new user; image placed over black; will...

created a master page, added a black rectangle over the entire page, labeled it ''B''.



created a new document and assigned the ''B'' master page to it.



Obviously, there is not a problem placing an image on the black page, but what about printing? If I export this document as a pdf and send this to a printer, will the printer do all right with this? Please forgive me for this basic question, but I am new to InDesign; used it for a few days now, and just don't know what happens to make it print.



What concerns me is that the printer will print a black page and then print the image over the black, which wont look right, will it?



I know the experts here are amused by my question, but all of us had to learn, right?



vasi
new user; image placed over black; will...
That image will knock out the black under it.



Bob
new user; image placed over black; will...
Is the image full colour, like a scan or photograph? Is the black CMYK process black or a rich black? Does the black need to print to the edge of the page? If so, does it bleed?



My guess is you are printing process, the image is a photo or a scan, and the black prints to the edge of the page. In that case, you'll want the black to bleed (extend beyond the edge of the page by about 1/8 inch). You'll want to add that bleed value in File %26gt; Document Setup. The black are would benefit from being a rich black. Ask the printer for a good rich black mix. A common value is 40% Cyan and 30% Yellow and Magenta added t 100% Black.

It's not quite as if the printer ''prints black

i then

prints the image.'' The entire page is assembled into printer memory (a digital printer!), which indeed starts with a blank sheet, then 'painted' black -- filled with black pixels. But then it paints the image over the black, replacing each pixel with a new value. At the time the page is sent to paper, there are no black pixels anymore 'under' the image.



If you have a really slow computer, you can see how the PDF on your screen is drawn the same way: for a split second, the screen is black; next, it is replaced with an image.



There

i is

actually an option to ''overprint'' stuff (which is the exact opposite of what you'd expect; then again, that's graphic history). Do the following:



* draw a huge yellow rectangle

* draw a blue rectangle on top of this, on the left side of the yellow rectangle

* draw another blue rectangle on the right side

* go to the Window menu, and select ''Attributes''. Select one of the blue rectangles; in the Attributes panel, select ''Overprint''.



What happens next? In the Default view, you don't see any difference, because ID's default is to draw everything on screen as fast as possible. But if you select ''View Overprint'' in the View menu, you will see that one of the blue rectangles prints

i over

the yellow one -- thereby replacing yellow with blue -- and the other, the one with 'overprint' selected,

i mixes

to green.



[Edit: I should add a stern

b Warning:

if you check the ''Overprint'' box

i without anything selected,

b it will become the default setting.

That would most likely seriously mess up your document.]

There's very little use to overprinting anything on a black background, It will just make it darker black, and yes, at some point you may reach too much ink and cause trouble for the printer (too much ink puddles or fails to dry fast enough to avoid offsetting onto the back of the next sheet on a press or inkjet printer, or fails to fuse properly on a laser printer and flakes off).



In general, large solid areas are harder to control than anything else when printing, so Scott's advice to talk to the printer is very important. My guess is that he will recommend a rich black, though the exact percentages seem to be as varied as the number of print shops.



Peter

If the image is CMYK and the black is all process inks, then Overprint will do nothing.

I'm assuming the OP doesn't intend to

i overprint

the image as you and I understand the term :-)



Any object placed regularly onto others replace the one below it. Setting the ''Overprint'' attribute changes this behaviour, but in a predictable way.



I know of a single book -- I won't tell you the title! -- that has a black cover, and on the back the blurb text is missing. I created it with CorelDraw and failed to notice the

i white

text at the back was set to overprint. No-one noticed (the PDF showed allright, or at least in the default view) until it had been printed.

Thank you very much! I am impressed that everyone took the time to reply; and so quickly. I have a few days into InDesign and I'm sure glad I bought the Lynda training dvds; they can't answer every question, so it's good to know this group is here.



I completed my goal ahead of my plan. The long term product is a book of my photographs taken for a client. We wanted to do a sample print to help him choose a page size, page color, and image size, and that's what I finished today. Made pdf and sent it off to the printer; then I wondered about the black pages.



I started with jpegs, moved them to Photoshop, then to a folder and the placed them in ID. Later I read something that said jpegs should not be used in ID. Is that true of CS4? For the final product, I'll use TIFF.



So this thread does not get off topic, I'll post my workflow question in another topic.



vasi

''So this thread does not get off topic, I'll post my workflow question in another topic.''



Thank you. It's refreshing to see someone joining a group like this with a concept of how it works. Too many people jump

into the middle of threads and turn them at a tangent, or ask totally unrelated questions, which makes threads rambling

and counter-productive.



k

JPEG compression is ''lossy.'' That means that to make the files so small, the compression program analyses the image and decides to throw away some if the image data. This happens
every time you open and save the file. If you never edit an image supplied as JPEG, then leave it in that format. If you edit even a liitle, first save it as TIFF or PSD.



I use TIFF as a default, whenever there are no added layers. If there are any layers or adjustments I use PSD.