'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.