Simulate recycled paper

[Lenou]

Hello!

Does anyone know about an Indesign feature which helps simulate recycled paper ?

I would like to do that in order to adapt my document colors to recycled paper before printing.

Thank you!

[Eugene Tyson]

The Paper swatch is the colour the paper is. If you change that you can simulate the paper. 

When you make a PDF it will appear white - as it's no colour. But you can make the swatch whatever colour you want.

[Lenou]

Thank you very much for your answer! I didn't know we could change the paper Swatch. I will search for the color I need and use it!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Eugene's answer is exactly right. A lot of new users assume changing the color Paper will change the output/print background color, but its sole purpose is exactly what you want: to simulate a paper color, the better to judge composition and colors for it, while leaving the color to the paper stock itself. So tint Paper to represent the paper you're printing on, and you're good to go.

Just mentioning this in redundant form to get in that if you want a colored background in PDF or print, you have to lay in a background rectangle (usually on a Parent page) and tint that — because, again, the color called Paper doesn't print no matter how you define it.

[Lenou]

Thank you very much for your answer too! I will try it!

[rob day]

Hi @Lenou , If you are trying to simulate the paper’s color, you can adjust the [Paper] swatch as @James Gifford—NitroPress , and @Eugene Tyson  suggest. But if you want to simulate or soft proof the appearance of CMYK color on an uncoated sheet or, color manage the conversion of RGB color into CMYK, it’s important to assign an uncoated CMYK Profile to your document and set DocumentCMYK as the destination for any Print ready PDFs. 

If the output is to a sheetfed offset press, and you can’t get a recommendation from your printer Uncoated GRACol would be a good choice for the CMYK profile assignment.

[Lenou]

Thank you very much for your answer! The tip James and Eugene gave me will be useful, but yes I wanted to soft proof the appearance of CMYK color on a recycled sheet and I think it won't be possible if I only change the Paper swatch. So if I understood well, combining the Paper swatch color change and an uncoated CMYK Profile will allow me to soft proof the CMYK colors on my document on Indesign?

[rob day]

an uncoated CMYK Profile will allow me to soft proof the CMYK colors on my document on Indesign?

Yes the assigned document CMYK profile (Edit>Assign Profiles...) controls the appearance of document CMYK colors—the difference in appearance would depend on thecolor values. Here the difference between the default US Web Coated SWOP and Uncoated GRACoL—the GRACoL color appearance is generally less saturated and darker colors are lighter in value, which is what will happen on an uncoated sheet with offset printing

[Mike Witherell · Accepted solution]

Editing the [Paper] swatch can change the solid tone appearance, but it cannot simulate any patterning or flecking or texture appearance. For that, you would have to have a photo image of the texture of the paper set on a custom layer (and probably on the Parent Page and probably locked) and that layer would be modified to not print.

[Lenou]

Thank you very much for your answer it iss really useful! Which effect do you recommand to apply to adapt the colors to the custom layer? Or changing the opacity might be enough?

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

The only problem with this solution is that is no easy way to show how the photos and colors would interact with paper. 

With the paper swatch one can turn on Overprint Preview to see how the document colors interact with the paper color.