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InDesign Text Drop Shadows Affecting Grayscale Images

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GenaN1

Technical User
Nov 28, 2007
11
US
Has anyone else noticed that when a shadow is placed on text in InDesign CS2, it affects the grayscale image? I am having problems with this. It seems to lighten my grayscale image. It seems to not have any effect on CMYK images. We just printed a large black and white catalog. Every page that had drop shadowed text, the image printed lighter. Any solutions?
 
When you mentioned that maybe it was converting it to a CMYK bw image this reminded me of something...I have noticed in the past while color correction, taking a bw image and making it a rich black image in Photoshop, there would be a slight shift when pasting your image on just the black channel and then previewing all the layers even though there is not any info on the other three channels. I could then tweak the black channel before proceeding on to make it a rich black image. I would hate to have to maka all my grayscale images CMYK images with just the info on the black channel.
 
this gives me something to think about tonight....
 
Ideally you would want to make all your grayscale images grayscale and place them into indesign, rather than copying and pasting. In photoshop save your files. Then in Indesign File>Place and navigate to your file. You won't get an accurate reading from InDesign. And you will see a colour difference if using different colour spaces from InDesign and Photoshop, a colour shift is inevitable here, you need consistent colour spaces. Edit>Preferences etc.
 
Has anyone come up with a fix for this problem?

I have been having the exact same problem. My entire project is in black & white with halftones. Whenever I add an effect (glow, shadow, etc...) the grayscale photos all dim. This seems to be a WYSIWYG problem. The photos are not dim on the final printed output.

I've noticed that if you set Separation Preview on View:Seperations and uncheck all of the colors except black, the screen appears as it should. So a silly work-around is to keep the Separations Preview window open all the time while you work on the document.
 
kvjery said : >>>>This seems to be a WYSIWYG problem. The photos are not dim on the final printed output.<<<<<<

That is not WYSIWYG, that's what you see is not what you get. If it's fine on output then there is nothing to worry about.
 
In response to a fix, I have not solved the problem yet.
 
...basically, there is no known fix for how indesign renders grayscale images when an effect is applied to a page that has a greyscale image...

...in fact, when seperation preview is active, you get a better preview than without, this comes at a cost of render time though, as indesign will be slower with overprint preview turned on...

...how was your catalogue printed, litho or Di?

...do the shadow dot readings in indesign seperation preview palette read the same as the image in photoshop?

Andrew
 
Open InDesign file. Go to Edit >Transparency Blending>Click CMYK (not RGB).
It will solve the problem.

jdguru

 
...this user problem is a screen render issue, currently the nature of how indesign renders greyscale images in combination with drop shadows, even transparency blend space in cmyk, indesign doesn't take into account black ink profiles embedded...

...a comparison between photoshop and indesign visually will look different, if however you applied multi-channel to the grey image (add three white channels) and then to cmyk, a visual comparison will look the same as the cmyk profile is used, there is technically no greyscale in indesign. Important to have your adobe apps synchronized via Bridge...

...you can choose a cmyk profile as the grayscale working space inside of photoshop and use for both photoshop and indesign:

Color Settings > Working Spaces > Gray > Load Gray > find your profiles folder and choose the CMYK profile. Save to a color settings file for use in Bridge to synchronize to all Adobe apps.

Note about using the CMYK profile as the gray space for photoshop:

This method will give you a good preview match in indesign, assuming you use the same profile in InDesign as photoshop (calibrated monitor helps and is recommended to be done before anything else).

There might be a slight difference depending on cmyk profile you use.

CMYK profiles define black as something other than an absolute neutral. For example, US Sheetfed Coated has a slightly warm gray of LAB 10,0,1.

In photoshop, black grayscale is absolute black LAB 0,0,0, even with a CMYK profile like US Sheetfed Coated. In indesign, as there isn't a grayscale space, there's a slight difference at the shadows and midtones.

Andrew

 
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