Illustrator Black not previewing correctly in InDesign CC2014

[lnivin]

When Illustrator vector art with 100% Black only is placed in InDesign. When InDesign Separations are turned on, the Black previews as 4-color Black. When outputting a PDF, the PDF is correct.

When we turn off Color Management in InDesign the Black previews correctly.

Illustrator art is CMYK, workspace is CMYK, InDesign is CMYK. There's no RGB anywhere.

What causes this?

 

[wonderings]

Are you sure that your colour mode is in CMYK and not RGB? I had this a while back, was trying hard to figure out why indesign saw it as CMYK and not just black. You can work in CMYK in RGB mode, but when saved it messes the colours up.

 

[mojoprime]

there's also the toggle in preferences for displaying and outputting blacks correctly.View attachment 4328View attachment 4329

 

[mojoprime]

wow. those images suck. suffice to say, under preferences in both programs, indesign and illustrator, there's a pull down for displaying and putting black correctly.

 

[dabob]

wow. those images suck. suffice to say, under preferences in both programs, indesign and illustrator, there's a pull down for displaying and putting black correctly.

If I'm not mistaken thats for the screen display of rich blacks vs 100 K - doesn't have anything to do with how its output

 

[mojoprime]

actually, looking at the illustrator dialog now, it has an option for "printing/exporting" allowing you choose "accurately" or "rich black."

 

[dabob]

actually, looking at the illustrator dialog now, it has an option for "printing/exporting" allowing you choose "accurately" or "rich black."

Yeah . . they do, but that begs the question . . why wouldn't you want to output all black accurately?

Can you image the fit problems if you had a lot of 6 pt. light type going from edge to edge on a large form . . and it was "rich black" . . that scares me just thinking about it and where would you set this "rich black" default?????? I never even considered that it would convert regular black to rich black.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

Yeah . . they do, but that begs the question . . why wouldn't you want to output all black accurately?

Can you image the fit problems if you had a lot of 6 pt. light type going from edge to edge on a large form . . and it was "rich black" . . that scares me just thinking about it and where would you set this "rich black" default?????? I never even considered that it would convert regular black to rich black.

This is why correctly converting RGB blacks to CMYK is so critical and also why many favour devicelink profiles rather than standard device profiles for CMYK to CMYK transforms. Acrobat Pro offers control of preserving blacks and solid primary colours in colour conversions, which are not available in InDesign:

Prepression: Acrobat Pro – Convert RGB Black to CMYK Black Only

Prepression: Acrobat Pro - Converting CMYK Black PDF Content to CMYK

Prepression: Acrobat Pro - Converting CMYK Black PDF Content to RGB


Stephen Marsh

 

[mojoprime]

you know, ever since i saw that option i've thought the same thing. i mean, if your monitor is calibrated, you can see the difference. but why would you pay for four color when you wanted just black?

 

[dabob]

I guess it's to compensate for the preponderance of web designers not understanding printers . .. heres a comment that should go into the tips for designers . . . use picas, centimeters, or inches we don't print in pixels or RGB. . .

 

[mojoprime]

Abso-freakin-lutely.

 

[lnivin]

Triple checked. Illustrator's Document Color Mode is CMYK. Black previews correctly in Illustrator (as Black only). Placed in InDesign (workspace is GRACoL2006), and it previews as 4-color Black. Exported PDF is Black only.

If I turn Color Management off in InDesign it previews correctly. If I change workspace to USWebCoated SWOP v2 it still previews as 4-color Black.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

InDesign Preferences/Appearance of Black/On Screen: Display All Blacks Accurately

No need to try to turn Colour Management “off”…


Stephen Marsh

 

[lnivin]

InDesign preferences were already set to "Display All Blacks Accurately".

 

[rich apollo]

Your Illustrator document has a different ICC profile embedded than is assigned to your InDesign document.

 

[Stephen Marsh]

I tried with an .ai file with tagged SWOP profile placed into a Fogra39 InDesign doc, the separations preview is correct as long as Display All Blacks Accurately is turned ON… However I am of course using a “CMYK Safe Workflow” - my colour management policies are set to ignore linked CMYK profiles (I do honour RGB profiles).

Setting a policy of Preserve Embedded CMYK Profiles, the separations preview is showing the results of a colour conversion: the blacks are being reseparated if the linked source profile and the working profile are different.


Stephen Marsh

 

[lnivin]

Here is a screenshot showing what I'm seeing. I would think U.S.WebCoated would convert to GRACoL2006 a little better.