LEFT: Rich Black vs. RIGHT: 100% K Black

Question: Why use a “Rich Black” ink mix in a layout?

Answer: You will get a denser looking black area.

Rich Black = C, M, Y, K mix vs. Black = 100% K, which means that you are packing more ink into the area and our eyes see that density as deeper or richer.

Follow Up Question: When should Rich Black be used?

Answer: Definitely when there is a lot of area that is to be printed black.

Follow Up Question 2: What C, M, Y, K mix should I use?

Answer: First, I would ask the prepress department of your printer if they have a recommendation. They know their presses and should be aware of the paper you are using and other factors that may effect how your job prints. In the example shown: Rich Black = C 50, M 41, Y 41, K 100 (as recommended by Daniels Graphics).

Note: The difference in the appearance of the black area was not obvious in layout through InDesign (even when changing the Preferences on how black is displayed on screen), but became apparent when exporting the print pdf. I have found this to be true with various potentially problematic items. InDesign is forgiving on screen, so I recommend you always review your print pdfs carefully.

I sat down to work with a client, just to reposition a few items on a rack card, and much to my annoyance I couldn’t move anything in the InDesign (CS 6) layout. I could select, but not move things. They behaved as if they were locked in place, which they were not. Rebooting the program did nothing, rebooting the whole system did nothing to fix the issue. Of course I had sent my client away with a promise to email them with discussed changes as soon as I got things working again.

SOLUTION: Reset InDesign Preferences – hold down Shift+Option+Command+Control while starting InDesign, click “Yes” to delete preference files.

Having done the immediately obvious steps to no success, I called a friend who works in prepress at a local printer and is super knowledgeable on software snafus. She said she had the exact same problem that morning as well – weird – but that reboot had fixed the issue. Drat. So onto the Adobe Forums I went and did find a reference to the same issue posted in 2010. Seemed like various things had been tried by people, but the one that had the most success was to reset the InDesign preferences. Yes, it did mean I had to reenter my preferences, but I was able to get the project back to the client and kept on schedule.

In fall of 2012, two electronic versions of Hababy’s Christmas Eve: An illustrated holiday story were created. The first, a standard fixed layout eBook and the second an enhanced version for iBooks including a full audio recording for a read-to-me option when viewing the book. Yes, read by author Jamie Farr, who best known for portraying Klinger on the hit television show M*A*S*H. His reading is of course wonderfully expressive and is accompanied by original music by Tim Clott.

We worked with eBook partnership for file conversion and distribution and their expertise was invaluable! Adjusting layout, page sizing and creating a base file was handled on our end, as well as preparing the audio track with page breaks. Knowing exactly what was needed, that is the trick, and having a knowledgable partner in that process made for a positive experience.

Purchase the electronic formats by following the links below:

Apple Products (with audio) $6.99  •  Kindle $4.99  •  Kobo $4.99

PROBLEM: I needed to provide a design that was 606 inches long to the printer full size at 150 dpi. What I was designing was banners to go along the front of court side scorers tables for the Southern Conference basketball championships. Since the design included a gradated background the printer wanted the file as one continuous piece, rather then breaking it into smaller banners.

SOLUTION: The printer’s second choice was a file at 1/2 scale at 300 dpi, but unfortunately that was still larger then the Illustrator limit. So I gave them 1/4 scale at 600 dpi. First time I have not been able to give a printer their preferred file size/format.

When designing brochures where images were to be printed in grayscale I came across the need for a quick way to mock that up inside InDesign. Since I wanted to show the client choices for stock photography, I needed to use low resolution comp images in the drafts. As such, it didn’t make sense to put the time in to open each image in Photoshop and change it to grayscale before placing in the layout. And it would have been confusing to the client to have the images placed in color when we were planning to print in black.

SOLUTION: Fill the image frame with black. Select the photo only, within the frame, and change image effects to “luminosity.”

This makes an image that in reality still contains color, but it emulates grayscale well enough to not be distracting and enabled my client to review the drafts and make decisions on the stock photos. On my end it made it easy to change proposed stock images quickly and painlessly when the client wanted to see additional options.

Okay, there is no white in CMYK which is why I’ve put “white” in quotes. The white I’m referring to is that pesky absence of color, not an actual ink, i.e. knocking out type from an image so the paper color shows through. In this case I was building a postcard using Illustrator with linked images and text over the images. On screen both in Illustrator and in the pdf for print all looked fine, but when the printer (an online printer in this case) ran the file through pre-press the “white” type disappeared.

Solution: UNcheck the Overprint Fill option in Attributes for the selected type.

Duh, you can’t overprint an ink that doesn’t exist. If you are like me, when you have a client you do multiple items for you reuse bits and pieces from one job to the next. In this case the reuse included text that had been black and was correctly set to overprint. Not remembering I had it set that way, I just changed it to “white” and thought all was cool. Lesson learned!

You never want to hear that there is a problem with a bunch of images when a client sees the proof from the printer. Especially when it is Moiré patterns. The images in question were photographs of clothing items that were all made of a seersucker stripe material. On the proof they looked terrible with the delicate stripe nature of the garment totally marred by the Moiré. Definitely not good!

SOLUTION: Place linked images into InDesign at 100% or slightly less.

In this case, the solution was simply a matter of not having the photos placed so that they were compressed by InDesign and therefore the pdf and print rip. The resulting compression did not work well with the standard line screen angle settings of the printer.

I use InDesign for the catalog layout and had standardized all the product images at 3 inches wide during final file preparation, however many of the images were in actuality being used at half that size or less. I changed the sizing on the effected images so that they were placed inside InDesign at print size, or a little smaller (not more than 10% smaller) and that seemed to do the trick.

The revised proof look good and when I press proofed things look even better.

So, for these conditions the solution was actually quite easy. If that hadn’t worked, the next step would have been for the the printer to change screen angle, which could have been a lot of trial and error.

NOTE: The photographs were clear of any Moiré pattern. This solution will not work if the patterns are in the photos themselves.

I do still quite a bit of design for print. Yes, actual placing of ink on paper – static stuff. Yes, there is still a need and I believe that no matter how many technological advances happen, printed items will have a place in our daily world.

In talking over beers with my friend Michael, who is one of my go to people for specialized coding and website trouble shooting, I was bemoaning the time spent in trouble shooting a piece for print, and how one stupid little check box made for a whole lot of trouble. He said, “you should write a blog about such things.”

Really? I hadn’t thought about that. I mean there are Experts out there who know waaaaay more than I do. But he does have a point, real world issues and solutions can sometimes be overlooked. Perhaps because they are stupid mistakes, which people don’t like to admit to doing, or perhaps because you don’t run into those items unless a very specific set of circumstances is met.

Case in point, a couple weeks ago Photoshop was acting beyond weird. Tools not behaving like I expected and getting stuck in a setting, after relaunching Photoshop – rebooting – cussing a lot, I searched the web and found someone else had a similar issue due to a stuck space bar. No way, that is just stupid, but sure enough pounding on the space bar and unsticking it did the trick. I should have searched the web first, would have saved me a lot of time.

PROBLEM: Tools sticking in PhotoShop; acting in unexpected ways, especially in brush sizes and the like
SOLUTION: Stuck space bar on keyboard

And, I figure if no one else ever reads this, I at least will have my own log of issues so two years from now when the same thing happens and I can’t remember WTF, I can look through these notes.