Oh my, I think I've opened up a can of worms here.
Bless you both for responding. I think maybe I should have been more precise as to why this is a problem for me.

-I get files from clients where they have laid out entire brochures in PS. Most of the time they've used tiny black text that is set to be a rich-black. My goal would be to try and trick PS into only putting that black text on the black plate. Now it seems I can't do that.

It seems I have 2 problems in PS CS2...the program always reverts to a rich black (no matter what I type in) and the cmyk breakdowns I type in (in RGB mode) decide on the fly to change into another cmyk breakdown depending on the color settings I have selected.

Do this test & see what you get: Open PS, make a new doc in RGB mode, fill the background with 50% yellow. Now type a bit of black text, color the black text 0-0-0-100. Now get your eyedropper tool or look over in the info window and see what happens. PS not only changed my 0-0-0-100 black text into a cmyk-rich black, but it also made my nice 50% yellow into a 1-2-50-0 yellow. Problem arises if I place this image into Indesign on top of a 50% yellow background, it won't match. I would have to make the background in ID match the muddy 1-2-50-0 yellow. (Yes, I know...I wouldn't put an RGB file into ID, I would convert it to CMYK first, but that doesn't help this scenario.) Since this is black text on a light yellow background, my goal would be to have the black text "overprint" the yellow, but of course only on the yellow plate (no need to also have the black on the cyan & magenta plates). In theory, I should be able to highlight the black text and color it with 50% yellow and 100%, therefore tricking the black text into an overprint on the negatives. Now that's impossible since PS refuses to allow me to pick my own "rich black" cmyk breakdown in RGB mode. (Yes, in a perfect world the text would be in ID anyway, just humor me, remembering most files I receive clients have tried to do everything in PS.)

So it's not only the forced rich-black that concerns me, it's the fact that in RGB mode you can't seem to type in a cmyk breakdown without PS converting it on the fly to some other set of numbers. My cmyk numbers only seem to "hold" if I'm in "cmyk" mode. I don't want to do my layered files in cmyk mode since that ignores the entire reasoning behind have different printer color settings defined (so that the density/ucr/gcr/etc) behaves correctly during an rgb to cmyk conversion.

(Note, what I'm describing would also be a problem if a client sent in an RGB file with black text on a white background with some colored elements elsewhere on the page. You would only want the black text to be on the black plate, but now in PS the black text is going to show up on all the plates. Again, I know PS isn't the best place to have this black text in the first place, we're talking about clients who've already set up the entire job this way.)

Thanks again...let's give this a roll and see who wins the cookie. Bueller? Bueller?

ColorBomb

Replied in the following topics

How to avoid Rich Black in RGB Mode/CMYK Breakdowns going Nuts