What's the richest black for print?
3dogmama (1633 points) | Thu, 2008-01-31 19:11I've used these combos only for four colour print:
0-CMY/100K and 20C/100K. I've also heard that 40C/100K is good off the press.
Other than 100 each of CMYK (a printer would ring your neck over that), what's your opinion on the best ink combination for a rich black?
Paddle faster, I hear banjos.
you should ask your printer what's best on the device they're outputting on. what may work on your laser printer might choke an inkjet or offset.
That will give you the richest black. But run it by your printer as gwells suggested.
Terrell Thornhill
e-zign Design Group
cb thread on rich black
Wikipedia on Rich Black
Remember to never use 400%; too much saturation. It's been said to use no more than 250-300% in total for your rich black. The rich black you choose really depends on your printer's preferences and the type of rich black you want. There are many different kinds of black... :)
And paper with better absorption rates can accept more ink than those with less absorption ability. It really depends on the stock you choose for your print job.
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The Salon Design Tech
Thanks. Never really gave black a thought until recently. Always thought along the lines of: black is black. When I do use combos, I will treat the process akin to mixing colour for web: sparingly.
Thanks for the threads, too. They were a helpful and educational read.
ttfn!
3dogmama
Paddle faster, I hear banjos.
40•30•30•100 Produces a nice looking rich black. I use it regularly in catalogs and it looks very nice on my laser (Canon CLC 1140) as well.
Strive
Strive to Thrive
The design really comes into play with regards to ghosting issues etc. For most applications 40C and 100K will deliver a nice rich black for offset.
In traditional prepress, a large field of 100% black would be bumped with a percentage of cyan, 20% 30% or even 40% and there are a few reasons for this.
1) Increases the density of the black.
2) No worries about yellow or magneta 'peeking out' along the edges due to misregistration.
3) Gives a cooler, bluer feel which translates to the human eye as a pleasing neutral color.
Now, a 40% cyan bump usually appears less dense than a 'straight' black that we might use for CMYK photo separations so, if you want a really deep black you would use values that were closer to a RGB to CMYK separation.
However, on an offset press with problems such as mis-registration, varying ink densities, varying gain, the best solution (usually) is an X% cyan bump to the 100% black plate. On a digital press (color copier on steroids) feel free to max out your inks up to the ink limit as there are no registration issues to speak of.
And if you want to be super geeky you could 'keep-away' (trapping term) the cyan from the edges of the black .25pt so none of the cyan never peeks out. Your printer MAY have a trapping RIP which would make doing it manually unnecessary.
Cheers.