Overprint Preview is not mentioned in the Help system

[Mike Witherell]

Hi everyone,

I just noticed that there seems to be no discussion of the View menu > Overprint Preview anywhere in the help system. 

It is not mentioned here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/overprinting.html

Seems like it would be and should be?

[HARSHIKA_VERMA]

Hi Mike Witherell,

Thank you for flagging this out! We’d love to incorporate your suggestion to improve the help article. Could you please let us know which specific section you believe would best highlight this setting?

Once we have that information, we’ll share it with our content team for review and potential updates.

Thanks again for your input!

Thanks,

Harshika

[Mike Witherell]

Hi Hashika,

This View switch is usually used in conjunction with the Separations Preview panel (whose use triggers this view to come on). It is used for ink overprint situations on printing press. The existing helpx page should simply expand a bit to explain that this parallel view switch exists and can be used with or without the Separations Preview panel set to "Separations". 

For some InDesign projects specifically going to prepress for ink printing, it is often encouraged to have this view switch turned on in order to "see" some ink interactions when objects are set to overprint.

[rob day]

Hi @Mike Witherell , I”ve always thought the term Overprint Preview was a bit confusing—the setting also brings out-of-gamut color into the assigned CMYK profile’s space regardless of what overprint settings are applied. Overprint Preview would still have a significant affect on the display of out-of-gamut RGB color even though RGB colors can’t actually overprint.

[Mike Witherell]

Hey Rob,

Thanks for that interesting detail. It seems like if the objects and document is in RGB mode, then InDesign should not be able to turn on Overprint Preview. Based on my limited experience, it should only operate on a CMYK project. Or at least it should message the screen and say that this is meant only for printing press CMYK work. I suppose the rare times I look at it, I'm only interested in rough approximation of ink interaction, and would depend on an accurate proof to judge accuracy of reproduction.

[rob day]

It seems like if the objects and document is in RGB mode

But InDesign doesn’t have a single document level color space like Illustrator and Photoshop do. There can be a mix of RGB, Lab, or CMYK native colors on a page. InDesign documents have both an RGB and CMYK profile assignment to handle the different spaces.

Compare InDesign’s Assign Profiles dialog with Photoshop’s and Illustrator’s:

Illustrator:

Photoshop

The added compexity is a powerful feature—you can mix spaces and let the final color manged conversions to the print output space happen at Export or Output.