Almost every week, I hear of another print publication folding under the immense pressure of the economic pinch. The Rocky Mountain News of Denver and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer just went out of business completely. The Chicago Tribune, LA Times, and Philadelphia Inquirer have all requested bankruptcy protection. Christian Science Monitor, PC Magazine, and several others are moving to online-only publication. Even iconic publications like Rolling Stone are making major cuts. So is it too late for print media? Can magazines and newspapers weather the storm of declining ad revenues and decreased newsstand sales? Continue reading »

We all know that web presses (presses that print magazines and newspapers) run in CMYK plates, as opposed to RGB like your local Kinko’s would. Normally we create our design files in CMYK, whether in Photoshop, InDesign or Illustrator. It’s almost automatic. But sometimes we all receive the occasional “camera-ready” illustration or ad file that needs to be converted to CMYK. And sometimes this process produces blackbuilds or rich blacks. So let’s try to understand the difference between the two and why/when it is important to use one or the other.

First of all, CMYK is composed of four plates, or process colors. Cyan (C), Magenta (M), Yellow (Y), and Black (K). Standard process black is 100%K, or 0/0/0/100. Visually, 100% Black is a kind of washed-out black, not a deep black like we can obtain through rich black. Rich black combines ink from all four plates to produce a dark, super-saturated black. An example is below, which uses 70/82/90/100.

Rich blacks can be very useful when looking to obtain a deep, dark black over a large field of solid color. However, be aware that utilizing rich blacks can have two negative effects:

1. Super-saturation. Depending on your medium, this can be a real problem. If you are designing for newsprint, using inks in excess of 240% can cause the ink to soak through the page and obscure content on the other side. In the above example of rich black, we would be using ink percentages of 342%. Check with your printer to see what their maximum ink limit is for the medium you are using. You can check overprints in Adobe Acrobats “Output Previewer” option (more on that later). Continue reading »