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It might be a dumb question, but I've been searching the net for hours and found nothing. Any help would be appreciated!

I am to create a monotint (black only) publication. I'm not sure what kind of PDF the press is expecting, but I've had no problems with grayscale PDFs in the past, so I thought I would stick to this format. I have noticed that the color "black" gets exported in a Composite/Grayscale PDF as a 90% black (gray) only (I'm using QXP 7.2), so my solution was to create a rich black (or use Registration), which gets exported as 100% black.

My main problem is that the present project contains tons of color images (provided in jpeg) that will have to be converted to grayscale. I would be happy with Quark's default strategy to this, but an RGB 0-0-0 black in the images comes out as a 94% black (gray) in the PDF. This happens even if I apply the desaturate adjustment to the images.

Does anyone know an easy workaround, possibly to both problems? Converting all images to monochrome TIFFs and then changing the black color to rich black may be a solution, but I believe there must be a way of exporting layouts to black plates in which ordinary black appears as 100% black.

Many thanks in advance!

The blacks are probably being cut back to 90 and 94 percent to meet a "black dot limit" specification. A black dot limit (and I may not be using quite the right term) is often specified by the printer, and (I think) represents the maximum percentage of black ink that can be laid down and still show detail, versus just spreading into a featureless black blob.

If you circumvent the cut backs so the PDF contains more than, say, a 94 percent dot, and run it on a press/ink/paper combination that has a 94 percent black dot limit, everything in your PDF that is 94 percent black or more will lose detail, fill in, and print as a featureless blob (this is not quite true because printers are a bit conservative with black dot limits, and may actually be able to hold a 97 percent dot when they say they can only hold 94 percent, thereby giving themselves a little wiggle room). In those jpegs you mention, if you force the maximum black dot to 100 percent, much of the shadow detail will be lost, replaced by areas of solid black.

This is assuming you'll be printing on an offset press (you mention a press in your post), versus say a high-end laser printer, which may well be able to hold a higher maximum black dot because of less spread of the toner. It would be a good idea to talk this over with your printer, who probably knows a lot more than I do about these things.

At the risk of a further display of ignorance, I think "rich black" generally applies to a black built up of 2 or more colors. In a one-color job, it is simply unavailable. There's a little bit of coverage about this on Wikipedia, as well as other sources on the Internet.

 Hi elpy zee, and thanks for the reply!

 Now I'm even more confused, as when I exported my previous project as grayscale (and the black color was represented as 90% gray), the press contacted me and asked if I was sure I wanted gray letters instead of black. It was then that I defined a color that would be exported as 100% black in the PDF, and it came out all right on paper (it was an offset press). I also changed the images so that black parts would be 100% black, and the quality on paper was good. (Also, when I export a color project separating the CMYK plates, Quark is happy to create 100% areas on all four plates.)

 I guess Quark represents the CMYK 0-0-0-100% black as a 90% gray in grayscale PDFs simply because that color would not look really black on paper. So it might be that composite/grayscale PDFs are not really intended to be sent to the press, just for viewing...? Is there a usual PDF format generally used in case of monotint printing instead of four-color?

Thanks! 

I'm confused, too. Going back to your original post, how did you determine that

Henry:

the color "black" gets exported in a Composite/Grayscale PDF as a 90% black (gray)

I've tried duplicating what you describe and then checking the PDF in Acrobat, but I seem to get 100% black in text, and in a box filled with RGB 0,0,0, and in a converted RGB jpeg, as well. But I'm a real beginner when it comes to Acrobat's preflighting and other prepress tools, and I'm not familiar with some aspects of the methodology, so I may not be getting a meaningful reading. I did the test in QXP 6.52 on OS X 10.4.11, PPC.

Well, I had no idea that this could be a problem until the press told me that the text in the PDF was gray. As I only have the free Acrobat reader installed, what I did was to capture the screen and then use Gimp to see what kind of color Acrobat drew (amateurish, I know). But it did turn out that what was originally ordinary black got drawn as a very dark gray, whereas what was rich black (like 100% on all four colors) or Registration was drawn as real black (RGB 0,0,0) on the screen. When I finally managed to get everything black on the screen, the press was happy with the PDF.

