Strange - Duplicate Black Text - overlapping not showing as 200% - test

[Eugene Tyson]

Curious here

Insert some black text at 100% black

Copy and Paste in place so it overlaps exactly (or even a bit)

Doesn't show as 200% black - even though it's overprinting and not knockout

Ok - so that's weird.

Then I export to PDF - and try to move one of the text blocks

But they both move together - I can't find the Ungroup option - maybe I am missing this
I can edit one text line and make edits.
I can resize the text block and eventually the two words or texts pop away from each other.

I can open the PDF in Illustrator and separate the text (I know I shouldn't but it's a test)

Is there a way to stop this strange behaviour?
I see the same results exporting from Illustrator

[Eugene Tyson]

I just want to clarify I know what's going on and why it shows as 100% - I know about the plate separation, and I know that it produces 1 plate - and to get 200% I need 2 plates. 

But still it's odd behaviour when it gets to PDF stage - that the text blocks can't be separated.

And just want to know how you can detect when the same text is overlapping each other exactly.

[D. Schulte]

InDesign expects four printing plates plus maybe spot colors. This means that when the black plate overprints, there is no other plate printing black. That's why there is only 100% ink application, because each printing plate can only deliver a maximum of 100%.

Regarding the problem in the PDF: does the issue still arise when the overlapping black text is no longer set to overprint? The overprinting of Black on Black might cause the issue.

[Eugene Tyson]

Thanks, as already mentioned I understand the logic of the 100% - but I'd like to show actual percentage, as technnically it is exactly that. I understand it's probably not possible to display the absolute value digitally.

If it's set to knockout there wouldn't be overlapping text, it would knockout what's beneath it. 

Problem is, Acrobat sees it as a single text block with overlapping text of sort.

But you can pull it apart in Illustartor as separate frames. 

It's like Acrobat treats it as a single text - instead of 2 of the same text. 

If you type the word 'test'

and overlay it exactly 

Open it in PDF in acrobat

Do advanced search for test

and it displays 1 result

'tetest'

not 'test'

[D. Schulte]

My first thought was that the overprinting of the same color channel might cause the issue in Acrobat. But I completely agree, if Acrobat finds one result for "tetest" and not one or two results for "test" thats weird. Maybe it's a Acrobat issue more then a InDesign issue?

[dbeattie-rcb]

You can't actually have more than one process black plate in your document. To achieve what i think you want to do, use a Pantone Black as a spot color and overprint it on the black (or vice-versa) You won't get a Black ink limit of 200% but you can see the 100% seperated values and see they add up to 200%.

[Eugene Tyson]

Thanks - I already said all this in the opening posts though. 

I know how to do it. But I can't work like that.

[rob day]

Another thing to consider with Overprints is if there is any percentage of the bottom ink included in the top fill there will be no overprint. So here the 80% Black is not overprinting the bottom 60% Cyan fill because I have added 1% Cyan to the top fill:

[rob day]

Doesn't show as 200% black - even though it's overprinting and not knockout

Hi Eugene, Not sure, but you might be expecting Overprint to act like a Multiply effect, but when a Process ink overprints itself nothing happens. For example here I have 2 overlapping frames with the top frame filled with 80% Black set to Overprint, and the bottom frame filled with 60% Black—Separation Preview shows the overlapping output value as 0|0|0|80, which is expected:

If I set the bottom frame to a different process ink, the Overprint applied to the 80% Black fill does have an effect—the Total Ink is now 140% with the overlapping area outputting as 60|0|0|80

Setting the top frame to Multiply does affect the overlap area, but the Black process plate can never exceed 100%:

[Eugene Tyson]

Thanks Rob

Yes I see what you mean.

Can't have duplicate text and check inks isn't working to check. And acrobat is handling the duplicate text strangely.

Forgetting about the percentages of duplicate text.

What's the best way of detecting?

I fear my initial post has focused too much on inks.

But it was a curious thing I noticed. I half expected to be able to at least see more than 100% in there somewhere 

But of course it doesn't work like that 

Really just trying to focus on the duplicate text and how to detect.

[rob day]

What's the best way of detecting?

Do you mean via some kind of preflight? I can’t think of a way. CMYK percentages are the RIP’d output values and can never exceed 100% per plate, so they wouldn’t help.

You can check manually in AcrobatPro via Output Preview>Object Inspector—click on the object you want to inspect:

[Eugene Tyson]

Hmm thanks for the tip.

Yeh I can't think of a way in InDesign or illustrator to catch it either.

[dbeattie-rcb]

Possibly look at Enfocus Pitstop to see if it has some functionality for finding duplicated text.

[Eugene Tyson]

Thanks for the suggestion but that is not an option unfortunately.

Possibly look at Enfocus Pitstop to see if it has some functionality for finding duplicated text.

By @dbeattie-rcb

[rob day]

Duplicate text wouldn’t be a problem if the formatting and text bounds were a perfect match—my example would output correctly because I cloned the text frame. Seems like the challenge would be finding duplicate texts that were not an exact match but were close in formatting and bounds. Might be scriptable.

[Eugene Tyson]

Yeh thought about using scripts but not sure on this for several reasons out of my control.