Gastonia, NC, needs help with a technical issue
My friend Randy Erwin — the assistant managing editor for design at the Gazette of Gastonia, N.C. — asked for some technical advice today.
Randy writes:
Could you post this question to your community of designers?
I’m having problems with our weekly NASCAR page that we sell through King Features. The PDFs are not working well with others.
Here’s what the NASCAR page looks like (click here for the PDF copy Randy sent me):
Randy continues:
I have tried many different settings to fix our NASCAR PDFs. Customers are saying text comes out four-color, graphic (EPS) logos don’t render correctly and some rips are crashing with font issues.
I have learned that exporting directly out of InDesign doesn’t work, so I used our network Distiller computer to produce this week’s files and we still have problems. My next step is to supply the large EPS file for each customer to use their Distiller to produce a local PDF.
Do you have any suggestions?
No, not really. But you came to the right place. I’m betting more than a few of our readers have experience converting InDesign files to PDF without the body copy reverting to RGB.
I’m wondering if the secret will be somehow related to your document settings. You’ve checked the output preset settings, I presume? It’s also very important to make sure you color palette is set up with CMYK colors, as opposed to RGB colors. Surely you’ve done that.
So, how about it? Anybody out there have some advice for Randy?
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Randy/Charles,
Sometimes this happens in Ai also. Make sure document color is CMYK. Also set the “Appearance of Black” in preferences to “dsiplay blacks accurately” and also to “export blacks accurately.”
I would also try to save back down a version or two first, then create the PDF to see if that helps.
-BP
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:31 pm
One more thing. Open the PDF in Acrobat, go to Advanced tab and select Print Production/Convert Colors and make sure the box “preserve blacks” is checked in the “convert colors” box.
Not sure if any of this will help since I don’t use InDesign, but it might since Ai is the older sibling.
-BP
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Greetings from California,
I ran this issue by my production manager here and he was curious to know about Randy’s settings when he exports the InDesign file (to convert it into a PDF).
A couple of things he mentioned:
• When exporting, choosing PDF-x1a (Adobe PDF preset)
• Also, another tool we swear by here at our paper is the PRE-FLIGHT tool under the File Menu in InDesign and the PRE-FLIGHT tool under the Advanced Menu in Acrobrat. That tool is usually gold when telling you what is wrong and what you need to adjust.
Hope this helps.
JULIO LARA AND NICK ZEUZEM
SAN MATEO DAILY JOURNAL
March 4th, 2010 at 1:25 am
couple of things, don’t know if any of this will help, but some of it you might find useful.
because I’m not sure what version of InDesign you’re using, I’m going to start with acrobat.
When you’re viewing your page in adobe acrobat, go to Advanced on the menu bar and scroll over Print Production. Select Output Preview. A box will pop up.
In the middle of this box under the Preview: section, you have three options to choose. Select separations.
When I do this with your page, I see you have 4 spot colors:
PANTONE Red 032 CVC
nascar red
NASCAR BLUE
NASCAR BLUE DK
This can be a problem that you’re having more than just CMYK plates.
I also see that when I uncheck the Process Black box, your type is in 4-color black. If it wasn’t, all the type should have disappeared when I did that. It didn’t, which means it’s made up of all the colors. Also, not good.
ALSO: There’s a box that says “Total Area Coverage” followed by a little color box (mine’s green) and then a number drop-down box for a percentage (i think they’re usually set at 280%)
Check the box, and then type in 240. This is checking the ink limit. Most newsprint can only support 240% of ink limit. When I do this with your page it is VERY much over-saturated, some of it over 290%!
To fix these problems in InDesign:
1. Go to Window»Output»Separations Preview
2. You should only see 4 colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, black)
If you see more than four colors (i.e. a spot color), go to your swatches tab and scroll through looking for spot colors. You will be able to tell if it is a spot color because next to the little CMYK logo box, it’ll have a box with a circle in it instead of a box that looks like a very tiny chess board. Right click on all of these and Select swatch options. Change the color mode to CMYK. Then change the Color Type to Process. After you have done that there should only be CMYK left on your separations tab.
3. Turn off the black layer. All solid black should disappear at this time. If you have black anywhere on the page not in a photo that doesn’t disappear when you turn off black, this is a problem. You need to go and change all the color to C 0% M 0% Y 0% K100%, and don’t use registration. IF the photo is dark, take the photo into photoshop and:
3a. Go to image»adjustments»levels
3b. below the histogram is a black/white gradient slider. Slide the black nob up by increments of 25, saving and rechecking in indesign after updating the link (there’s an easier way to just check this in photoshop, but too long to put here).
4. Lastly, when you’re using a making a PDF through InDesign, under the setup tab, make sure there are no color conversions.
I’m not sure if you found any of this helpful at all, or if you already did all that stuff or whatever. These are just the problems I found when I downloaded your original PDF.
-colleen kirsten
colleenkirsten@gmail.com
March 4th, 2010 at 1:32 am
AMENDMENT TO ORIGINAL POST!
*Where I said:
You need to go and change all the color to C 0% M 0% Y 0% K100%, and don’t use registration.
What I meant was:
You need to go and change all the BLACK to C 0% M 0% Y 0% K100%, and don’t use registration black.
Also:
Where I said:
4. Lastly, when you’re using a making a PDF through InDesign, under the setup tab, make sure there are no color conversions.
What I meant was:
4. Lastly, when you’re *making a PDF through InDesign, under the setup tab, make sure your Output is set to no color conversions.
Ooops. :D
March 4th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Thank you all for the help. I am going through all the settings to prepare for next go-round. I did try 2 or 3 changes yesterday before sending new PDFs.