I guess I'm even less familiar with color management and prepress things than you are as I started to use Quark out of sheer necessity and am in the process of getting to know it. I'm using QXP 7.2 on WinXP.

I did a test export again, just in case, and had the same result.

I also did some more test exports, but my results are also the same. This time, after creating the pdf, I opened Photoshop alongside the pdf and used its eyedropper tool with the color picker open to get color readings off the pdf, and what was 100% Black in Quark remained that way in the pdf. The RGB color image in my test doc was converted to grayscale with brightness readings of 1% to 99%. I guess the pdf could be opened directly in Photoshop or Illustrator or perhaps InDesign as well for color checking. Anyway, I trust these readings, where I wasn't so sure of the info I was getting directly from Acrobat.

While I am stumped for a solution, and I'm no expert on output, I think there must be something seriously wrong if a pdf workflow converts Quark's default Black applied as a 100% shade to anything other than 100% black, especially on text. This simply is not supposed to happen, and it seems that you are having to go through a lot of trouble to get something which ought to be available right out of the box.

If I were getting your results, I'd double-check that the black I was using for text was Quark's original Black, applied at 100%. Also, I'd check that Quark's color management system was turned off, although I'm not sure you can turn it off in later versions. If it can't be turned off, I'd make sure it was set correctly for my intents (which might mean setting all profiles to "None"). I'd also, to try and simplify things, get rid of any RGB colors in my Quark document, since it's destined for CMYK output, and find a way to get all my color readings in CMYK when checking pdfs. And I'd do some tests on simple documents, starting say with a 1 page doc that only had 1 line of black text in a large point size (for ease of sampling in the pdf), and going from there.

If no one else chimes in with some more definitive information, I'd also suggest reposting or starting a new thread in either the General or the PDF sections of the forum. It would fit in either, and color management seems a bit of a backwater.

Many thanks for your help!

I thought I've found a solution, and that was when I started to jot down all my observations. I was wrong, but I didn't check how an rgb jpeg filled with black gets exported. It seems to result in a 100% black (as is a black defined in the rgb colorspace in Quark), so I think what I'll do is to define an appropriate color for the text, and the images will be fine.

I know I wrote above that an rgb black resulted in a 96% black; that was probably because I applied desaturation to the image in Quark. 

Here are all my observations (all pertaining to Quark 7.2), for the benefit of future generations:

- Using a very bright setting on my monitor, I was able to confirm what I suspected, that Quark even displays black and rich black differently, more or less with the same difference as what is observable in PDF outputs. Basically, Quark's default black, as well as a color defined as CMYK 0-0-0-100%, is brighter than Registration or an RGB 0-0-0 black. The two latter ones result in a 100% black in composite PDF outputs.

- This difference remained on the screen no matter what kind of proof output or rendering intent for soft proofing was selected. (Selecting or deselecting black point compensation did make the gray lighter or brighter, but as I understand, all it does is to alter colors close to the max printable black.)

- Disturbingly, the difference between blacks and rich blacks is visible in both grayscale composite PDFs and in CMYK composite PDFs when displayed on screen. (Knowing little of PDFs, I just hope that the CMYK information is stored correctly in the latter, and it is only on the screen that the difference [as on paper] appears.)

- However, when one exports the plates spearately, the PDF displays the expected colors, i.e. 100% black on the black plate in the case of the above kinds of black.

- Sadly, it is not a solution to export the layout with separated process colors, and take the black plates only, as desaturated rgb images use rich grays.

- I've also tried to modify color output setups, but one has absolutely no options in the case of composite / grayscale.

So I guess the solution is to use a rich black color for everything in the layout. I might try to open another thread to see if there is an easier solution.

If you have Acrobat Pro you can do convert the PDF there, with less hassle and better results.

 What you may also do is, create a new RGB Colour with R=0, G=0, B=1.

This should give you solid/rich black in RGB.

