Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications

Rich Black

You don’t have to be running spot colors to have large color areas requiring special treatment. Solid black areas bigger than, say, one square inch, usually need to be beefed up or they will appear anemic. The solution is referred to as rich black, but the definition of a rich black varies by print service provider. In some cases, just adding a bit of cyan (40 to 60 percent) is considered sufficient, although this can result in a cool black with a bluish tinge. To avoid a color cast to the rich black area, many print service providers add a neutral balance of the three other process colors. This author was raised to believe that C60-M40-Y40-K100 constituted rich black, but your mileage may vary. And your print service provider may ...