Minolta c6501 - Black text prints as CMYK, any solution?

bgardner

Well-known member
Since Minolta can't figure this out I would like to see if anyone else here has. I thought I saw a post like this before but I can't seem to find it.

Lets say you have text typed out in an InDesign Document. The fill color is applied as the default Black swatch thats always in InDesign. You convert this file to a PDF, with no compression, no downsampling, and more importantly no Color conversion destinations.

When you import that PDF into the fiery, it prints all the black elements as CMYK builds, such as the text, and it looks real choppy. It also does it with grayscaled images (grayscale from PS) and it gives them a color cast to it.

Sometimes I find you can convert the text and images in Pitstop to gray, which usually fixes the type, but the images you would have to convert one at a time, and its becoming a bottle neck in our digital workflow.

Has anyone experienced this issue and have you come up with a solution?

thanks!!!
 
if the whole document is B&W, make sure you select GRAYSCALE.

if not, there's a BLACK DETECTION option in the Fiery driver
 
Have a wee read of the documentation for your rip. It'll explain all those options and I'm sure you'll be able to print blacks properly, amongst many other things.
 
Have you examined the PDF to mark sure you actually have a pure black like you think you do?
 
Then is it possible that you've set the RIP to assume a profile for CMYK that is different from your destination profile? I would think pure black would be treated specially, but that doesn't have to be the case. Does the Fiery RIP have a preserve black option?
 
Black comes out of InDesign as Separation black. You can use PitStop or callas to convert Separation Black to K of CMYK (which separation black really is already) or to device gray. I've had this problem for years with Konica, Xerox and others. The only reliable way I have been able to fix it is to convert all blacks to device gray as part of the preflight/prep process.
 
Open a copy of the PDF in acrobat pro.
Then select advance/Pre-flight/digital output profile.
Select black and white option.
Replace the black pages in the original file with the newly converted pages.
This is proceeedure adds more wok but it will ensure black page prints in black.
 
Are you outputting crop marks or page information from Acrobat?

We find that any time we do this the C6501 says this is a colour page.

However if we select 'greyscale' in the front end driver it works just fine.

Kantblue
 
Kantblue - The crop marks are a colour called Registration, which is CYMK black, so to fix that, add a spot colour called Registration to the Fiery and make it 0,0,0,100.

bgardner - Check your GCR setting in the CMYK workflow and set it to Source GCR.
There will probably be grey and black settings in the Expert Colour Settings tab, set both RGB and CMYK grey options to Text/Graphics/Images and set the black option to Pure Black On.

I hope that helps :)
 
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Hi,

I'm relatively new to our c5501 but I had a similar problem with colours being incorrect. My solution was under Expert Colour settings to select "none" for ALL the colour profiles, CMYK, RGB and Greyscale. I was advised by KM that these profiles adapt to media differences (gloss, silk, etc...) rather than the actual colour calibration with the spectro.

This may or may not solve your problem, but it gives something to start from.

Just my guess, please let me know.

Andy
 
Hi Sorry I fell behind on reading these responses. I apologize there are so many choices being thrown out, its a bit overwhelming. I can't print in just grayscale because sometimes there are mixed color and black and white elements. I know when exported out of InDesign, Black text reads CMYK, showing 100% K, with CMY = 0%. Yes usually doing a Global Color change from 100% K to gray color fixes the issue, but does not work everytime. You can not, at least if you can I do not know how to, fix grayscale images globally, you have to convert them one at a time. This is fine except when you have a 700 page document to go through.

Is there anyway I can present a PDF file to someone and have them inspect it, or try it on their machine, or perhaps I can take a screenshot of my EFI settings?

thank you!!!
 
Thanks for the link, but this does not apply to my problem at hand, unless I am missing something.

Take a regular one page document, mix of Black and white text, some color text, a color image etc, and a grayscaled image, that was grayscaled in photoshop. The black text is InDesign default black. Export a PDF - Convert with no downsampling, no color conversion etc. Read it in pitstop inspector, text will show as C/M/Y = 0%, and K will equal 100% - Import that into the Fiery and let it print - the 100% K text will print as all 4 colors, giving it a bold ugly look with all 4 colors on it, almost like registration color, and the grayscale images will print with a Cyan cast to it. All i want it to do is print using black toner. Even when converting text to Gray color in pitstop does not always solve the issue.
 

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