Overprint Mystery

[terrapindesign@carolina.rr.com]

I have an ad that was sent to press. In it there is a black box on top of a yellow dotted rule. The prepress person called to say the black box was overprinting and the yellow dots were showing through-- not the effect I wanted.

I checked the InD document- the box attributes are set to NOT overprint. The yellow dots do not show up in the Overprint Preview.

I did this ad in InD, exported to a high-rez PDF, and placed that PDF in my final layout. The final layout was exported to PDF, and that was sent to the printer. If I look at the Overprint Preview in the PDF, the dots show through. So somewhere in the two exports, the non-overprinting black box became an overprinting black box.

Why does this happen, and how do I avoid it?

[Bob Levine]

100% black overprints by default. You can either set the black to 99.9%
or create a new black swatch.

Bob

[terrapindesign@carolina.rr.com]

I thought that was true only for text. Is there a way to make black non-overprinting by default? (would this be desirable?) Why doesn't the overprinting show up in the InD Overprint Preview?

The curious thing about this is there are many ads in the magazine and many instances where the same problem could happen, but it doesn't. The only difference is that I usually drag the ads over from individual InD documents into the final layout InD document. In this instance the ad was a banner that appears on every right-hand page, so I got lazy, made a PDF and put it on a master page.

[Tom Usrey]

The "Overprint Black Swatch at 100%" preference is in different locations for CS and CS2. For CS, it's in the General pane of Preferences. In CS2 it's in the Appearance of Black pane of Preferences.

[terrapindesign@carolina.rr.com]

If I go into my preferences and turn off the "Overprint Black Swatch at 100%", what effect does this have on text? I don't think I want small (or even larger) point sizes to not overprint... this would be a registration nightmare for the printer.

[Bob Levine]

I already gave you the best advice I've got in post one.

Bob

[Heather Bell]

I change the in-RIP settings on my plate setter to over-ride any in-software trapping definitions. I trust the person to design the document how they want it to look, and I trust me to set it up so it can PRINT that way in the most efficiant manner. I know I don't want green-black, I want black-black, so my black and yellow only hairline trap and NEVER overprint. I'm not sure why a professional print service wouldn't be doing all In-rip seperations that were specified to their specific presses, and operational needs, and ink definitions.

[Scott]

Create a new process swatch that's 100% black (ie: 0,0,0,100). It won't
overprint unless instructed to via the Attributes palette.

Heather Bell wrote:

> I change the in-RIP settings on my plate setter to over-ride any in-software trapping definitions. I trust the person to design the document how they want it to look, and I trust me to set it up so it can PRINT that way in the most efficiant manner. I know I don't want green-black, I want black-black, so my black and yellow only hairline trap and NEVER overprint. I'm not sure why a professional print service wouldn't be doing all In-rip seperations that were specified to their specific presses, and operational needs, and ink definitions.

[CariJansen@adobeforums.com]

Alternatively create a "new Black" colour in your swatches palette set to 100% Black.
You can then set selected fill or stroke Attributes to 'not' overprint.

[Bob Levine]

Nobody reads post one.

Bob