Appearance of Black Preferences

What could be so difficult about the color black? As the old rock and roll song goes, "Black is Black. I want my baby back." However, as many designers have discovered, when a color-corrected black is displayed on a computer screen, 100% black ink winds up looking very washed out. The Appearance of Black preferences allow you to choose how 100% black ink is displayed and printed .

Use the Options for Black on RGB and Grayscale Devices to control how 100%K ink appears.

To control the appearance of black on screen:

• Choose one of the following from the On Screen menu :
  
  

  The On Screen menu controls how black appears on the computer monitor.

  

  • Display All Blacks Accurately displays 100%K as dark gray. This setting allows you to see the difference between pure black and rich black.

  • Display All Blacks As Rich Black displays 100%K as jet black (RGB=000). This setting makes pure black and rich black appear the same on-screen.

You can also control how 100%K appears when printing to a non-PostScript desktop printer or exporting to an RGB format. This helps control the appearance of blacks in PDF and JPEG files.

To control the appearance of black when printing or exporting to an RGB format:

• Choose one of the following from the Printing/Exporting menu :
  
  

  • Output All Blacks Accurately outputs 100%K using the color numbers in the document.This setting allows you to see the difference between pure black and rich black in the finished document.

  • Output All Blacks As Rich Black outputs 100%K as jet black. This setting makes pure black and rich black appear the same.

  The Printing/Exporting menu controls how black appears when printed on RGB or grayscale devices.