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• • April 16, 2015 at 7:43 am #74725
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    Another novice question folks. Typsetting volumes of text, each volume about 400 pages long, it will go to print and be a PDF; print version will be black and white but PDF can have colours to make it look better.

    So I’m sure you wonderful people will tell me that it’s fine for me to typeset it in full colour as I like and then when it goes to print it can easily be printed in black and white, but how exactly do I go about that? Is there a way where I can, at the click of a magic button or buttons, turn it all into black and white and vice versa? There must be a series of best practice procedures that I need to follow to be able to do this, and I would love to hear from you experienced InDesigners out there as to what they are.

    Thank you.

  • April 16, 2015 at 2:09 pm #74737
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hello Haka2012,

    Yes, it is novice question but you will get a novice answer so you can understand it.

    Basic Typesetting and Creating Styles you can learn in a couple of weeks.Everything is based on work with Paragraph,Character,Object style editing.You can search it on Youtube.com (for video tuts), and you can find many of Typesetting text tutorials on the internet.
    Here is the example of basic typesetting tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZtZfWDWVe0

    Besides, your main question was about changing to b&w, the easiest way would probably be to print to a .ps file using a B/W PPD and the distilling the resulting file back to a PDF.But when you go printing there would always be option to print in b&w and there you can see the print preview.

    Ask if I was not clear enough.

    Artwork Abode.

  • April 16, 2015 at 2:37 pm #74738
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    Hello Artwork Abode and thanks for replying. So as regards basic typesetting and creating styles I’m getting there in that I’m going through a whole load of courses on Lynda.com at the moment, they really are wonderful, so I’m getting up to speed daily on some of the basic stuff.

    You said, “the easiest way would probably be to print to a .ps file using a B/W PPD and the distilling the resulting file back to a PDF,” ok I’ve seen the postscipt file option in the print dialog vox but what did you mean by a PPD?

    “But when you go printing there would always be option to print in b&w,” am I correct in understanding that you mean that no matter what colour one puts in a document, the printers can always just ignore any colour settings and print it in black and white anyway? So I could hand them a full colour PDF and they could just print it out black and white?

    Also this is going to sound so novice and ‘Microsfot Word’ like I’m embarrassed to say it but nevermind, here goes, isn’t it possible, once the full colour document has been prepared, to just select all and then choose to colour everything black and be done? Wouldn’t that work?

    Thank you for your patience.

    • April 16, 2015 at 2:42 pm #74739
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      To change your colors afterwards in Indesign, you would need to either search and replace and change the colors, or delete the color swatches and replace with black.

      I don’t understand why you would want to do it in color, even though it’s going to print in black & white only. Sure–it might look better when viewing on screen, or if printing color files from the InDesign file, but all that prettiness doesn’t matter in the long run–it’s going to be printed in black & white at the final stage.

      I’m in book publishing, and if it’s a black and white job, we do it in black and white at all stages. If it’s color, we do it in color at all stages.

      I think, for you, it would just be easier to do the job in black and white and forget about the color.

  • April 16, 2015 at 2:45 pm #74740
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    Hello Dwayne and thank you for the points about searching and replacing the colours and the swatches point.

    Well, I’m asking about the colour because as well as actually being printed [in black and white] it will also be provided as an electronic PDF, apologies if I never made that clear earlier, and it would feel like a waste not to have colour in the electronic PDF version.

    • April 16, 2015 at 3:12 pm #74742
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      ^^Ahh–that answered my question. There is no need to apologize. :)

      Then in the case you are talking about, I’d just leave everything as color.

      It shouldn’t be an issue to print as black and white.

      Maybe when it’s all finalized, you can make a PDF that is black & white and one that is color (and labeled accordingly).

      PPD stands for postscript printer description. That is the postscript settings for your particular printer (either you printer in-house or the one you send it out to). They may have a preferred one.

      Since you are sending this out to be printed in black and white, I’d contact the printing house that will be doing the printing and see what they recommend. And if’t not clear, we can try to help you with it.

  • April 16, 2015 at 3:21 pm #74743
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    Ok cool, that clears it up for me then, colour it is. Thanks for the info on the PPD, I’ll look into it. I’m gonna be getting round to the videos on Preflight stuff etc., on Lynda.com later, at the moment I’m just going through David’s InDesign CC Essentials course, marvelous it is too.

    The two major things I’ve taken away from you guys on forums and what I’ve watched so far is to make sure I have good master pages set up for each different page style, and that there should be a paragraph and character style for virtually every formatting to be applied to text, so as to make changes easier in the future. Any more broad fundamentals for best design practice that you guys know is always welcome.

    • April 16, 2015 at 3:36 pm #74745
      Dwayne Harris

      Member

      You seem to be doing fine, HaKa2012. I hope you stick around a long time here at the forums.

