indesign converting black text

[meddington]

Need someone else's brain for a moment.

Hers the deal. A colleague has created a press form in indesign placing single page indd files with the layout. A proof was output and the client reviewed and approved the color. When file went to CTP, it was discovered that the text was 4 color...indicating that the whole form had undergone a conversion.

So, color settings were adjusted (turned to "emulate CS2") and files resent to CTP, and the text was black only, but the color of course was different than that of the proof that the client approved.

So, after scores of trials, ashtonishingly we have not been able to output from indesign a file wherin the CTs undergo a conversion, while the text does not. Id list the different options we tried, but to numerous to type in on blackberry pearl keyboard.

Any suggestions?

I'm having a hard time beleiving that indesign is so inintuitive with regards to color management, but there you go.

 

[kyle]

If you don't need any native Indesign elements converted, but only placed content, you could assign the output color profile to your Indesign document to avoid conversion. All of the links would need to have source profiles individually tagged or assigned if you want their CMYK values changed.

If you do need to convert native Indesign elements, you could convert the colors in Indesign using Edit > Convert to Profile.... This should leave anything assigned the default "Black" swatch alone (including tints I think), but would still convert any other blacks.

Alternatively, if you can place all of the black-ink-only stuff above or below what you need to convert, you might be able to separate the content onto two layers, output a PDF of the layer you need to convert without "preserve numbers," then place that PDF back into the same document in a new layer (with "Transparent Background" checked when placing), and finally output with "preserve numbers."

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Trouble shoot blacks. Is there an Auto colour swatch? throw it and replace with black.
Is it a PDF you are placing use the colour converter i Acrobat Pro 9 to convert to output intent and preserve blacks prior to placing in InDesign.
We normally handle all objects that need to be colour managed in RGB so that we can use preserve numbers for CMYK data.

Also Indesign has a great search and replace function if invountary conversion has occured

 

[rich apollo]

Hey, Mike,
The "Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers)" option should convert all placed elements, but leave native InDesign elements alone. Or are you looking to convert even native elements that are not black type?

Could you just take the exported file that was proofed, and convert the type back to black in Acrobat? A PitStop Global Change will do the trick.