How to apply R0G0B0 to imported EPS?

[moritzcica]

I had previously problems with printing PDFs exported from InDesign CS3 on a simple b&w laser printer (HP LaserJet 1100).
The printer tried to print the default 100%K of InDesign (which is not very black) by adding small white dots in text and b&w images. This made for a quite poor print quality; fonts were not rich black and sharp, as when printed with any other program (or directly from InDesign) but fuzzy and grayish.

Thanks to helpful posts on this forum I was able to solve the problem with the text. I simply changed the swatch for the text to R=0G=0B=0, or even set the default of a document to r0g0b0 instead of the 100%K of InDesign. The text now prints nice and crisp black, as it should.

But I still have this problem with EPS images I place in documents. Even if the text is r0g0b0, the images still print in 100%K; thin lines in graphs are almost made of dots and the whole images is not crisp enough.

Can anyone help me with this? How do I tell InDesign that I want the EPS images in r0g0b0 as well?
These are vector graphs generated by a graphing program, SigmaPlot.
I tried to do this with Color Settings, Profiles, etc., but it's quite unintuitive and I'm lost. By the way, the RGB working space of this document (it seems to be the default in InDesign)is sRGB IEC61966-2.1 which seems to come with the North America General Purpose 2 settings.

Many thanks in advance

 

[eugenetyson]

You would have to apply it to the actual EPS using something like Illustrator. I'm not familiar with the app you specified.

It seems like you just don't have a postscript printer though. Get the model number of your printer and see if you can find a postscript driver for your printer online, or using the TekTips site

http://www.tek-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=750

Hope that helps you with this problem... by the way, if you are using this technique to produce for your printer, you should or could use the REGISTRATION swatch, this is C M Y K all 100%. But make sure to tell any printing company you send it to for final printing that this is applied, because it can be troublesome for them when it hits the plates, but that's another problem.

I hope you find a solution, but I think you would be better off with purchasing a new, better printer that can handle postscript data.

 

[jmgalvin]

What you probably want is for everything in your do to be in RGB format, not CMYK, which is generally only used for for postscript printing. You'll also be better off if you turn off color management in both ID and the app your making the eps from.

If the other app you're using for the eps, make sure it's rgb. In indesign, make any swatches rgb - process.

When you export a pdf from click the advanced tab and select rgb from the Color drop down menu,

When printing from ID, select Composite rgb or composite gray in the Output section.

Thes setting usually give a pretty good result on basic desktop printers. Just remember that, for professional printing, you'll want everything to be cmyk.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[moritzcica]

Thank you for the tips.
But I tried everything and ID just keeps stubbornly using this 100%K for the EPS graph colors, which looks so bad on a low end printer. It's very frustrating.
I just would need to be able to tell ID that I want the entire document, including images, in r0g0b0. I don't know how to do this.

So the reformulated question: how do I set the color (black) for a certain vectorial image that has anyways only 2 colors (such a bitmap image would have 1 bit color depth, but I'm not sure this is applicable for a vectorial graph)?

Or for that matter, how do I do it in Illustrator?