'True Black': How-to

True black

A reader asks:
I have a problem. When I send a project to a professinal printing company they complain that the text in pages isn't 100 percent black. It's in CMYK.

I've written here about 100 percent black text in CMYK files – 'true black'. But it seems that quite a lot of Pages users stumble upon this when they go to printers.

Here is how to do it:
- select all text in your document;
- in Text Inspector click on the colour well (the bar with which you change colour);
- when Colour Viewer opens, click on the Slides option (second from left);
- choose CMYK in the drop-down menu and set CMY to zero, and K (black) to 100 percent.



Repeat the same for text boxes and captions.

 That should give you what they call 'true black'.



Licorice

The problem occurs when you use a preset black for your document, for example Licorice from the Crayons Box in the Colour Viewer. It looks black, but in fact is a composite of several basic colours - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Professional printers prefer 'true black', because it gives text the best crispness on paper.

...if I don't have Distiller

The only reliable way I know to produce high quality CMYK separated PDFs from Pages is to process documents through PostScript to Acrobat Distiller.

So, what if I don't have Distiller? Numerous readers of this blog have asked me this question. I asked it myself when I was looking at Pages three years ago. I am still not aware of another way to produce CMYK separated PDFs without Distiller.

I can suggest a workaround though:

- if you need CMYK PDFs for a one-off, occasional project save your Pages document to PostScript, put it on a USB stick, CD or similar and take the PS files to a friend with full Acrobat Pro suite which includes Distiller. A computer service/shop or a small professional printer may do the distilling and colour separation from PS files for you for a reasonable fee;

However:
- if your project is of a continuous, long term nature - periodical print publication, posters, cards etc., my advice would be - get yourself full professional Acrobat/Distiller suite. I've just looked it up on Amazon - Pro version 9 could be as low as 200 dollars. When I did costings for my magazine I found that even after upgrading my Mac to Tiger, installing additional RAM (Pages are very RAM hungry!) and buying Acrobat Pro, I'd spend about half of what I'd have to, had I chosen InDesign or Quark.

And the ease of learning Pages, their elegance and intuitive behavior are a big factor too.

Nevertheless I agree with those who complain that there is a missing link between Pages and professional printing. Export to PDF or 'printing' to PDF with Preview is only good for small series digital printing, but not for bigger printshops which require four colour separation.

To read other articles on producing professional print quality PDFs from Pages please click here: Pages and professional printing on this blog.

Blue conversions - solution found!

I had a serious go at the blue conversions mystery the other day. And though I couldn't find out why it happens, I did find a solution.

Watch this space: I will soon publish the step-by-step guide to converting photos which come out as blue spots after the usual conversions process.

Black vs Licorice: fuzzy text in CMYK

Many of the Pages templates including stationery templates use composite black colour by default. Instead of 100 percent black it is a combination of cyan (blue), magenta (purple), yellow and black (in CMYK mode.)

For desktop printing and for use in RGB (red-green-blue) computer screen mode there is no problem. In fact various shades of black look nice and create attractive design effects.

However for high-end publishing projects where professional print shops are involved composite black colour may not be suitable, because text pixilates creating a visible fuzzy effect after converting to press quality PDF.

Standard black in many Pages templates is called Licorice. Open Colour window (Command+Shift+C) or click on any of the colour tabs in Inspector (text, object, frame etc.). The Crayons palette shows colours with their default Apple names. Click on the black crayon to get Licorice. Then click on colour sliders (second icon from left) and from the drop down menu choose CMYK sliders. Now you can see that Licorice has 74% Cyan, 71% Magenta, 64% Yellow and 87% Black breakdown.

To 'create' default black for continuous use later change your CMYK breakdown to 100% black by moving Cyan, Magenta and Yellow sliders to 0% and Black to 100 percent. Either save the '100% Black' document as a template or simply start your new projects with this document saving it as (Save as...) a new one.

To save your pure black colour in the custom colour palette click on the big colour pane at the top of the Colour window and drag it down into the colour palette.

CMYK sliders have many other useful applications. For example, please see this previous article on how to use CMYK sliders to synchronize colours with colleagues when working as a team.

A linked list of articles dealing with various aspects of producing press quality PDFs from Pages and CMYK separation is here.

Three Steps from Pages to PDF

Here is the method I use to produce compact and clear PDF documents from Pages files.

1. 'Print' file to PS. Under File menu click on Print. When Print dialogue window opens click on the drop-down menu and choose Save as PostScript. As that would be my temporary work file I save it to Desktop.

2. Launch Acrobat or Preview and open the PS file.

3. Save your PDF document.

Pages documents look elegant and professional. To bring them to your friends or clients you need to convert them to PDF format (portable document format.) Any computer can open PDF files with Acrobat Reader. Apple Macs have their own PDF making machine - Preview (in Applications folder.) However files made in Preview are often so big, they can't be sent via e-mail. Choosing 'Compressed PDF' option helps a bit, but the files would still be bulky. Another consideration is that professional printers can't convert them from the computer screen three colour mode (RGB) to the four colour print mode (CMYK.)

The best results I have achieved so far were through Acrobat Pro with Acrobat Distiller. You can open your PS file under file menu, or go via Create PDF - from File option. Or put Acrobat icon in the Dock and drag and drop the PS file onto the Acrobat icon. Distiller is launched automatically.

The PDFs produced that way are compact and retain the high image quality which is so attractive in Pages.

Please read a more detailed explanation of how this method works in the later article 'Pages and Professional Printshops: Why PostScript?' and tips on what to do if you don't have Acrobat Distiller here. See the list of other articles and updates on Pages, PDFs and working with professional printers here.

Update 2010: this article was written four years ago. If you wonder if the method I described here still works, yes, it does. And I have since found other publishers who use iWork/Pages for high-end publishing and printing. 
Update 2013: Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook' (2012). Follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages, like my page I Work in Pages on Facebook and add me to your circles on Google+.

Photo by © A.Anichkin