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the3storeys
Participant
April 1, 2013
Question

Setting up Colour and Black and White in one document

  • April 1, 2013
  • 2 replies
  • 21821 views

I hope this is a stupid question. I am creating the school year book for the first time. It is 80 pages with a mixture of black and white pages and colour pages.

Do I have to set Indesign up any special way so that when it goes to the printers it will know this.

Can I have black and white masters and colour masters in the one document?

Do I need to gray scale all my (black and white images) in Photoshop first?

Do I need to do anything to the text to make it print in Black and white if I am using a black coloured font???

Thank you for your help.............it is greatly appreciated

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    2 replies

    A
    AdAstraGames
    Participant
    September 1, 2017

    Apologies for the thread necromancy.

    I've got a 144 page document with roughly 55 color pages in it.  I print in house on a Canon Imagerunner Advance, from an InDesign exported PDF.

    I used to get 55 color clicks and 89 black and white clicks up until I did a new export of the file.  Now the PDF when printed reports as 144 color pages, which...is problematic, as the color pages cost 5x as much as the black and white ones, and the black and white pages are all black.

    Anyone got a magical setting that tells Acrobat "Yes, this is a document of mixed color and black and white pages, not one long color document?" that doesn't involve editing the header of the file in a text editor?

      rob day
      Community Expert
      rob dayCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      September 1, 2017

      I print in house on a Canon Imagerunner Advance, from an InDesign exported PDF.

      If you are including any bleed or cropmarks, they normally get exported as 4-color CMYK even when the contents of the page are limited to black or grayscale objects.

      Peter Spier
      Community Expert
      Peter SpierCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      April 1, 2013

      >Do I have to set Indesign up any special way so that when it goes to the printers it will know this.

      Maybe. How is it going to be printed? Have you talked to the printer about it?

      >Can I have black and white masters and colour masters in the one document?

      In a sense, yes. ALL pages in ID are color pages, but you can certainly set up masters where the only color used is Black.

      >Do I need to gray scale all my (black and white images) in Photoshop first?

      InDesign CS6 introduced export to grayscale PDFs, but that turns everything in the PDF to grayscale so you would need to export your color pages separately from the grayscale pages, then recombine in Acrobat pro, or send to the printer in separate files. You also need to set your Appearance of Black settings (in the prefs) to Output All Blacks as Rich Blacks if you are going to export to grayscale or your black type will be screened to a dark gray. Personally, I'd do the conversions in Photoshop so you can see and control what is going to happen and avoid the export hassles.

      Grayscale content is output in the K channel of the InDesign file, and your screen preview may not be accurate unless you use overprint preview.

      >Do I need to do anything to the text to make it print in Black and white if I am using a black coloured font?

      Your text will print in whatever color is you choose for it. If you use the default [Black] swatch, it will output using only black ink.

      Beauteous_soul16B8
      Beauteous_soul16B8
      Participating Frequently
      September 17, 2013

      I'm having a similar issue, I have a file set up to print pages as auto b/w or color using a printer preset, but even though a spread has no color (I'm checking this through a Preflight setting, no images even, just type) it still counts/charges as color.

       

      So, when you mention "...but you can certainly set up masters where the only color used is Black..." do you mean the physical objects are all grayscale (which this spread already has, to my knowledge), or is there some setting where that master page or even regular page can change to a grayscale color profile or something?

        

      I'm trying to avoid having to export a grayscale .pdf and recombine all the pages.

      With a test document I combined exported color and grayscale .pdf files, and they counted correctly (1 color, 1 grayscale page in the same document) so the printer can differentiate at least with Acrobat.

      Any advice is appreciated!

      Peter Spier
      Community Expert
      Peter SpierCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      September 17, 2013

      Are you using any automatic printers marks? Those are colored Registration, and will make the page a color page, even if there is no other full-color content on the page.

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