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• • April 25, 2019 at 4:14 am #116258
    Chris Etherington

    Member

    Hi

    We produce a local community newspaper that is printed in the UK and we are having a lot of issues with ink density. I have followed a lot of advice on this website but the PDFs are still being produced with massive ink levels. We have tried processing images using the SWOP profile mentioned on this site and are exporting PDFs with ISO Newsprint 26v4. I thought we had resolved the issue yesterday when I exported with the Output setting Convert to Destination – (NOT convert to destination – preserve numbers) this did resolve the over inking issue on images, however, then our text was exporting as 4 colour black! I am kind of losing the will to live with this now and any help would be greatly appreciated. I have spoken with the press site and they recommend the ISO Newsprint 26v4 but that is about as much information as they can give me

  • April 25, 2019 at 5:21 am #116259
    Barry Monks

    Participant

    Yup. Exactly the same problem. My workaround is to convert the offending images to PDFs in PhotoShop using the Adobe PDF Preset ‘Smallest file size’ and checking ‘Preserve PhotoShop Editing Capabilities’ [if there is actual text in the graphic].

  • April 25, 2019 at 7:14 am #116261
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    @Barry: Be really careful with “smallest file size” PDFs! If the image is already in CMYK, it will be converted to RGB, and the resolution is dropped to a VERY low ppi! I would not use that pdf preset for anything.

    
    @Chris: InDesign has the ability to check ink density using the Separations Preview panel. There’s even an Ink Limit setting in there. Check out the links below.

    If you’re placing RGB images into InDesign, then exporting the PDF to the desired CMKY (e.g. ISO Newsprint) will convert them properly, and within the ink limits. That is the best practice these days: leave all images as RGB and then let InDesign do the conversion when you make the PDF if you need CMYK.

    But if you’ve already converted images to CMYK, then you’re stuck with them. SWOP is higher ink density than Newsprint, so that could be a problem.

    Yes, if you leave “preserve numbers” off, then all CMYK gets “cross-rendered” from one CMYK to another, and 100% K will almost certainly change to 4-color black. Rarely a good idea.

    If you have access to Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning, check out my titles on “InDesign Color Management” and “InDesign: Print PDFs”

    https://creativepro.com/force-color-images-cmyk-240-ink-limit.php

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