Comments on: Use Rich Black to Stop Colors Seeping Through

By: Jongware

Jongware — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:00:14 +0000

Ink jet printers are particularly susceptible to high total ink limits, so for those, you might want to steer clear of very rich blacks, or you’ll get a page with ink dripping off of it.
Don’t know, though, what their actual ink limit is.

By: simon Cooper

simon Cooper — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:43:43 +0000

There not only commercial litho printing but also digital printing for short runs and there is high speed inkjet printing that not been on the market very long. So the setting for rich black varies.

By: Rick Carpenter

Rick Carpenter — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:34:08 +0000

Our Rich Black recipe is 50/45/0/100. But if someone ever wants black (and not Rich Black) to overprint one place and not another, I copy and paste the overprinting shape. One is filled white and the other, on top of course, is filled black placed precisely over the white, with a thin centered black stroke applied last to the top black for peace of mind. I think the white fill shape negates the trapping, but even if it doesn’t, no harm no foul with the manual trap.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:26:54 +0000

Be careful however when changing your blacks to rich blacks when something is going to press. If you or your client has had something quoted as only 2 or 3 colors, making your item a rich black may increase the price. Something to take into consideration when designing for print!

By: Mike Thomson

Mike Thomson — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:51:24 +0000

Earlier in this post someone mentioned that using a Rich Black would cause issues if the registration on press is off. This is a great comment and it’s absolutely true, especially when speaking of text. You should be very careful in applying a Rich Black to text. The rule of thumb we use here in our print facility is to not apply a Rich Black to any text that is smaller than 14 pt.

By: Lee

Lee — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:06:47 +0000

I used to work for a printers and the system we used automatically turned all large black areas into rich black. There was no way a large 100k rectangle could be printed just as 100k, unless we manually overrode the system.

I’m amazed there are systems that don’t do this!?

By: Rick A

Rick A — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:10:01 +0000

It’s the truth, but also a shame that many designers have been cast out of the loop and are not allowed to speak to the printer. This makes the job more expensive in the long run, which pisses off clients and makes the designer look bad, when a few up-front Q&As wold’ve saved a lot of time.

I get cryptic messages from the printer through my client’s client, like “This won’t print right.” What is that supposed to tell me?

Or I do get to speak to a printer who recently told me how to prepare a PDF for them: “Just go with the default settings for everything.” Huh?

Good thing we’re not in the communications business,,,

By: Petteri Paananen

Petteri Paananen — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 20:14:55 +0000

I know that electronic paper has been on the way for 15-20 years and we still don´t have even a public prototype of it. I still believe that in long term, it going to be the thing that replaces regular paper.

I can imagine myself reading my morning paper from huge sheet of electronic paper where I have downloaded all the pages from server of local newspaper.

That day I propably will miss the faint scent of fresh ink I have used to smell all these years.

By: Mike Rankin

Mike Rankin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:52:23 +0000

Laurie-

Your comment (plus the fact that I’m currently reading a book on the history of graphic design) makes me wonder what people will think of the DTP revolution in 20, 50, or 100 years. I wonder if it might not be thought of as an odd transitional phase between the analog print era and the pure digital publishing era, where we all wear those silver jumpsuits + boots and robots do all that detail stuff

By: Laurie Miller

Laurie Miller — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:41:19 +0000

@David: Well, yeah, I guess you did advise exactly what I indicated would be best. (Grumble, grumble, mutter.) You just did it more elegantly. (grumble, envy, grumble.)

The desktop revolution has been nearly all for the better, but we have lost some of the craft of good printing. In (dare I say it?) the 20th century, designers didn’t have to do so much of the detail stuff.