PDF to Book

The Black and Grey saga...

I have just uploaded the PDFs from InDesign ready to order my book. All of the colour profiles are correct (RGB left as is and CMYK converted to Blurb ICC – PDF output set to convert everything to Blurb ICC).

The black backgrounds in my PDF appear grey (whereas the black in the photos appear black) but I understand that they will print black. However, the online preview in ‘My Book Projects’ also displays my black backgrounds as grey – will they print as black? Other online previews from previous books, made using Booksmart software appear black so what is the difference?

If anyone can shed a little light on this I would be extremely appreciative (esp as I need to get this delivered for Xmas!).

Thank you in advance…

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Posted by
joncoutts
Dec 3, 2012 7:03pm PDT
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joncoutts
 

Hello,

If you are concerned about the Blacks of an image and background matching, what I might consider is to create images large enough to fill the entire InDesign page within Photoshop that includes the image and the background color. That way the InDesign page is created from one image where the image and background Blacks are assured of printing identical.

Thanks!
Joe
Posted by
JoeCro
Dec 3, 2012 8:43pm PDT
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JoeCro Icon_staff
 

Hey Joe, thanks for that advice, that is certainly an option for black backgrounds. However, if I use any black framing around images in InDesign they show up as gey too. With so many images it is impossible to do the framing in PS and keep the borders the same when resized etc…

jon
Posted by
joncoutts
Dec 4, 2012 5:41am PDT
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joncoutts
 

This is back to the "Rich Black" scenario. I’ve made a few books with black backgrounds and I have made a Rich Black swatch in ID with CMYK values of 60:40:40:100 and it works fine with both colour and B+W images. The figures that I’ve used have a total ink load of 240% which shouldn’t give the press any problems. Blurb have also suggested 60:50:50:100 which could be worth a try. If you’re using the thinner paper, keep the ink load down as it could give the press drying problems.

Robin
Posted by
robinsinton
Dec 5, 2012 3:39am PDT
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robinsinton