Detecting Black and White Pages

[tngcas]

This has bugged me for a while and I'm wondering if I'm just overlooking something obvious.
When we have larger/longer documents is there a way to find out before we print it how many pages the printer is going to "detect" as black and white vs. color pages.
This seems like such an obvious thing that we need and I haven't been able to figure out a reliable way of running this kind of analysis.

Software we currently use are: Fiery, Fiery Impose, Adobe Reader, Indesign (well the whole Adobe suite).

 

[Ynot_UK]

Acrobat Pro >Tools >Print Production >Output Preview to check individual pages
and Tools >Print Production >Convert Colours to change pages to greyscale

Also ensure your print engine isn't set to replace greyscale images with CMYK

 

[tngcas]

Also ensure your print engine isn't set to replace greyscale images with CMYK

Any idea where I would find out whether or not it's set to do that? I'm running Fiery's and Canon printers. I can't find a setting anywhere that indicates it would do that but there's a lot of settings in there.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

Acrobat Pro >Tools >Print Production >Output Preview to check individual pages
and Tools >Print Production >Convert Colours to change pages to greyscale

Also ensure your print engine isn't set to replace greyscale images with CMYK

However, you must recognize that “grayscale” and CMYK=(0,0,0,k) are functionally equivalent. Thus, a page may have all objects defined as CMYK yet actually not be “color” but rather all “grayscale.”

Similarly, you must recognize that in many cases RGB=(r=g=b) is used as the equivalent of Grayscale=(r=g=b) in many enterprise or office applications. Some RIPs/DFEs have special options to recognize such instance and to use only black ink for objects so-defined. Otherwise, you may end up with what should be grayscale pages printed as “rich black” using combinations of C, M, Y, and K colorants. There are tools in Acrobat Pro (including Preflight) to find such R=G=B objects and convert them to actual grayscale.

 

[kslight]

It also depends on the program used to create the document. If it was created in word, for example, you can almost guarantee it’ll detect as color. The fastest way to determine how many black clicks a document registers is just to print a copy and take down the meters before and after. If it’s imperative that all black pages register as black clicks, I know you can manually set pages individually as BW using the Fiery preview. Might be a feature of Fiery Compose but I don’t really remember, it’s been years since I’ve had to do this.

 

[pippip]

Open the pdf in acrobat -
- Print Production - Preflight
- Magnifying Glass (top centre)
- Pages
- Page uses other colorants than Black

Run this and it will give you a page count for colour and black.

Also, under printing and online publishing, the Digital printing (color) will convert most cases where a black page is coming out of cymk when it doesn't need to and obviously keep color where it should be.

 

[Ynot_UK]

Open the pdf in acrobat -
- Print Production - Preflight
- Magnifying Glass (top centre)
- Pages
- Page uses other colorants than Black

Run this and it will give you a page count for colour and black.

I've not got that test in my "Pages" menu

 

[pippip]

I've not got that test in my "Pages" menu
View attachment 291791

That's weird, I have about 20-30 options in that pages section. I wonder did I install some add on over the years?

 

[gregbatch]

I generally run 1 copy for review to make sure everything looks as expected. Then just go to the job log and see how many pages registered as color and how many are BW. Beware of trim marks which may be set as registration color and trigger a color click. There should be a fix-up in Acrobat preflight to convert registration color to K.

You can also use a program like APFill ink and toner calculator to get a color breakdown of all the pages in the document.

 

[Ferran]

That's weird, I have about 20-30 options in that pages section. I wonder did I install some add on over the years?

I guess Ynot_UK is seeing just the "Essentials" ... one should change to "Prepress,..." in order to see all the available options

 

[Ynot_UK]

Thanks @Ferran
That's great - every day's a school day!

 

[wonderings]

What I do is bring the PDF into Indesign. I then have a black only preflight set. I turn this preflight on. Any colour errors it brings up is the number of colour pages I will have, the rest are black pages.