Urgent help, blacks and transparencies not printing properly.

[samjoy]

Hi Although I have been using indesign for a while now I have reached a hurdle thats blown my confidence for a while!
Here is what has happened or what I am looking at from my wife printing on an office printer a portfolio I have made in indesign exported as PDF/x -1a 2001 .

1. I have a blurred shadow reflection as part of my logo,I found I coulnt use my nav hyperlinks on the page this was on (it showed a small transparency symbol next to the page in panel) so was forced to save it as jpeg from PS with a background of C0 M0 Y0 K35 this matches the background CMYK specified as fill colour. When it prints it creates a dark grey fill where the BG (background) colour grey from jpeg should be invisible or match BG in indesign of same CMYK numbers?

2.I have a cut out of a chair as PSD which therefore leaves the background of transparent. When put into ID over black BG when printing I see a darker black fill around the chair as in the rectangle surround of the PSD project?.

3. I have a chandelier overlaid on black BG then select hard light in effects so I just see the lights of the chandelier but when printed again see a darker black fill of the rectangle frame around the chandelier.

4.I have a picture of a light in PS with its own black background and have to make it so it sits on a larger black BG. to play it safe I sample the BG from the image C75 M68 Y67 K90 and set this as the BG colour black, again I see the light picture black BG hard black and the matched filled black document BG as less black when printed from indesign PDF.

5. I create a black 40% shadow of two objects with black BG and slightly overlay them, when printed the overlap of shadow shows hard black not invisible but the C70 M50 Y30 K100 of the objects themselves are lighter.

I appreciate this is a lot of info but I guessing there is a setting or process Im missing somewhere someone might be able to unlock. Are transparencies and blur effects trouble with indesign. How is it not matching up my CMYK values.

Is it not good practice to place indesign made PDF,s back into indesign?

Many Thanks if anyone knows what Im doing wrong its 3.31am got to see a client with this nicely printed tomorrow afternoon!

Many Thanks

Sam

 

[samjoy]

Also is there anyway I can see this either in the PDF or in Indesign as some kind of preview, tried lots of things but cant see anything on screen!

 

[apepp]

>>> Is it not good practice to place indesign made PDF,s back into indesign?

...nothing wrong with doing that in my experience.


...are your color management settings consistent across the Adobe suite?



andrew

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http://www.apepp.info

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[samjoy]

My Adobe programs say colour is consistent across applications. I dont understand the placed PSD problems, with one having transparent background and showing in the project as a black rectangle doccument bound, also the PSD that has black on black of the same CMYK in the project shows two blacks when printed. Cant see any preview that shows me this to be able to try settings to trouble shoot it!

 

[apepp]

Printing from Indesign:

Is the transparency blend mode set to CMYK?

Is the color ouput when printing set to composite CMYK?

Is all color management/correction turned off in the printer driver?


Printing from Acrobat:

Is all color management/correction turned off in the printer driver?

What happens when you choose "print as image" from the advanced settings of Acrobat print dialog?


andrew

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http://www.apepp.info

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[apepp]

...all the above steps i mention are assuming the color values used in the images match that of indesign color values, be it RGB or CMYK when trying to match backgrounds...

...the seps preview panel assists in judging CMYK color values across artwork before exporting or printing in a CMYK workflow:

Window > Output > Separations Preview

andrew

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http://www.apepp.info

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[apepp]

...sorry, also forgot to mention the other settting of "Simulate Overprint" from Indesign and Acrobat print dialog settings, try that too...


andrew

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http://www.apepp.info

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[apepp]

...also feel free to read this thread with regards inkjet printers and CS3 on mac os x:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1600237

andrew

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http://www.apepp.info

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[samjoy]

Many Thanks andrew

Is the transparency blend mode set to CMYK?....yes
Not sure about settings on printer as my wife prints them at work my home printer just died. Got some copies done down the road and the issues dont show on them!

..all the above steps i mention are assuming the color values used in the images match that of indesign color values, be it RGB or CMYK when trying to match backgrounds...

Because I am showing a portfolio of web/print works a lot of the profiles wont match but Im not looking for consistency of black but to try and understand why these miss matches (that can be seen as obvious errors) are happening.

My logo has a dark grey shadow so to place it I had to give it a solid BG as if I placed it from the PSD as is (ie with transparency ) it would stop the hyperlinks working on that page.
The PSD had C0M0Y0K35 Bg fill to match the BG of indesign C0M0Y0K35 yet shows as a darker grey rectangle not match/invisible border. Same as PSD which is placed has black on black in project of same CMYK setting yet indesign or PDF is specifying two blacks, where is it getting this info from, its like its over printing colours twice when it should see them as one?
Thanks again
Sam.

 

[apepp]

...if you try out the above steps you can determine whether or not it is your print device, i suspect you will find it is how the document is being printed to that device...which i suspect is non-postcript device, probably not handling PDF files very well...

...testing the above steps should give you a printed result, if they don't then the output device would best be avoided...


andrew

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http://www.apepp.info

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