Matching blacks

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
May 12, 2017
6 replies
3176 views

I'm so baffled by this. The cat/shoe on the left is a .psd that is set to CMYK black, 100% K. The border around and the text on the left are done in InDesign, CMYK black, 100% K. All are set to 50% opacity, so that the yellow shows through the gray. Why is the cat/shoe showing up a different color? The one on the right I did in Illustrator. I added the border and the text to it there, hoping it would make the colors match. But it looks the same. Why don't the blacks match up? CS6//Mac

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rudo123

Inspiring

Rob Day is right. You are likely using 50 % tint in Swatches panel (and [Black] colour) or 50 % K in Colour panel for your text and border - they are now 0-0-0-50 (without background), and your PSD image with 50 % opacity is 50 % black + 50 % of your background - so is darker. Same problem with your Illustrator experiment.

Tips for your blacks:

rob day

Community Expert

There's also the Isolate Blending checkbox, which could affect 50% Opacity. Keep in mind the transparency setting can be applied separately to the Object, Fill, Text, or Stroke.

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rudo123

Inspiring

Predefined [Black] colour in InDesign (if 100 % Tint in Swatches panel) is set to overprint background by default (in Preferences). Still overprinting when opacity changed in Effects panel (if still in 100 % Tint). Not so imported blacks from Photoshop or Illustrator (when placed, not using copy/paste and mapping black to [Black], or when Overprint option applied in Illustrator). If predefined [Black] is used with smaller tint than 100 %, is not overprinting too. Illustrations:

rob day

Community Expert

All are set to 50% opacity, so that the yellow shows through the gray.

It looks like you might be applying a Tint with no Overprint from the Swatches panel rather than Opacity from the Effects panel:

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detritus booksAuthor

Inspiring

I most definitely applied the 50% transparency in the Effects panel to both the border and the cat/shoe .psd. I don't understand which object you think I applied a "tint with no overprint" to?

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rudo123

Inspiring

Only now the colors are flipped, the border being the more grayish gray...

1. In InDesign, turn on Separations in Separations panel.

2. Place cursor above Cat and measure all CMYK colours in Separations panel.

3. Place cursor above stroke and measure all CMYK colours in Separations panel.

4. Place cursor above background (not cat nor stroke, just above your yellowish background) and measure all CMYK colours in Separations panel.

5. Give us all these CMYKs.

Are you previewing created PDF in Acrobat Pro? Using Print Preview (or Separations preview or how is this function called in your Acrobat version), what colours are in your PDF (cat, stroke, background)? If Acrobat Pro is not available, try import PDF to InDesign as picture and use same 1 to 5 point instructions as described above. Or rasterize in Photoshop (into cmyk-picture) and give us CMYKs from Photoshop’s Info panel.

Or share your data...