I had the same problem, which I noticed on a job where I made a form and the text came out less than full, solid black. I was able to fix this by changing the Color Manager setting. For some reason, this problem happens when I have the color manager set to Quark Default (preferences, print layout, color manager.) When I switch it to Legacy color, black comes out just fine. Supposedly, the Default settings are meant to be more up to date and accurate. However, I seem to get just as good results with Legacy, and without the very annoying black-to-gray scenario. Hope this helps.

Also had this problem, my inhouse press operator caught it the very first time I sent him a job ...  choose "as is" as the color setup. The black comes out black.

Henry:

I've had no problems with grayscale PDFs in the past, so I thought I would stick to this format. I have noticed that the color "black" gets exported in a Composite/Grayscale PDF as a 90% black (gray) only (I'm using QXP 7.2), so my solution was to create a rich black (or use Registration), which gets exported as 100% black.

My main problem is that the present project contains tons of color images (provided in jpeg) that will have to be converted to grayscale. I would be happy with Quark's default strategy to this, but an RGB 0-0-0 black in the images comes out as a 94% black (gray) in the PDF.

I haven't read all the responses but I came accross that problem last year (!) and the solution was to output a Composite CMYK PDF instead of a Grayscale. Hope this helps!

 Hello, actually the best solution to avoid this known issue -- both in Quark 7 and 8 -- is the following:

1) Go into the Preferences panel, under Print Layout > Colour Manager

2) Under Source option, change the selection from "QuarkXPress 7 default" to "QuarkXPress Emulate Legacy".

This should resolve the problem -- now the correct percentages of black will be preserved in Composite/Grayscale output.

Hello Henry and all,

If you'd like to do further reading on this topic, we have a Virtual Knowledge Base article that covers many of the variables that may come into play when outputting black information.

AE0248     Printing Rich Black, Pure Black, and Print Black

Problem Description: I am having difficulty with getting my blacks to print a true black. Sometimes black in my print jobs and exported PDF files appear more like gray even though I've set black to 100%. Why is there a difference between RGB black (0,0,0), CMYK black (0,0,0,100), and rich black (100,100,100,100)?

Background: The key thing to remember when working with black regions in your layout is that is it is possible to have black mismatches between imported images created in other applications and objects created in QuarkXPress, even though you have only chosen a straight CMYK black for QuarkXPress objects or text. These mismatches occur when converting RGB black to CMYK black, when designing using the straight CMYK black, or when building rich blacks. Mismatches between different types of black may be difficult to see on a monitor, but you can often detect differences in display when you view the blacks next to each other. For example, when RGB black (R0, G0, B0) is converted to 4-color CMYK black in PhotoShop, the RGB black information is transformed to C-63, M-52, Y-51, K-100 in the CMYK color space.

Note!: The CMYK black build will be entirely dependent on the working CMYK profile chosen in Photoshop’s Color Settings. This is in addition to either the source profile of the image or the working RGB profile chosen in Photoshop’s Color settings.

When an image is printed with these values, the resulting black prints noticeably darker than a CMYK black with values of of 0,0,0,100. A rich black will result in a darker, shinier black at the press. A straight 100% black will result in a duller, matte-like finish.This occurs because less ink is being laid down on a particular region of a page.

If you are working in a color-managed workflow, black information can undergo color transforms if the profile for the source and target devices have significant conversions defined for black. For more information on color managed workflows please refer to: the QXP User Guide PDF file (located in the Documents folder of your QuarkXPress folder), pp.142 ff.

Note!: Ultimately you will want to consult with your prepress department or with your service burreau customer service representative to determine how you should be defining your rich black or regular black information for specific jobs.

More Information: Much information is available online relating to creation and output of Rich Black. While these links to other vendor sites are not a complete list, we have referenced these as a service to our customers:

From the OCE web site

http://dl.oce.com/downloads/downloadsave.asp?FilePath=%5CEn%5CPdf%5Cproducts%5Ccpsrichblackwpp.pdf&filename=cpsrichblackwpp.pdf

http://outskirtspress.com/admin/***/Images%20in%20a%20Digital%20World.pdf

 From the Adobe web site:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/5.0/help.html?content=WS7E8089AA-F584-46b0-8E67-DAA2ED79BE4B.html