pdf export settings

[herbiehysteria]

hi guys
ive designed many things for commercial CMYK printing before but am having a slight problem with the requests from a specific printer

i'm exporting as pdf/x, and usually i choose the 'commercial printing' @ 300dpi option and never had a problem

however, this printer has stated that he requires 100% black for any black text in the file, and 20 20 20 100 black for any black backgrounds. how do i confirm/change this when exporting as a pdf?

ive looked around the forum but cant find a specific answer for this
regards
H

[gwpriester]

Printers! They do have notions.

I think you will have to specify these percentages before you export the file.

The PDF export cannot do this automatically.

[Albacore]

I am afraid that you will have to do it manually and then export as you will find at the moment D Pro6 will not give the output that you want as black is give about 90%. Just make as a named colour and the click on the blacks in your drawing to make the named colour. That setting your printer gave you is normally just used for text.

[herbiehysteria]

thanks for the replies guys, ive tried the manual way by specifying the CMYK colour for the blacks, my colour editor is always in HSV model as a default.

just been on the phone to the printer and now he's saying the file is NOT in CMYK format but in RGB! what the hell? i've never had this problem before because i'm sure all pdf exports are CMYK anyway.

please help, my hair is thinning here lol

[Albacore]

Any bitmaps will still have RGB profile but your say for the value of black is the problem and anyway their RIP software will sort that. Change your printer as some just try to be awkward and show that they have control. Do you have Acro. Pro on your hard disc because it is one of the most important tools that sits on my desktop, if you can afford it buy it. If you are having problems with PDF output why not download one of those free PDF writers and all you have to do is to print to that free PDF driver but as I say don't have any issues with D Pro6. You can also go into the Advance Options and go through each of the tabs to make sure you have a printable file in the colour profile I mainly use FROGRA27 but I also have FOGRA39 which is set up using Adobe Bridge in my system. Xara recommends US Coated which is a very old standard.

I send to the printer work about on average about 8 pieces of work /week and I have no problems but I know him well and I am only a phone call away. I use a template with my known colours that I use all there so that there is no colour frights when I see all the wet prints on one day/week so I am only looking for the odd grammatical and spelling faults mostly it is all newsletters.