Printing color and black text from InDesign

I have been printing to a Konica Bizhub C364e, C654e, & C368. The older models like the C552 don't have this issue but it seems that every machine from the 4 series to the 8 series have this issue with Indesign. I haven't tried the 9 series but I'm sure it is the same.

I found that the document I was trying to print had an 80% black (C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=80) and when I changed that to K=100, the document would print with the correct color and b&w clicks. So for some reason, anything less than 100% black is read as a color. I have a ticket open with Konica and we have found a firmware that deals with this color issue, but it did not resolve it.

I can print the document fine with a PCL driver on a windows pc, but only after clicking an option to "convert to grayscale" and then set a threshold. The Post Script driver doesn't have that option on windows or mac.

Right, your print driver is making the conversion to 4-color—the color in Acrobat has no CMY and is black only. The problem is with the printer software.

But why doesn't it only happen with Indesign and PDFs made from InDesign?

IF you want to convert all colours to greyscale - export as pdf, open in Acrobat Pro > Print Production > Preflight > Digital Printing and oline publishing. Convert all colours to greyscale.

I have the same problem with InDesign printing black and white pages as full color pages when "Auto Color" is selected in the print driver. It only happens with InDesign and the only workaround I have been able to find is that I have to export the document and open each page in photoshop and convert to grayscale and then place those pages back into InDesign and then it will print correctly. This is completely unacceptable.

I have done the preflight and it shows my black text as K only and nothing appears in the CMY plates....but it prints as a full color click.

If I understand you right:

• colour pages should print in colour
• black and white pages should print in K only

At least at my site there is nothing I need to do. The printer has 2 different counters and we get charged accordingly. a BW page prints in K only, other pages get charged as colour copies, even if there is only the thinnest colour point on.

You can print, however, the would document as greyscale. You can configure PDF printing like that or you configure the printer driver.

You can set up a preflight rule that flags objects that use CMY or Registration so the only color that won't get flagged is [Black] or grayscale objects. Use the preflight rule to check the pages you assume are black only. Also you can't include printer marks because they use the registration swatch, which includes CMY.

This preflight rule catches the oval because it is filled with an RGB black and the square because it is filled with the Registration swatch. The "A" passes because it is filled with the [Black] swatch

Hi.

This is the Acrobat forum, let's move to the InDesign forum.