The presses we have here has no issue with printing black. We run into prolbems sometimes when our chemical and plates are not so good.
If you want a rich black i suggest that you use C100 M100 Y100 K100.
Can't get darker than that.
It also depends on the press and pressman....he gotta get perfect registration.
Adrian Juman said:If you want a rich black i suggest that you use C100 M100 Y100 K100.
C100 M100 Y100 K100 is too much, and causes problem to the printer. Too much tint is slow to dry and cause many problems on the printing process. The maximun percentage must be 320% but the best results is with 240% / 280% (for example 60+40+40+100 as suggested Rodrigo). Really a 40% of cyan is enough, but causes a "blue" tone. And using the same values of yan, magenta and yellow causes a "brown" tone. For this reason, is better to use a little more cyan than other tints
Ariel said:C100 M100 Y100 K100 is too much, and causes problem to the printer.
I agree, I would not use it
Ariel said:Really a 40% of cyan is enough, but causes a "blue" tone.
Yes, this is called "cool black".
Warm black is perhaps C0 M30 Y30 K100.
I only use 3 plates at most, never all 4. As 4 just adds more chance of registration problems.
Anyway... what hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread is the output device.
We can play with numbers all day, but the visual result will be different between output devices anyway.
Many print jobs are now done digitally, and not offset, since there are more short run jobs than big long-run jobs it seems. For example, on a digital device using toner like a Xerox DC-240, black comes out quite nice "as is" on coated stock. My advice is for a designer to construct a sample sheet of various rich blacks, and print it at their local printshop on the device they intend to use for the real order.
Also, for reverse text - like white on black- small text at 7 points or under with serifs is not a great idea, since serifs can fill in.
Jeff Harrison said:Anyway... what hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread is the output device.
Not only the output device but what happens when some body decidesd to place 5 pt reversed type on the Rich Black Build? Then what happens when thay is run through automated trapping? Groovy!!
Jeff Harrison said: Many print jobs are now done digitally, and not offset, since there are more short run jobs than big long-run jobs it seems. For example, on a digital device using toner like a Xerox DC-240, black comes out quite nice "as is" on coated stock.
Yes, the Xerox Docucolor 242 creates a very good black using only C:0 M:0 Y:0 K:100
Also for some plotters such as Roland you don't need to send too much tint, only black is enough
Of course, since most digital printers allows to send as RGB, sometimes the color values changes to a "rich" black
Ariel said:Also for some plotters such as Roland you don't need to send too much tint, only black is enough
This is a good point.
The quality mode set in the RIP itself for our Roland SP 540-V on a job-by-job basis makes a huge difference in output quality. Not only for blacks, but all colors. Hi -quality outputs great.
Twice the time to print, twice the ink laid down, but twice as nice. ;-) And no rich black needed.
Now, in some cases, I've used a rich black instead and printed in standard mode. The speed is fast and the black is denser than only black by itself (as expected).This was for a case where the art was huge but had a big black area.
So... artists must think about each job as they go... and envision what's really happening (technically) when they print the file.
Jeff Harrison said:Twice the time to print, twice the ink laid down, but twice as nice. ;-) And no rich black needed.
The conversions to the media profiles are dependant on the quality settings, specifically the profile must be created using the proper quality setting. So (please try and follow) a media profile created with a low quality setting but then used on the same media with a high quality setting will produce un acceptable total ink densities.
So to be proper if you use a proper media profile that was created with the proper quality setting then you would need to use a dense black builds. However so many users use mixed (impropper) media quality setting you get so mnay mixed results.