InDesign Black RGB text not showing as rich black Separations Preview

[JayCPP]

Have a customer on Mac and recent version of InDesign (can not give exact detailed info).

Using the Separations Preview to look for rich black text,  black RGB text is not showing as Rich Black.
He turns off the black channel and the text disapears instead of showing it will print/rip as rich black.

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

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[Willi Adelberger]

Rich black exists only with CMYK, not with RGB. It is for print, not for screen. 

[JayCPP]

We are a printing company and print in CMYK, the Separations Preview should show him that the RGB text will print as rich black (CMYK) instead of just black (K).

[jmlevy]

He turns off the black channel and the text disapears

It seems that your customer has set this RGB black as a spot color…

[JayCPP]

Thank you both Willi and jmlevy.
I will check if he has more than 1 black channel appear in Separations Preview, like "Black copy" but that should be obvious. He has been in the print industry for many years also.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Are you working from a PDF from this file? It could be they have set (or your RIP is overriding) an intent profile so that it's doing an unncecessary profile conversion. Is it possible to see a sample file?

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

If it is a PDF, please let us know the extact export setting used.

[Eugene Tyson]

They should set the text in Rich Black using CMYK - get them to edit the Swatch for the Rich Black and change the colour mode to CMYK - and what rich black should it be?

Surely you're not having 34.5% 73% 23% 88.67% for example?

Rich black technically could be 2 colours only - I typically use 50% Cyan and 100% Black

Or for a warmer black tending on context I'd use 50% magenta 100% Black

No idea why for a rich black they'd use RGB. 

Sounds like the RGB black is being promoted to 100% black on output. 

[rob day]

Hi @JayCPP , UI glitches are often caused by corrupted Caches, so ask your customer to delete their Caches folder.

How are they determining the selected text is RGB? They should be using the Color or Swatches panel not the Color Picker.

The Separation Preview values for RGB 0|0|0 are determined by the document’s CMYK profile, or the Proof Setup if Proof Colors is turned on. Seems unlikely, but a CMYK profile that uses a Maximum Black Generation could convert 0|0|0 RGB to 0|0|0|100 CMYK. For example a custom maximum black profile created in Photoshop vs. Coated GRACol:

[JayCPP]

I'm sorry I missed this 1st time around rob day!

[JayCPP]

Thanks all.
Will try rob day's suggestion of clearing Caches.
To be clear, we do not want rich black text and he checks his publication visually using Separations Preview.
When selecting "offending" text, it shows a RGB color swatch.
A correction: OS is Windows (will check if 10 or 11), InDesing 18.5
It is a monthly publication and this glitch started November 2023.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"When selecting "offending" text, it shows a RGB color swatch"

Do you mean they added a separate swatch in addition to the built-in Black? If so, you can always delete the RGB swatch and replace it with the built in Black. Can you show us a screen grab of their swatches panel?

Are you printing directly from InDesign, or from a PDF?

If it was from a PDF, what were the Export settings, especially for Color Management? This can change the appearance of even 100K Black if "Convert to Destination" was selected if the "Output Intent Profile" profile is different than the document's Working/Assigned profile.

You say you are a printing company: what RIP are you using? Most RIPs have settings on how to deal with certain common issues, like what to do with RGB Blacks. This comes into play especially with files from RGB-based programs, like Office apps like Word.

[JayCPP]

I find when customers bring in text from say a word doc, it will come in as RGB and auto create a swatch.
Other than bringing text in unformatted, I have not found a good/easy solution to this in the past but have not researched it recently.
They send us a PDF and he could preflight or check output preview in Acrobat but it makes more sense to catch it before exporting to a PDF.
Our rip is Harlequin and updated about a year ago, and unanounced to me, does rip RGB 0|0|0 to 100% K which has helped alot.
We also have Pitstop and I do have a preset created that can fix this issue but we try not to alter provided PDF files. It has bitten me bad in the past.
I forgot about corrupt Caches/preferences. In the 90's use to deal with this happening alot with Quark.
Customer will not be back in the office until Monday. I sent him instruction on renaming directories in AppData Roaming & Local to cut to the chase. and I am off all next week.
Will post if this fixes the UI issue

[JayCPP]

Sorry for the delay everyone.
Deleteing caches or uninstalling and reinstalling did not fix the issue.
I have just asked him what the color settings are. No answer yet.
Could this effect Separations Preview?

[rob day · Accepted solution]

I have just asked him what the color settings are. No answer yet.
Could this effect Separations Preview?

The Document’s assigned CMYK profile (which could be different than the Color Settings’ CMYK Working Space), does affect the Separation Preview’s CMYK values for an RGB black (see Edit>Assign Profiles...).

So, the Max Black profile I’m showing in my last post would convert 0|0|0 RGB to 0|0|0|100 CMYK—it would be unusual for someone to assign a max black profile, but not impossible.

Another possibility would be, the RGB black is set as a Spot Color and it is aliased to the Process Black plate. That seems more likely—someone may have aliased an RGB black swatch in an effort to prevent 4-color black text. Here my RGB Black Swatch is set to Spot and Aliased to Process Black via Ink Manager:

Separation Preview shows the black spot color on the process Black plate:

[JayCPP · Accepted solution]

It was the Color Settings.
I do have customers set PhotoShop to a custom CMYK Max Black profile.
He must have synced the color settings across all apps.

Thank you All!