How to convert color photo to black and white for commercial printing?

[Artworx]

What is the best way to convert a color photo to black and white for commercial printing.
I know I saw this topic in the forum, but could not find it. Thanks, Lew.

[mwenz]

Because some people have a different idea of what a B&W photo is, two solutions.

You can set the saturation option box in Xara to -100 and it will be an RGB black.

You can use an actual image editing application to turn the image into grayscale and it will only print using black ink.

Take care, Mike

[gwpriester]

To add to what Mike just wrote. Even if you reduce the saturation to 0 (or -100). the image will still export as RGB because Xara does not support true Grayscale. So if your printer requires a grayscale image then you will need to change the mode to grayscale in a program such as Photoshop.

A good printer however should be able to do this for you.

[mwenz]

Which is unfortunate, Gary.

In the PDF export dialog, there is support for using Native as the color and, in other applications, one can use this setting to maintain images in their various color models. PagePlus can use this--and I do all the time.

Take care, Mike

[mwenz]

Oh. And I wanted to add. If you have Acrobat installed, its conversion of a PDF to grayscale is pretty darn good.

Mike

[Albacore]

Yes Mike as the years add up doing a jobbing graphics I have used Acro more & more. I still can't figure out how or why it cost so much, still it is a tool I use frequently.

[Artworx]

Hi all, thanks for you comments. I wanted to create a 2 spot color job all in XPDX. But I guess I'll convert the image to grayscale in Photoshop, then import grayscale image into Xara, edit and add the second spot color. Thanks again for all your help!! Lew.