CreativePro Forum

Return to Member Forum

• Author
  Posts
• • July 6, 2012 at 2:01 am #62551
    nicktapper

    Member

    I am a complete novice at InDesign but have been using it to create some really simple booklets recently. However, I have just discovered that when I export to pdf and print to the office copier (reasonably high end) it is printing pages with just B&W text as colour.

    How do I stop this. I have tried using the maximum preset export to PDF settings, but it makes no difference at all.m Even printing one page of the document with pure black text – removing the colour front etc – it still prints as colour.

    I have been assured that the photocopier we have can decipher between pages that should be B&W and full colour, but that the pdf output from InDesign is telling the printer to use full colour on those pages.

    If you are able to help, please can you keep the langauge / advice as simplistic as possible as I am not a designer, simply a marketing bod trying to minise a school's costs.

    Thanks,

    Nick

  • July 6, 2012 at 3:11 am #62552
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    Have you tried printing directly from Indesign?

  • July 6, 2012 at 3:16 am #62553
    nicktapper

    Member

    Hi Tim. No. I will try that and see what happens – however, it still doesn't overcome the basic issue.

    It seems crazy to have a professional programme that is unable to export an accurate pdf. Surely it must be possible? BTW, I am using CS5.

    Thanks, Nick

  • July 6, 2012 at 5:30 am #62554
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    It is entirely capable of exporting any kind of pdf you tell it to. Don't blame the tools. Do you imagine that an entire industry would be using a product that doesn't work?

    Look at the printer driver and what kind of pdf you are exporting, the colour set up of the text, and to be honest from your description I don't really understand fully what the problem you are encountering is.

  • July 6, 2012 at 6:06 am #62555
    nicktapper

    Member

    Hi Tim,

    First of all I shall apologise for slighting the programme. I don't blame the tools at all. I have been scouring the web to try and find an answer to this for several days. Each time I think I have found something, I try it and the net result is the same. My plea here is my last resort and my reading shows that the members are very good at providing support to others.

    If I start at the beginning it may help. I have created an A5, 16 page document in InDesign. The front and back covers are in colour. The rest of the document is purely black text.

    I have exported the file to pdf using the preset press quality / high quality print. I have then gone to print this, setting the copiers print driver to automatic. This means it should, in theory, recognise pages that have colour – and therefore print colour – and recognise those pages with just black – and therefore print K only, not a mix of CMYK. I have been assured by the supplier that the copier is able to do this. However, the whole document prints as if it were colour.

    I then tried to print a single page of text from the pdf, this also comes out as colour if the driver is set to automatic.

    I have tried to adjust the setting in appearance of black, but this doesn't seem to have helped.

    I would be very grateful if someone could quickly walk me through the process of exporting a pdf so that the text is black, and therefore will print as black from the copier.

    From what I have read, people have been suggesting opening the pdf in Acrobat, removing the images, changing the text to grayscale, replacing the images and then printing it. But it seems very convoluted.

    I hope that you may be able to help.

    Cheers,

    Nick

  • July 6, 2012 at 6:29 am #62556
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I think there are potentially two things happening here. First, when I want to print something with just black ink on my xerox color laser printer, I MUST click on the Printer button in the Print dialog box. This opens the printer driver dialog box, where I can control things relevant just for my printer. I can set it to Black and White there! That way, the driver only sends grayscale information to the printer.

    Second, InDesign CS5 cannot create grayscale PDFs. They always appear to be tagged internally as color. You should, however, be able to print them as B&W on your printer from Acrobat, but only if you set that in the printer driver.

    As for the automatic color to B&W to color… hm…. not sure. I wonder if you exported as PDF, then used Acrobat's Convert Colors feature to convert just the inner pages to grayscale. It might work, but I tend to be skeptical of any “intelligence” inside a printer that could truly tell the difference between one page and the next.

  • July 6, 2012 at 7:52 am #62557
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    InDesign CS5 cannot create grayscale PDFs. They always appear to be tagged internally as color.

    A slight clarification of David's remark:

    InDesign internally works with CMYK color only. That means that even plain Black text always gets exported as CMYK, as can be seen in the generated PDF:

    BT % Begin text
    0 0 0 1 k % Set text color
    /T1_0 1 Tf % Set text font
    9 0 0 9 36.8504 631.0427 Tm % Set text transform
    [(Hel)-9 (lo)]TJ % Draw text with kerning

    The 'set text color' command is for setting CMYK colors, and even though the first three inks are 0, your printer software recognizes the command and decides “therefore it's a color page”. Compare it to a 24-bit full color image, which only happens to use black-and-white pixels — that in itself doesn't make it a black-and-white image file.

    If you have Acrobat Pro, you can change those black pages to 'real' black with its Convert Colors option (use “Convert Colors to Output Intent, with one of the Dot Gain or Gamma targets).

    CS6 has an “Export to Grayscale” PDF but I haven't got that so I cannot tell if that would work better.

  • July 6, 2012 at 8:19 am #62558
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    I would send the colour parts and the black and white parts separately, I've got a pretty high end printer here and that will not switch from output mode during one print job. If the job is sent in colour it all colour and if its sent as greyscale it will all be that.

