Blacks for printing

RL
Posted By
roger_leale
Jan 1, 2009
Views
208
Replies
3
Status
Closed
This will probably seem like a stupid question to most of you. If I mix a rich black using the CMYK colour picker, set it as the default foreground colour, will that black be used for printing? I am just not sure that for printing PS does not just use a 100% K.
Roger
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H
Ho
Jan 1, 2009
Photoshop will use whatever colors are present in your document, which can be independent of whatever colors your foreground and background colors are set to. Once you’re made the CMYK conversion, you can check your colors and/or ink percentages with the info tool.
RL
roger_leale
Jan 1, 2009
Thanks Ho. Further on the same subject – if I have set a rich black (say C:0%- M:60% – Y:0% – K:100%) as the foreground colour, will that black be used when I am printing a B&W converted file or does PS ignore the foreground colour setting?

Roger
P
pfigen
Jan 1, 2009
Roger,

It’s a little unclear as to how you are getting to your rich black CMYK file, but just setting a color in the color picker unfortunately does nothing to the values already in your file and does nothing to affect how your file is converted to CMYK.

If you want to have a rich black CMYK on a black and white, you need to use a CMYK profile that has been set up for a maximum black generation and a lower than normal total ink level, or you can use Hue/Sat in combination with the Channel Mixer to accomplish the same thing. The former method is far superior but you need third party tools to do it right.

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