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I've always wondered what the difference between "black" and "registration." i've noticed that the "black" isn't as black as registration. Could someone explain this? A wise man said that, "there are no dumb questions". I apologize if this falls under that category. Thanks!

Not a dumb question at all - if no one has ever told you what it is, how can you know?

Registration is a special colour you can't delete and will always appear on every plate of a job. So if you've got a file that only uses magenta and cyan, for example, then you pop a line or something on it in 'registration' and print seps that line will appear on both the cyan and magenta plate.

Even if you've got a 5 colour job - say CMYK plus a Pantone special - anything in registration will appear on all plates.

It's used for the crop marks and registration points XPress adds when seps are made.

However you shouldn't use this colour for anything other than printer's marks - no printer wants 100% of every colour in an area. So if you want a deep black, don't use registration (100% of each of the 4 CMYK colours is too much) just make a custom black with, say, 40% cyan and 100% black (k).

Ok?

Greg

Excellent! Thank you very much! I'll make a custom black from now on. If you use registration and send something to print, will the final product look odd?

Well, in cmyk a solid area of any appreciable size in 'registration' can mean a good deal more ink than the process can comfortably cope with; and I think some printer's pre-flighting may flag it up as an error anyway.
If you used it for any rulework or type (and it printed) you'd run the risk of even the merest hint of misregistration spoiling things, but with little or no worthwhile benefit if you got away with it.

I've heard of people trying to use a tint on 'registration' (to get, for example c40 m40 y40 k40), but it's a fairly bizarre thing to do and asking for trouble when it comes to troubleshooting or editing or reworking a job in the future.

Agreed. Frankly a hard and fast rule is 'registration' colour is just for that, and only that - registration marks.

You want a rich black? Mix it - 40-70% cyan and 100% black. Want a warm black? Use magenta instead of the cyan. But put ink on all four plates and you risk trouble. Especially if it's large amounts of ink!

All the best,

Greg

9 out of 10 of my most clueless customers use all 4 plates for black! :D

Why am I not surprised. :roll: