Spot Color Black has different values

[jonasukulore]

Hi! I get this error 'Spot color "Black" has different values', but there's no spot colors in my document?
Running actions 'change all to CMYK' and 'Change Specific Color' have no results. Please see screenshot.

 

[abc]

Can you send me the file please?
[email protected]

Would be interested to take a look.

 

[jonasukulore]

Hi Andrew, Thanks for your quick response. It's a rather hefty pdf (200 pages / 2GB+). I'll send you a few pages of it.
Can you please assure me you'll delete the file after taking a look? It is copyrighted materials. (comic book)

 

[abc]

Sure no problem at all. This is actually an easy fix, but maybe more difficult to explain.
Interesting to see it was generated in Quark 9.5, it's been a while since I have seen anything from Quark.

It's the black and white images, if you click on them you will see they are colored Separation, with an alternate colorspace of Gray.
So technically 'Black' is being described in different ways in the document.

The error message could do with a bit of tweaking, but I think it's part of the built-in PDF/X-4 checks, rather than a specific GWG requirement.

Either way, converting them to CMYK resolves the issue for me. I've attached the Action I used which selects separation colors and converts to CMYK, you could also use Grayscale if you want as the Black does have an alternate colorspace of Gray.

Obviously please check the results to make sure they are ok, I looked at the pages I had and they separated to just the K, so they did not become 4-color blacks. The result then passes the GWG preflight you have.

 

[abc]

To confirm, sample file now deleted.

 

[jonasukulore]

Thanks, Andrew! Very helpful!
(Edit: why is it always the PDF's generated with QXP that give me headaches )