Grey Images (grey/8bit) from Photoshop in Indesign to flat

[Oliver TLOF]

Hello Indesign Community,

we are preparing a fine art print for a client.

Our pictures are grey/8bit converted RGB.
In photoshop (and on our Canon Imageprograf printer) blacks are great.
But in indesign pictures flatten out to grey. No real blacks. Also in exported PDF.

We tried different color profiles. No success. The printing company says, there is no black in the file, but when we open the linked files in PS everything is great.

preview in Indesign vs. Photoshop.

Any experience with that problem? Would be a great help!

Oh, we just print the K channel for fine art. So no rich black discussion, please 🙂

Oliver

[Eugene Tyson]

Your file is in RGB - so there is no black. 

You should make your images Grayscale in Photoshop if that's the case of no rich black. 

Try it on some test documents - duplicate some images and try to convert them to grayscale. 

The better way is with UCR/GCR adjustment. 
https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/apply-ucr-gcr/m-p/11786684

[Oliver TLOF]

Hi,

as I explained, we got RGB images from the photographer and converted them to grey 8 bit in Photoshop. Great till that step!

Now we place them in an Indesign Document. There we have CMYK document, as some pages have color. 

And the picture immediately flattens out in preview and in the PDF. As if Indesign misinterpretes the File/Color profile?

[Oliver TLOF]

btw: the files from your link don't work anymore?!

[Eugene Tyson]

Well the link is jsut for information if the links there don't work there's not much I can do about that. 

You say the document is CMYK - but InDesign doesn't have a colour mode, it can take rgb, cmyk, etc. in one file. 

Not that that's important  for now.

Are you InDesign CMYK profiles identical to that of hte photoshop file? 

And are your PDF output options converting to a CMYK profile? 

[Willi Adelberger]

Did you save the geyscale images without color profie? Try that!

[rob day]

we got RGB images from the photographer and converted them to grey 8 bit in Photoshop

Hi @Oliver TLOF , InDesign does not have grayscale color management. It displays grayscale images as they will print on the Black CMYK plate when you have Overprint Preview turned on. With Overprint turned off grayscales are displayed as sGray (2.2 Gamma), which is useful for screen only projects.

If you turn on Oveprint Preview the grayscales will preview using your document’s assigned CMYK profile—Edit>Assign Profiles... Here are some related threads:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/exporting-rgb-cmyk-and-grayscale-to-print-pdf/m-p/10990825?p...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign/dot-gain-or-gray-gamma/td-p/8365606?page=1