Just as colors vary from the natural world to your monitor to print (see Color Printing 101: the RBG & CMYK Gamuts), black is never JUST black. Rich Black, Cool Black, Warm Black, “Plain” Black, “Designer’s Black”…. each has their own reason for being. It is important to know them all, because on your computer monitor they all appear exactly alike!
Below are the standard compositions for some varieties of black used in the printing world.
Using these wisely will enrich your design and allow you a spectrum of black to use for different effects. While designers use rich black for visual effect, printers occasionally rely on rich black to solve trapping issues when text is printed over a colored background. It can hide slight misregistration of plates that would otherwise result in a small gap in color.
In the RGB world of your monitor’s display, black (um… ‘pure’ black?) is composed of R0, G0, B0 (no light is emitted from any of the three channels). Regardless of how you define black for printing purposes, it will be rendered this way on your monitor and thus appear the same – a fact that has caused many bad results over the years. Photoshop has contributed to this with the fact that the “Fill with Black” command defines black as C100, M100, Y100, K100. The image you are working with may have a black area that will match perfectly onscreen, but once printed you will see the difference in your black and the rich black Photoshop used in the fill areas.
Left: on your monitor, a .jpg logo may appear fine, but Right: once printed you see Plain vs. Rich Black
Many times we have seen, for example, a .jpg or .tif logo with a black background placed onto a larger black background in a page layout program – onscreen the result if fine, but once printed you immediately notice the marked difference between the logo area and the black box onto which it was placed.
The use of rich black or its variants can enrich printed graphics, but remember that too much ink coverage on certain papers can create other unintended problems, especially when used over large areas of coverage:
- damage to lower quality papers
- problems with ink drying times
- ink offsetting onto the sheet above or below
- increased costs of production.
Always consult your print provider for guidelines or concerns.
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