asked on

Color Information?

How can I put a color image on a b&w background and convert the image to cmyk and have only black and white color info on the background, but cmyk on the color parts.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

weed

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

patrickm3

ASKER

I still need to know how I can flatten the image and keep the b&w on the k plate and not have any other color in it.

Thanks

weed

The black parts will be on the K plate anyway because the image is CMYK. The C will be on the C plate, the M will be on the M plate etc etc.

Ill try to describe it this way...

When you have a CMYK image each color represents a plate on a print press. When you print to those plates the image will separate into the 4 colors, 1 color per plate. Since the middle part of your image is only black or shades of grey it will automatically be put on the K plate. It doesnt have a choice because there are no other colors in black.

patrickm3

ASKER

Weed,

I did what you recommended the first time I tried to uotput the ad. It gave me the B&W part of the image on all four plates. When I flattened the image, it appears as though I got color info on everything.

weed

In photoshop go to File-Color Settings-Greyscale Setup....make sure youre using BLACK ink for black instead of a mix of RGB. If youre using 3 colors to simulate black youll get weird output when you go to cmyk.

patrickm3

ASKER

Unfortunately, I use photo 4.0 for my newspaper output because it has a better color and ink control-how would this be possible in 4.0?

Thanks

patrick

weed

Yikes...thats a rather vital detail...I would assume it would be similar to 5.5 or 5.0 but i havent used 4.0 in so long that i cant honestly remember. I would suggest going to 5.5 because its color is far superior to that of even 5.0 which used adobes sRGB default which messed up many a print. 5.5 also supports spot color channels. Other than that i dunno. The option to use black ink for black pixels should be around there somewhere but i couldnt tell ya where.