Spot Colors only preview in black - regardless of their InDesign CMYK recipe

[Gregg]

Recently upgraded to ID 2015.4 and discovered that Spot Colors no longer preview the way the used to. For example, we have a book jacket that has a foil stamp. We create a spot color "Foil Stamp" and assign it a color in ID. Typically, while the designer is still working on the file the spot color will have a color recipe that simulates the actual foil color (e.g. a 4/c gold). With the new version of ID the spot color is only rendered in black - unless you switch to Overprint Preview.

This is not how previous versions of ID behaved. Is this a glitch?

 

[wonderings]

Mine does the same thing, just did a test, made a spot colour from CMYK, took away all the CMYK separations and was left with a black box instead of a blue box. Add 1 colour back and the spot colour box looks as it should. Strange, probably something over looked by Adobe when they released this version.

Overprint preview automatically gets turned on when looking at separations in Indesign.

 

[DYP]

Interesting, but if you have two spot colors selected and no CMYK, they show colored. Uncheck one spot and you're back to black.

 

[Tim-Ellis]

Hello folks,

Adobe Acrobat Pro has been like this for some years now. Show any two separations and they both show in their natural colours. Remove all but one separation and it shows as black only on screen.


if you have an cmyk artwork and you turn every thing off except yellow, does the yellow show as black? (I'm away from the office so I cannot test this out for myself).

 

[gregbatch]

Drop the preview menu and uncheck "show single separations as black".

 

[Gregg]

Drop the preview menu and uncheck "show single separations as black".

That didn't fix it.

 

[gregbatch]

So, you are looking at a created spot color in regular view and it is black, but you turn on separations preview and it show the correct color?

 

[Gregg]

So, you are looking at a created spot color in regular view and it is black, but you turn on separations preview and it show the correct color?

Correct. Normal View (GPU Preview) shows the spot as black (even if it is 100 Yellow). Changing to Overprint Preview or Viewing Separations shows it as the correct color.

 

[gregbatch]

No. That is not normal behavior. Everything works fine here. Do you have any transparency settings on the element?

 

[Gregg]

No. That is not normal behavior. Everything works fine here. Do you have any transparency settings on the element?

Other than the Spot image being a Bitmap. After some further testing it looks as though the issue has to do with Bitmaps. Place a bitmap and colorize it 100Cyan, it will preview as Black until you go to Overprint Preview. I tested colorized Grayscale TIFS as well, those behave as they should.

 

[Gregg]

Now that I knew exactly what I was looking for I was able to find this. https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2170258

 

[gregbatch]

Oh. Yes. That makes a big difference. TIFS are the only format I know of that will display correctly when colorized within InD.

 

[Gregg]

Oh. Yes. That makes a big difference. TIFS are the only format I know of that will display correctly when colorized within InD.

These are TIFs, just but bitmap color space.

 

[gregbatch]

Go to the View menu and make sure Proof Colors is checked.

 

[Danny Whitehead]

Yep, it's a bug. It only applies to coloured images, though, not other elements in a custom spot colour..

 

[gregbatch]

With "Proof Colors" turned on mine displays fine now.

 

[Sherbert]

No alias' setup in Ink Manager?

 

[bdenitto]

Unchecking the "single plates in black" in separations preview worked for me.... CS6

 

[gregbatch]

The OP's issue is that a colorized bitmap image is not showing in color on the regular screen view, not the separations preview. It was showing correctly when in separations preview. I misunderstood as well. I was able to duplicate the issue and the "proof colors" option resolved it for me.