Ink density warning indesign

[Chi5C80]

Hi, 

I was designing a menu in indesign. My logo, which consists of an icon and name of the company was made in photoshop. I exported that logo as a png file. Before I exported the file I had checked the ink density of the name in the logo in photoshop. It was CMYK - 0 0 0 100. When I imported the png in indesign on an background which has a CMYK value of 0 6 13 13, for some reason the Seperations preview warned me that my ink density reached over 300%. I couldn't find out why this happened. I worked around it by typing the company name in indesign. Instead of via the png file which was created in photoshop. 

But I still don't know why this happened. Can anyone explain?

[Derek Cross · Accepted solution]

Try Placing the logo in InDesign as a PSD file.

[Chi5C80]

I tried your solution and it worked. Thanks 🙂

[Steve Werner]

I agree with Derek. The PNG format is designed for web pages, not for print documents.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

The real issue is that PNG is only RGB. The RGB black would be converted to a CMYK black (numbers may vary depending on color settings).

For black-only (100K) logos, I use LZW-compressed TIFFs. Ideally, created/scanned at high-resolution (1200-1500) as line art (Bitmap mode). The logo will be as crisp as a vector logo and can be re-colored in InDesign. 

[rob day]

My logo, which consists of an icon and name of the company was made in photoshop.

You can not save a CMYK file in the PNG format. You can Export a CMYK file to PNG, but it would be converted to RGB.

Separation Preview would show the expected color conversion of placed RGB color to the document’s assigned CMYK profile. Here’s a placed RGB PNG (top) and a placed CMYK PSD with no embedded color profile (bottom). The document’s assigned CMYK profile is Coated GRACoL 2006, which allows a total ink of 340% on a conversion from RGB to CMYK:

[Chi5C80]

Makes sense to me now. Now I know that png files can't be CMYK even though exported to CMYK in for example photoshop. Thx again all.