Print Settings - Black not Solid

[THRobinson]

Designed a logo for a guitar headstock to print onto waterslide decal paper.

First mistake was that I designed it in illustrator with 100% K for black, imported to Photoshop, did the rest of the edits and such and realized I used 100%K not rich black.

Found a forum post where someone said easiest work around was to click Selective Colour and add +4 to everything. Print came out darker so was happy about that.

Problem I am still having is that the logo is solid black. Only a few spots have a gradual fade from black to clear. But outline and drop shadow is solid black, and it's printing as small dots.

I have a Samsung CLP-325 colour laser printer. If I print a test page for example from the printer, solid black items like type are a solid black.

Any ideas how I can get this to print solid black as solid? Not a halftone effect?

[Mylenium]

Well, unless you actually manually manage the prinetr colors with profiles, there's probably not much point to working in CMYK in the first place. That's pretty much it. It might actualyl work straight off the bat with an RGB image and the printer/ printer driver's automatic conversion. Everything beyond that would require to instate color management. That, and of course rich black is not a solid color to begin with. You would still have to use a normal black and by ways of managing separations explicitly have the other colors printed on top as halftones, which totally may not be possible with your printer. It's the nature of the beast.

Mylenium

[D Fosse]

CMYK is for commercial offset print only. All desktop and office printers are RGB devices that expect RGB data.

Convert your logo to Adobe RGB or sRGB. Drag the black point down to 0 with a Levels adjustment.

[rob day]

I have a Samsung CLP-325 colour laser printer. If I print a test page for example from the printer, solid black items like type are a solid black.

The appearance of CMYK black is determined by the document’s CMYK profile, which lets you soft proof (or proof on a composite printer) the differences between Black only and Black + CMY percentages that happen in offset printing where the inks are transparent.

Different profiles produce different appearances—an uncoated profile proofs as a lighter value than a coated profile. Here's US Sheetfed UnCoated:

Legacy profiles did not distinguish a difference between Black and  Black + CMY colors, so if you were to assign (not convert to) the legacy Photoshop 5 Default profile, 0|0|0|100 black should output to your RGB composite printer, or convert to RGB, as 0|0|0.

InDesign has an Appearance of Black preference that lets you override the profiled black appearance.

[THRobinson]

Well... I am in another forum for designers, figured post in 2 places and double the chances of response.

Other forum said my problem was that I should have left everything in illustrator and used the rich black.

So, rather than spend more time figuring it out, I spent that time going into Illustrator CS3 (windows) and redoing everything in there. I used the CMYK black this time (69.53c 67.19m 63.67y 73.83k) and prints much darker, dots not as noticeable, but still dots. I am fine with the dots in the small gradient parts but that solid black drop shadow should be solid black. I checked everything, fills and outlines are black (69.53c 67.19m 63.67y 73.83k).

Gave it a break... went to Logo2. Old guitar from the 60's, had to trace out a poor photo of the logo since virtually none exist anymore... some reason manufacture used a sticker for the logo on this brand and didn't varnish over it.

Anyways... same as the other logo... black/white only, mix of solid fills and outlines, all black the same (69.53c 67.19m 63.67y 73.83k). I click print and voila! Nice rich black, solid, no dots at all.

So... same program, same printer, same settings, same black... Logo1 is dots, Logo2 is perfect. Both CMYK.

And this is where I get lost... not sure why 1 fails and 2 is fine.

[rob day]

And this is where I get lost... not sure why 1 fails and 2 is fine.

Are the document CMYK profile assignments the same (Edit>Assign Profiles)?

And why set the black value to 73% for your rich black? A more typical rich black would be something like 65|50|50|100.

Is the final print destination the Samsung laser printer, or are you just proofing for offset printing?