changing a large document from color to grayscale, but keeping one color, specifically pure magenta. This is a text book, so magenta is the answer overlay (on a separate layer in Indesign).

Is it possible to export the book as grayscale but keep the color answer overlay?

If not, what would you recommend doing for best efficiency.

Thanks!!!

Edit : With Acrobat layers, can you add a color layer to a grayscale document. Or can you change the under layer to grayscale later?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

rob day
Community Expert
rob dayCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 5, 2017

Is it possible to export the book as grayscale but keep the color answer overlay?

You can export documents to a Gray profile, but that will convert all color, including spot colors, to grayscale.

You could create a spot color for the answers, which would output to a different printing plate. So here I've created a spot color named Answers set to overprint, which shows as a separate plate in Separation Preview. You can't name a spot color Magenta because that name is reserved for Process Magenta. In this example my gray object is on the Black plate and the magenta colored answer is on the Answers plate

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
October 4, 2017

Acrobat layers aren't what you think. Most documents don't have layers, and they are really only for showing/hiding stuff.

I think you will need to convert all of the non-coloured stuff to greyscale first, as part of the InDesign file, then make a coloured PDF (which contains a lot of greyscale). All text is trivial to change to black if you've used styles, graphics will need to be redone.

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