Printing True Black in Color Documents

[John Chambers]

I am running Word 2004 on OS X 10.4 and only experience this problem within
Word. Other applications like Adobe, Preview, work as expected. When I
create a document and send it to a color printer (Minolta 2350EN) all of the
black text is printed using composit black, instead of true black. If I
were to select the printer option to only print in black and white,
obviously the black text prints as true black. But, most of the time a have
a document with color in it and I want the color to print as color and the
black text to print as true black. I have tried changing the font text
color to Automatic and to Black, but neither of those changes the output. I
am running the current version of drivers for the printer. It would appear
to be a Word thing, because other applications like Adobe Acrobat print
color documents with the black text as true black. I will test it again
tonight, but as I recall Excel also prints correctly.

Thanks,

John Chambers

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi John:

Check the properties of the styles you have in use, and of the text they are
used on.

Look in Format>Font...

If the colour is set to "Automatic", it should print as true black. If it's
set to "Black", it may print as process black or as a different colour,
depending on your printer driver and your colour-matching profile.

Cheers

I am running Word 2004 on OS X 10.4 and only experience this problem within
Word. Other applications like Adobe, Preview, work as expected. When I
create a document and send it to a color printer (Minolta 2350EN) all of the
black text is printed using composit black, instead of true black. If I
were to select the printer option to only print in black and white,
obviously the black text prints as true black. But, most of the time a have
a document with color in it and I want the color to print as color and the
black text to print as true black. I have tried changing the font text
color to Automatic and to Black, but neither of those changes the output. I
am running the current version of drivers for the printer. It would appear
to be a Word thing, because other applications like Adobe Acrobat print
color documents with the black text as true black. I will test it again
tonight, but as I recall Excel also prints correctly.

Thanks,

John Chambers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[John Chambers]

Thanks for the info and for providing some ideas on where to look. I found
that on my two "identical" computers, the problem only occurred on one of
them. Here is what I found, just in case anyone else is interested.

When installing the drivers for the Minolta 2350EN (Color Laser) I also
installed the color profiles (.icc files) that are provided by Minolta
(downloaded the current version). I had gone into the ColorSync Utility,
and under Devices, for the Color Printer, I had changed the CMYK profile
from the Factory Default of "unknown" to the profile provided by Minolta.
With this configuration, Word and the other Office applications print black
as composite black. Changing the profile back to the Factory Default of
"unknown" has corrected the problem.

It still does not explain why other applications print black as true black
and Office prints them as composite when using this color profile. It is
obviously some sort of conflict between the two, either the Minolta profile
contains some sort of error of Office does not like the profile. The whole
color space concept and how various devices and applications interact with
it is a concept beyond my realm of knowledge. Just FIY, I had originally
installed the Minolta color profiles thinking that this was the best way to
try to get the printer to print what is being displayed on the screen as
accurately as possible.

Thanks again for the info, I'm now back up and running.

John Chambers

 

[Elliott Roper]

Thanks for the info and for providing some ideas on where to look. I found
that on my two "identical" computers, the problem only occurred on one of
them. Here is what I found, just in case anyone else is interested.

Thanks for posting this. I have the same model printer, and while I
never saw any problems in Word or anywhere else, my wife was getting
composite black from Eudora on her Pismo. You have encouraged me to
look further.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi John:

The colour profile is indeed a way to get the printer to print colours
accurately.

However, for it to work, there must be a colour profile for each device
capable of responding to it. You need one for the printer, one for your
display, one for your graphics program, one for your scanner, and one for
your camera.

Most applications are unaware of colour profiles, so my advice would be to
run with them disabled most of the time. Bring them into play only when you
are using PhotoShop.

Most applications send a font as "Black". Word handles black text
internally as "Automatic". I believe Black internally is 255,255,255
(maximum ink) and Automatic is -1,-1,-1 (Set the colour to the exact
opposite of the background).

I have never looked to see what actually goes down the wire under these
circumstances, but I suspect they're similar. When your printer colour
profile sees "Automatic" I suspect it's saying "OK, I have to compensate for
the colour gamut here" and varying the ink weightings accordingly.

Or it could be that your document is set to "Black" rather than "Automatic".
Which might cause the printer to say "Ah, he's sending "Black" instead of
"No Colour". No Colour means I use the black cartridge, "Black" is a
"colour" that I must mix."

Cheers

Thanks for the info and for providing some ideas on where to look. I found
that on my two "identical" computers, the problem only occurred on one of
them. Here is what I found, just in case anyone else is interested.

When installing the drivers for the Minolta 2350EN (Color Laser) I also
installed the color profiles (.icc files) that are provided by Minolta
(downloaded the current version). I had gone into the ColorSync Utility,
and under Devices, for the Color Printer, I had changed the CMYK profile
from the Factory Default of "unknown" to the profile provided by Minolta.
With this configuration, Word and the other Office applications print black
as composite black. Changing the profile back to the Factory Default of
"unknown" has corrected the problem.

It still does not explain why other applications print black as true black
and Office prints them as composite when using this color profile. It is
obviously some sort of conflict between the two, either the Minolta profile
contains some sort of error of Office does not like the profile. The whole
color space concept and how various devices and applications interact with
it is a concept beyond my realm of knowledge. Just FIY, I had originally
installed the Minolta color profiles thinking that this was the best way to
try to get the printer to print what is being displayed on the screen as
accurately as possible.

Thanks again for the info, I'm now back up and running.

John Chambers

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410