Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

SIMON C

Active member
Hi there,

We have a 64pp job that comes in every week, and in some cases certain pages will not rip. All pages are supplied 1.3 PDF's. So to get these pages through the RIP I convert them to Photoshop PDF's, and all pure black text etc stays as pure black, with overprints and everything. The problem seems to come when we then RIP across to PrintDrive. The pure black text is converted to 4 colour AHHH!

Does anyone know if there is a way round this, the pdf's are RIGHT BEFORE we Impose/rip the flats, but not after. Is there a profile or colour Management thing that it might be going through, because when we say yes to "In-Rip Trapping" in the Job ticket we have to select "EURO" as the ink profile thing. So could this be the problem?

Apogee version series 3.0

Any help would be great

Thanks

Simon

Edited by: SIMON MILLER on Jan 17, 2008 10:43 AM
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

Do you see the text as 4 color in the final resulting ApogeeX PDF or Render result or you notice that on the resulting inkjet proof? Or maybe both?
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

Hi,

It's 4 col on the PrintDrive PDF that we use to make the plates from.

I've had a quick look at the "settings" in the output menu on the job ticket, and there is a "Composite Printing Profile" set to "StandardEURO" but there does not seem to be an option to deselect this or turn it off...

Help!!!!

S
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

I tried to replicate your problem but my resulting PDF is fine. When saving as Photoshop PDF, what settings are you using?
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

Hi,

the settings are:-

Version 1.3 comp
No image compression
No colour conversion
Do not include profile

Does this help?

So, your PDF test resulted in black only overprinting text?

Simon
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

Yes, my black was overprinting before and after. Looks like you've got some cmyk to cmyk profile conversion somewhere in your plan, either at the Normalizer or at the Renderer. You should have both Postscript color management set to "honor application" if you don't want that to happen. Also, if you have some Pitstop actions somewhere in your plan, make sure it's not set to do cmyk-cmyk profile conversion.

Hope this helps.
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

We need one clarification:

Apogee Series 3?

Or ApogeeX version 3?

In either case, if the incoming data has any ICC profiles attached to any content, and "honor application settings" is enabled for color management in either the PDFRip or the Renderer, then the workflow does as asked, in which case it reads the profiles attached and performs color management to make those match based on the output profile, which you have indicated as EURO (an aside, why not SWOP or other US standard? Not that it would solve your problem, just curious) .

When color management is performed (CMYK to LAB and back to CMYK) the software creates rich blacks where there was only black before. The only way to avoid this is to use device linked profiles, and that's not a simple matter.

Your better defense against this undesirable result is to ensure that any incoming data is free of profiles. It sounds like you are exporting PDFs from Photoshop? Make sure NOT to include any profile. That should solve your immediate trauma, I am guessing. If not from Photoshop, use an action list with Pitstop to strip all ICC tags from the entire document.

Try that and let us know how it works.
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

You're right, I just tried it, attaching a profile to it does a CMYK-CMYK conversion, so I guess you have to NOT include the profile when saving the Photoshop PDF file.

Edited by: Colorblind on Jan 18, 2008 3:50 PM
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

Check the preflight. I think there is a cmyk conversion.
It could be in the normaliser
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

This also happened to us. We had a tech come in to help us with Impo2. He set up hot folder for us to help our workflow. Come to find out when we drop it in a hot folder all the black type goes to 4/c grey.

We went back to using print dialogue. Works fine again.

We have Apogee X light.
 
Re: Why does Apogee convert my black only text to 4 colour?

Thanks Guys,

The problem was, when I was saving the Photoshop PDF out of Photoshop, it was embedding a profile, but when you opened up the file, the text was STILL black only. However, when the PDF was next imposed, RIPPED, and sent over to print drive that was where my 4 colour blk was coming out. So it would seem that because the profile was embedded at the time of creating the PDF out of Photoshop, and you could still see blk ONLY text when opened, nothing came to light until the PDF was RE-RIPPED going over to Print drive. If I now do not embed any profile from Photoshop in the first instance the result is JUST BLACK TEXT!

Thanks for all your help on this one!

Simon
 

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