Black text "ghostly"

[Baddhan]

Hi there,
I am a designer at a small newspaper company. They seem to be having a major problem with some of their pages as the black text on some of their pages are come "ghostly" and not fully black. Instead, a tint of red or yellow seems to appear behind the black text.

I have been told it is something about the black being used is seperated. Please could someone define this and help out, its driving me mad!

I look forward to your reply.

Version of Quark: 4.1
Adobbe Photoshop: 7

Thanks.

Lakh.

 

[signal49]

What program are you setting the text in and are you printing from the same program? If you set the text in Photoshop, make sure it's actually 100% Black, not a mix. If you are setting it in Quark or some other page layout program and then saving that as an eps or a pdf for whatever reason, that will change all your colors to process even if it was originally set as 100%.

 

[Baddhan]

Hi Signal49,
Text is done in Quark and printed in Quark using Distiller to create a PDF.

How do I make sure the text is 100% black? I use the original black preset in Quark and so therefore is not editable. So I presume this is the correct black.

Thanks.

 

[roccot]

sounds like the pdf is being created to rgb. check the settings in distiller to see if you can save it as cmyk. That should keep the file true to its original format.

 

[Baddhan]

Somme of the images are also appearing "ghostly", all images are CMYK and TIFF saved. I use Distiller 4.0 to create PDF's, anyone guide me through the correct settings?

Or if anyone wants to contact me personally via email, please feel free to do so, would appreciate it greatly. My addy is Lbaddhan@gmx.net

 

[roccot]

In distiller at the top you can check under "settings" "Job options" under the tab "color" there are some options to how the job will be saved.

hope this helps

 

[Baddhan]

Are there any specific settings which you would recommend that are essential and not so essential?

Do you think an upgrade of Distiller or Quark would improve the colour output for the newspaper?