      You’re right–you want paragraph styles for every element, and I mean every element. And the same thing with character styles. It’s especially needed for when it goes to ePub/eBook (at least that’s what demanded of my company).

      One hint I will pass along is kerning combinations. On some fonts (such as Adobe Garamond, Caslon, Minion, Electra) the space between a lower case f and the following letters F W V T h l b look like crap and almost crash. So does the letter f followed by ? and !.

      I always search and replace on those and replace with optical kerning (as usually our text styles use metric).

  • April 16, 2015 at 3:42 pm #74746
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    Thanks for the welcome, I think I will be sticking around especially because of how helpful you guys have been on here today, my first time posting.

    The point you make about ePub/eBook is very interesting, because the project I have to get done will also have to be converted to some sort of an eBook in the end; it’s gonna be printed on paper, made into an electronic PDF and also has to be in an eBook format.

    Lovely point about the kerning combinations. As well as English I have to typset in Arabic too so it will be interesting to see what things pop up there.

    Again, thanks for all the feedback.

  • April 16, 2015 at 4:56 pm #74749
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hello again!

    Dwayne’s response was completely correct and I agree with it.

    In fact, I now fully understand what you want to do.
    The best solution is to have two files and one to be in black and white (print), and one with colors(electronic PDF-Ebook).
    Just finish your book in b&w and then color it and save as completely new file, but there is one little problem, every time you want to edit b&w version you must update changes to color version too.

    And you have all my support to learning InDesign, you might one day be needed not only for your own project.

    Artwork Abode.

  • April 16, 2015 at 6:38 pm #74751
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    @Artwork Abode: You are definitely right about the problems with two files.

    I think, depending upon his printer, he may be able to use just one file.

    Let’s keep our fingers crossed :)

    By the way–Thanks for your great advice in these forums.

    Dwayne

  • April 16, 2015 at 9:11 pm #74753
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    @Artwork Abode & @Dwayne, awesome advice and encouragement, many thanks, I’m gonna try and get in touch with the printer that these guys who the project is for are gonna use so I can find out what they work with.

  • April 17, 2015 at 7:25 am #74766
    DCurry

    Participant

    I’ll second the recommendation to contact the print house before you go making 2 versions. Most print shops can simply take your full-color PDF and with the click of a button RIP it as black only. The thing to keep in mind with this option is that anything that is color will not necessarily convert to 100% (solid) black – in fact, most colors will convert to a shade (screen) of black.

    If you need all your colors to convert to solid black, ask if the print shop can do that – many shops have special PDF editing software that can make such a request very simple and cost-effective.

    As I write this, I thought of yet another way you could do it yourself and still maintain 1 document and maximum flexibility: Build your book in color, and make sure every color swatch you use is defined as a Spot color (normally this would be taboo, but in this instance it is called for). When you are ready to export your B&W PDF, first visit the Ink Manager dialog and once there you can alias each color to Black. When you are ready to export your full-color PDF, simply revisit the Ink Manager and undo the aliasing. (Aliasing takes a particular ink and puts onto the same “plate” as another ink).

    (The only potential downside I see with this solution is if you have color images it won’t affect them the way you’d want.)

  • April 17, 2015 at 7:36 am #74771
    P. Ahmed

    Member

    @DCurry, thank you for your reply. I will not try to act as though I know what you’re talking about one hundered per cent, but I do have an idea since I was just going through the chapter on color by Blatner on Lynda.com as you sent that message, in it he was discussing things such as spot colour and swatches etc. I’m going to try and contact the printer and will also try to get my head around what you mentioned in the last paragraph over the next few days, depending on how fast I can get through these videos. The thing is I’m more of an enthusiast than someone working in the industry, I’ve always loved typography and type-setting but never got round to it, so now I’m learning it as an [almost full time] hobby and typsetting stuff for some friends, so because of that I don’t have any idea about what printing presses ask for or what their jargon is or what you guys who work in the field pick up on through daily interactions with each other. Hence the reason I’m beginning to live in InDesign forums lol. The only thing is it can feel embarrasing asking very basic questions, you tend to feel as though you may be bugging people by wanting them to break things down even more. I’ll get there hopefully.

    Anyway, thanks for your input.

  • April 17, 2015 at 8:24 am #74796
    DCurry

    Participant

    I’ll admit that my last solution sounds more difficult than it really is. In the meantime, everyone is here to help. Better to ask questions early in the process to avoid pain and expense down the road!

  • April 17, 2015 at 8:24 am #74797
    Gustavo Martinez

    Member

    I always create two files. One for print, one for ebook. Mainly because there’s some tweaking needed to prepare the file for ebook. My 2c.

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