P.M. wrote:
In the swatches palette, what’s the difference between “white” and “paper”? And how come we can’t delete the [paper] [black] [registration] swatches?
Many InDesign users — especially those who are converts from QuarkXPress — wonder why there is no “White” color in the Swatches palette. Some go so far as to make their own 0% CMYK swatch and name it White. However, there’s typically no need: That’s what the Paper color is there for. When you apply the Paper color swatch to an object, you’re telling InDesign to knock out everything beneath it, all the way down to the paper beneath.
One nice thing about the Paper color: It’s editable! For example, if you know you’re going to print on some canary-yellow paper, you can edit the Paper color to roughly approximate that color. This is not a substitute for proper soft proofing (getting an ICC profile for your printing conditions and using it in the View > Proof Setup > Custom dialog box), but it works in a quick-and-dirty kind of way.
As for why you can’t delete the swatches that have brackets around them: Well, to quote the great words of the greatest sages: “I have no idea.” I’ve certainly never had a need nor desire to delete Paper or Black. I can definitely see a need to remove the Registration swatch, though.
Registration is “all colors.” That is, if you color something 100% Registration, it’ll show up as 100% black, 100% yellow, 100% spot colors (if you’re using spots), and so on. The only time you need the Registration color is if you’re making your own registration/trim marks. That’s pretty rare.
But too many people apply Registration to text or objects when they mean to use [Black] because the two are right next to each other and look identical. Big problems. So here’s a trick (repeated here): While no documents are open, drag the Registration color to the bottom of the palette. (Did you know you can reorder swatches by dragging them around?) Now it’ll be down at the bottom for all future documents you create, and you’ll be less likely to click on it accidentally.
This article was last modified on December 18, 2021
This article was first published on February 16, 2007
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Hello. I wanted to know if you can shed some insights into why a printer will advise a designer to change the type color in a brochure to registration color? I am thinking that the text will become illegible if it is too small, or either way, would waste a lot of ink on paper, causing paper longer to dry. Do you have a recommendation for this issue?
I am a graphic designer and have worked for a printing company for 15 years and can not think of a single reason why a printer would ask a designer to change type to the registration color. That makes ZERO sense. The only time our shop prints type with any ink other than just straight black is in cases where there is a heading of some kind (we use the rule of any bold typeface with a pt. size greater than 36) and for those cases we add a screen of 30% of cyan, yellow, or magenta (depending on other elements of design) to achieve a rich black.
If I had a nickel for every file I’ve preflighted that had type (and other elements) set to the registration swatch, I could have retired 10 years ago! It would be a nice, no, a FANTASTIC feature for Adobe to add to the Preferences, the ability to hide/show that swatch and have the default for it to be NOT shown in the swatches panel. In my experience, there are WAY more users who don’t know what that swatch is for than there are who do. Those that do would easily be able to turn it on. PROBLEM SOLVED!
PAPER settings in Pantone-spot-only documents.
When preparing a spot only document, I set the preflight profile to disallow CMYK colour space. All the text and objects set to PAPER are then marked as ‘Problems’ in preflight with the description “Text content uses CMYK”.
What do you recommend to stop preflight from seeing this as error? Thanks.
Blais: I think you are choosing the wrong thing. Instead of “color spaces not allowed” try turning on the “Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow Plates Not Allowed” checkbox. When that it on, Paper does not trigger the error.
Ah, OK. Thanks. Nowadays I usually do my original work in RGB, so getting rich black is not a problem.
Hi, thanks for this clarification. But, isn’t there also use for the Registration swatch when you need a black item to be truly blank in print? Just black (0-0-0-100) doesn’t do it. My guess (and nothing but a guess) is that Registration should be used for creating truly black items, which, after a bit of profiling, will be just enough black to cover everything. Right or wrong?
@Gunnar: You’re thinking of “rich black” which we talked about here: https://creativepro.com/use-rich-black-to-stop-colors-seeping-through.php
Basically, the idea of adding color to black is a very good one (when doing color printing), but you do NOT want to use 100% of each color or the Registration color. Instead, just adding 20% of each color to your 100% black is enough (different people use different ingredients for different effects). Using too much ink is not just wasteful, but dangerous and bad on printing presses.
@Gunnar: The profile only takes effect if you are converting RGB to process colors, or if you do what’s called a four-color cross-conversion, which is rare. No, just remember: Only use Registration for crop marks and registration marks — not for any real color on your page.
Hence the profiling, where all excessive ink is removed, right?
Well, I got it worked out with help from a friend but I had already done what you had suggested here. possible that it was a problem unique to this document? or perhaps there is some specific order to these steps – BTW, these containers are on master pages.
thanks for you help.
@Richard: It sounds as though you need to set the Fill color of the frame to Paper. Also, you can turn on the Object Knocks out Effect checkbox in the drop shadow panel of the Effects dialog box.
this issue came up when trying to get the fill of a picture box to knock out a shadow effect I applied to the box itself. The content of the box may be an illustrator file, pdf, or psd with transparent b/g. The fill of the container needs to be white and punch through the shadow showing around the perimeter….? Right now it showing up on the inside of the box as well.
Thank you for this explanation of Paper/Black/White/Registration. I have been wondering about this myself.
Sacha, thank you for the reminder. Yes, there are some fun tricks you get create with the Registration color (due to the fact that this color is always the darkest color possible on the page). Branislav Milic pointed out some of these in his tutorial.
Sorry: the transparency mode of the textframe has to be set to Lighten, not the picture.
Sacha
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Another application of the Registration Swatch for a cool text/picture-effect:
Create a Textbox with big bold Text. (e.g. Placeholder Text) Color the text with the Registration Swatch. The Textframe itself has the Swatch Paper. Import a picture and send it to the background, text on top. Set the transparency mode of the picture in the background to Lighten.
Greetz, Sacha
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