Skip to main content
SteveRinzen
SteveRinzen
Known Participant
February 11, 2019
Question

Inconsistent appearance of Black and White images

  • February 11, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 4415 views

I'm currently working on a book full of Black and White images. I'm correcting the images in Photoshop and laying the book out in InDesign. The issue I'm having is the images are not displaying accurately in Indesign - they don't export to a PDF accurately either. I've checked that all the images color profiles are the same. Their bit depth is the same. They're all greyscale. I've made sure the "appearance of black" dialogue box is what I need it to be. I've been saving everything down to a Tiff rather than including my working PSD files (which defeats the handy feature of live updates to the document when correcting the images). I'm at a loss for why images adjusted to be similar in tonal range and appearance look so wildly different from spread to spread. My best guess is that Indesign can't handle PSD files well in this latest update?

I'm on a MacBookPro running 10.13.6 with Photoshop & InDesign CC21019

4 replies

rob day
Community Expert
rob dayCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 15, 2019

I'm currently working on a book full of Black and White images.

Also, if your document is all black and white, it is possible to go the other way and use Photoshop’s legacy Custom CMYK dialog to create a 25% Dot Gain CMYK profile that can be used over in InDesign for preview matching.

The Photoshop 5 Default CMYK profile, which can be assigned to your ID doc via Edit>Assign profiles, previews the black plate as 20% Dot Gain. You could edit that profile to be 25% dot gain over in Photoshop and save it as an .icc profile for use in InDesign. But, generally you don‘t want to use legacy profiles for color managing or converting color images.

Here, I‘ve assigned my ID doc a legacy 25% dot gain CMYK profile, and everything matches

SteveRinzen
SteveRinzenAuthor
Known Participant
February 16, 2019

Viewing the InDesign file with Overprint Preview on and only the Black channel viewable does show the colors accurately. Unfortunately the interiors of the book will be printed in one color (black) while the cover and endpapers will be multiple colors.. So i need to provide regular PDFs with all elements presented accurately for approval. And while this set up works to preview the images in InDesign it doesn't output like this to a PDF. So for every correction right now I'm tweaking the PSD and saving a new TIF... fortunately there are only 118 images in this book.

rob day
Community Expert
rob dayCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 16, 2019
So for every correction right now I'm tweaking the PSD and saving a new TIF... fortunately there are only 118 images in this book.

Just keep in mind when you edit in PS you are changing the output numbers. The different preview in InDesign and Acrobat is a soft proof difference because of the different Gray profile, and does not affect the output numbers,

Also, as you are seeing, ID has a duel grayscale display, which has no affect on the actual output numbers. When there is no transparency on the spread, and OP is off you get an sRGB preview. This is for documents that will not be printed and are for screen only. When you are designing for RGB devices you can leave OP off and set the Transparency Blend Space to RGB and get a consistent sRGB display for gray objects.

    rob day
    Community Expert
    rob dayCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 15, 2019

    InDesign has no grayscale color space and color manages gray objects as if they are on the black CMYK plate via the document’s CMYK profile. To consistently get the print view you have to have Overprint preview on. If there is a transparent object anywhere on the spread, the doc‘s Transparency Blend space is used—with a CMYK blend space, a transparent page would preview as if Overprint was turned on.

    To get a preview match with PS you have to use the Black Ink version of your InDesign document‘s CMYK profile as your grayscale file’s assigned profile in Photoshop. To create a Black Ink profile in Photoshop open Color Settings, choose a CMYK profile from the Gray Working Space drop down, and then choose Save Gray... to save the black ink profile to your profiles folder. From there you can either Convert To or Assign the profile to your grayscale documents. Here's Black Ink for US Sheetfed Coated

    It's important to note that grayscale values export unchanged when you export with the destination set to Document CMYK, so you can ignore the InDesign preview. Over in AcrobatPro open Output Preview and set the Simulation Profile to your Photoshop 25% Dot Gain profile. If you check the Black values they should match your PS values.

    Gusgsm
    Gusgsm
    Inspiring
    February 15, 2019

    I'm at a loss for why images adjusted to be similar in tonal range and appearance look so wildly different from spread to spread.

    Try this neat little trick: Just place in the canvas (outside the pages) of each spread a tiny element with some transparency. A black square in multiply mode will do. If the visual appearance of your screen has changed in some of the spreads just by doing that, the answer is that some of your srpeads had applied an element with transparency and some didn't.

    InDesign shows greysale images accurately if you set the general preferences to show "accurate" black AND you have "overprint preview" checked on OR you have an element with some transparency in the spread (hence the trick). Besides, you might have "softproof colors" on. But that does not affect the first issue: Blacks are shown more black than they really are.

    Hope it helps.

      SteveRinzen
      SteveRinzenAuthor
      Known Participant
      February 16, 2019

      There are no transparencies in the document.

      rob day
      Community Expert
      rob dayCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      February 20, 2019

      I think we're not solving the same problem. If you read the initial post the whole point is to have an editable PSD file sitting in the Indesign document. The goal being an efficient workflow where I can make changes to the Camera Raw smart filter in each PSD as the project proceeds and those changes are appearing accurately in the Indesign document - from which I can deliver accurate PDFs for approval. Currently I'm wasting time and storage saving each iteration of the PSD down to a TIF.


      How have you decided that 25% Dot Gain is the correct press profile?

      I think you are assuming the Photoshop grayscale's assigned profile is affecting the output values, which is not the case—the profile assignment only affects the preview.  You can see that by assigning (not converting to) different gray profiles in Photoshop and checking the output values. Here's 10% Dot Gain vs. Black Ink US Sheetfed

      If I place the two files in InDesign, the Photoshop gray profiles are ignored and the document’s assigned CMYK (Black Ink) profile is used for the Overprint preview—there can only be one destination profile. The gray output numbers are not changed by the reassignment, and don’t change on export unless you force a conversion in the Output tab.

      Turning off Overprint changes the preview to sGray (the typical Web sRGB preview), but that does not affect the offset press separation output numbers.

      Srishti Bali
      Community Manager
      Srishti BaliCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      February 14, 2019

      Hi Steve,

      Sorry to hear about this issue. The first thing which I would suggest you is color sync all Adobe applications using bridge: Keeping colors consistent, Adobe Acrobat

      If that does not help, I would request if you can share some screenshots and a sample file. I will try to check it at my end.

      Regards,

      Srishti

      SteveRinzen
      SteveRinzenAuthor
      Known Participant
      February 14, 2019

      Thanks for that tip. It didn't correct the issue. My color management was working perfectly.

      I can tell you exactly how to recreate the issue if you want to try it out?

      • Take any image - make it greyscale. (I'm working with the Dot Gain 25% profile - but I don't think it matters)
      • Convert for smart filters.
      • Apply Camera raw as smart filter - adjust image to desired outcome.
      • Now save as a PSD with layers and a TIF with no layers.
      • If you lay the PSD next to the TIF on the same spread or page in InDesign they both display inaccurately.
      • If you move the TIF to the next spread it displays correctly.
      • Even when exporting a PDF the issue remains

      My only solution was to save all my images down to TIFs without layers in order to export an accurate PDF for my clients approval.

      It would have been preferable to have the PSDs in the document so that when i make corrections they are automatically updated in the document - ready to export.

      Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
      Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices