InDesign Help

Mark recently wrote in with a problem he was having in InDesign CS3.  The color black printed out slightly more grayish than he was anticipating.  He is using Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) but the problem and solution are the same on Windows XP and Vista as well as when using InDesign CS or CS2.  Mark’s problem was that his blacks (K value) appeared fine on screen but didn’t have the rich black look when printing out.  Although difference between printer and monitor can often be varied and complex the most likely solution is also the simplest.

If you’re having troubles with black printing out either too gray or too black than you probably want to check your appearance of black setting.  While the problem could be color management,  print driver, type of paper or a variety of other things it’s most likely a simple preference.  In fact this comes up so often and is so important it has it’s own section in preferences.

Solution:

Navigate to Preferences>Appearance of Black

Adjust the preference so that On Screen and Printing / Exporting both have the same black setting.  Rich black (also known as true black) will use a 100k black value as well as cmy coloring in order to get you the darkest, richest black possible.  That’s not to say you need to use rich black but I highly recommend syncing what you see with what you print.  Changing this preference will also affect which type of black is exported to pdf, rich black or accurate black.

I hope that helps.