Color 1 side... grayscale back...

xcelprint

Well-known member
I have read a good bit on this but still not sure what to do... please comment.
Using Fiery Work Station 5 and Versant 80

On a simple 8 page newsletter customer wants pages 1 and 8 in color with pgs 2-7 grayscale. (All 8 pages of the pdf are color)

I convert pages 2-7 to grayscale in acrobat and send pdf to Hold

Operator says he chooses booklet as usual but does not get the proper click charges. He should be getting 1000 color clicks and 3000 bw clicks.

What am I missing?

Thanks
 
Possibly the trim/registration marks are activating the colour click.

Tel the operator to convert to grayscale on the Work Station, under preview, simple right click and "convert to grayscale" on each spread that needs to be black.
 
Im guessing there are items in the file that Acrobat are not converting to B&W. If he wants to make sure of it, go into your compose on the Fiery and Convert the pages to greyscale there. Should give you the results click wise that you are wanting. Ive had to do that on random magazines. Nothing like having a 36 page booklet and trying to figure out which pages is giving you the color click in the file.
 
The other thing is if you have K only CMYK your color management setting have to be correct. Actually CMYK profile of the printed piece needs to be the same as the input profile. Check if it is assigned in the PDF and if there is more than one used.
 
If you use output preview in Acrobat, you can turn off black separations for the inside pages. If something still remains within the "B&W" pages, then you know you are not converting it right. If the pages appear blank, then you know it's the RIP.
 
I agree with the previous replies about crop marks (the usual suspects) and colour profiles, but the sure-fire way of having black clicks is to use the Mixed Media function on the CWS Media tab to define pages 2-7 as greyscale. It doesn't then matter what artwork is on those pages as they will definitely print grey and click as black.
 
I have had issue with crop marks not converting as well, but that was a while ago. I would first check that the document is actually CMYK with no RGB in it. I find when converting to grayscale with Acrobate it does not do it to RGB images. So first I convert everything to CMYK SWOP and then grayscale for what I need. That generally fixes my colour/black problems.
 
Real Simple solution with Fiery. Open Properties, choose MEDIA tab, see the MIXED MEDIA section. Select INSERT PAGE RANGE, enter page numbers , and set COLOR MODE to greyscale. Enjoy
 
After converting to grayscale,save out as postscript and then run through Distiller as an X1-a format. Clears out a lot of issues.
 
On a similar note, is this something that many of you do?

Mixing b&w and color clicks on my ImagePress makes the fuser heat up and cool down each time. This results in a longer run time, especially on coated stocks. It's also difficult to police which pages should be color vs b&w on larger booklets....

I generally give customers the option of b&w or full color booklets. I will print color covers on b&w jobs though by pre-printing covers and running through the inserter.

I have lost a few jobs by not offering b&w with random color pages... Should I?

(By the way, mixed media is where I do it also.)
 
No slowdown issues on the Xerox printers mixing b&w and color clicks. Also no slowdowns between paper weights depending on what your Production Mode is set at.
 
I've never had a machine slow to make fuser adjustments for color mode. My slowdowns have always been paper weight related.
 
Actually our 1000i was slow between color and b&w mixed booklets. Our techs gave us an NVM value for it and it got it running at rated speed. So I’d ask the techs what to do about it cause it shouldn’t slow down. But I know they will.
 
If you have special barcodes (like QR or 2D barcodes) sometimes these are generated as color images. We had a fight with this, wondering why we were getting so many color click charges when the back of the postcard was black only. Turns out the program generating the 2D barcode couldn't output a greyscale/black barcode. It was very frustrating.
 

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