Rich Black with Orange
fccctorres (8 points) | Fri, 2010-02-05 12:24Hey everyone, 1st post here,
You probably have lots of people asking opinion on rich black but I'm a junior Designer and only Designer where I work so I have no one except the printer I usually work with to answer my question, and this time I wanted second opinions.
I have worked with rich black (usually c=40, k=100) on other documents but in this case I'm going to print a brochure for a company who's logo is black and orange, the background will be black and will have watermarks on it, there will be white text on top of this.
What I was thinking was to print the background as an orange rich black (c=0 m=60 y=70 k=100) and the 3 watermarks would be something like c=0 m=60 y=70 k=98, c=0 m=60 y=70 k=96 and c=0 m=60 y=70 k=94, this will have text on it, has I said, Neo Tech pro medium (minimum 7 pts).
My thought is, If i send it to the printer they are going to ask me for a rich black anyways, so I might aswell experiment.
So what do you think, is this a mistake?
Nothing particularly wrong with this. It would serve to 'trap by common color' your watermarks. However, it would force a 'keep away' trap for your knockout text which may not be desirable for very small typography. I hope you find the following article useful.
http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=762
I question the watermarks - you're only taking out 2, 4 & 6% black to create a watermark? That's going to be one dark watermark.
PS: I would have been shocked if that article covered keep away trapping.
I really want the watermarks to be discreet, I wouldn't want them to stand out and for all the tests I've made this seems to be aprropriate, but maybe I should reconsider..
any sense in spot varnishing the watermarks?
Discuss the watermark with the printer beforehand - that's my advice. It might be showing up fine on your laser prints or dye subs, but they're not as dicey as an actual printing press. The varnish idea sounds good too - a couple percentage points with a varnish would work imo.
After talking to the printer, they advised me to try a setup so the watermarks printed ok. t
the black used was: c:20 m:50 y:90 k:100
the watermarks: c:0 m:25 y:45 k:95, k:90, k:85
so the trick was to remove the cyan, and reduce they and m values to half, this keeps the watermarks discreet and at the time ensures they are visible and gives them that "orangy" effect i was going for!
the test looks cool, I'm quite anxious to see the final result
hope this thread helps people facing the same situation! and thx for the replies!
Yes - you definitely need to remove some more ink. 5-10% might look like a mistake more than a watermark.
Thanks for the update - interesting.