    Hope this is some help.

  • July 6, 2012 at 8:28 am #62559
    Tim Hughes

    Member

    I read my first reply back sorry if it sounded a bit short! Not my intention at all, during the day I am busy so tend to be too brief. :)

  • July 6, 2012 at 1:04 pm #62561
    sbravata

    Member

    It is usually a matter of the difference between “looks black” and “is black”. If I had a dollar for… nevermind, I digress.

    You talked about opening in acrobat, removing pictures, converting grayscale, and adding in the pictures. You are right, not only should this be un-needed, but it is also unlikely to work well. It brings up a two points however:

    First: If there is a color picture on the page that need to be removed, then the page is in color as far as the printer is concerned. There is nothing you can do about that.

    Second: If you have acrobat PRO, open up your PDF and find “tools –> print production –> output preview” uncheck the “black” box. If the page is truly black, everything on the page should disappear. Do a similar thing in InDesign: turn on the separations preview (window –> output –> separations preview), and uncheck the black box. If EVERYTHING on the page does not disappear, then the page is in color. If it is black in InDesign, but color in Acrobat, then you are doing something wrong in your export. If it is color in InDesign, then you are doing something wrong in your design.

    You need to do the first step above to start self-diagnosing where the problems are, then google or come back for more specific help when you have a more specific problem to report. In the meantime here are some common problems within the realm of “looks black” vs “is black”.

    You are using the “registration” or “rich black” swatch instead of the “black” swatch for your text. Or you are using a swatch that looks black, but is really some form or “rich black”. Make sure that the swatch is 0:C 0:M 0:Y 100:K.

    You are using a photo on the page that “looks black” but is really not. Only photos created as “grayscale” in professional software such as Adobe are “actually black”. If you are using a photo that you edited in some cheap or free software, such as Paint, then it is not going to be black, even though it may look black. (it has to do with RGB vs CMYK, these cheap things are mainly for making photos that “look” black and white to post to your facebook account or webpage.)

    You are printing crop marks. Depending on how your printer handles this, it may just see a “color” element, and print in color.

    Lastly, a 16 page book really has 4 pages on each sheet of paper. If any one of those 4 pages on the sheet has a mistake, and is in color, the printer has no choice but to print the entire sheet in color. Even as simple as one screwed up period in a sentence. That is why you need to look at the “seperations preivew” and make sure that everything disappears.

    That's all I can think of. Good luck.

  • July 6, 2012 at 4:15 pm #62563
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Sam, the problem is that the default “black” in InDesign is always represented by a CMYK quad in the PDF it exports — even if you are only using the black component, this will show up as “color has been used” in some software. That includes Acrobat Pro! If you convert a PDF to grayscale-only, using the Convert Color command, you'll no longer see the four CMYK colors listed in the Output Preview list, but just only “Black”.

    The problem is that a PDF can contain two “kinds” of just-black. The one that ID exports is “full color black”, with C,M, and Y set to 0. There is another type of black: grayscale black — but InDesign does not allow you to select this. (Illustrator, on the other hand, does.)

    You could try experimenting with ink aliasing, but I think that would still use InDesign's internal model of “only CMYK” when exporting.

    (Edit) Instead of exporting to PDF, try printing. In the Print dialog there is an option to use “grayscale”. You can print just the black-and-white pages and if you need a single document, assemble the PDF again with Acrobat Pro, or just use two separate print commands. You can still seperately export the color pages as usual.

  • July 6, 2012 at 10:54 pm #62565
    gerodave

    Member

    I have done a lot of these in the past and I agree with Sam B's second point check the colour in Indesign is correct (0:C 0:M 0:Y 100:K) then check the output preview in Acrobat has retained that same black using the steps mentioned.

    If the Black has become 4 colour then its highly likely that when exporting the colour conversion's destination (under output) is set to a RGB profile, it needs to be set to a CMYK profile (eg. US Web Coated SWOP v2) to retain the CMYK values.

    If the PDF has retained that (0:C 0:M 0:Y 100:K) value then the issue is with the printer, possibly a RGB printer?

  • July 9, 2012 at 1:54 am #62575
    nicktapper

    Member

    Hi all,

    Thank you for taking the time to reply, very much appreciated.

    I have separated the ID document so that the front cover colour image is now in a separate file. This is for convenience and my sanity in trying to fix this. I have also checked that the black text is 100% K by using the separations preview that has been mentioned. If I un-eye K, all the text disappears.

    I have then sent to print directly from ID to the printer (set to automatic – so it should pick up that it is just colour) and it still prints the black using FC.

    I think, it is probably that I am using a very advanced program with run-of-the-mill copiers and not commercial printers, where non-FC black is not a consideration perhaps. Who knows.

    I have lived and learnt that I don't think I can achieve a mixed print with the current set-up. Thanks anyway everyone.

    Cheers,

    Nick

  • July 13, 2012 at 2:09 pm #62603
    kkorpal

    Member
  • February 27, 2013 at 2:04 am #64293
    BeaufortIMAGE

    Participant

    You can take some image processing sdk to apply to remove the backcolor…

• Author
  Posts