Why Rich Black Ain’t All That

Every so often, I come across a post that mentions how print designers should almost always use Rich Black. The most recent example being here. Using 100% isn’t the sin some would have you believe and I’m going to explain a little about why.

Black is the key.

In CMYK printing, black is referred to as the “key” ink. Because the combinations of cyan, magenta and yellow produce only a dark brown (this is called a composite black), black is added to create more depth in shadows and a richer black.  Sometimes this is a great thing but if you get hung up on having this deep dark black, you’ll miss out on some of the fun that offset lithography provides!

Not all instances.

Because printing is done in the sequence of the abbreviation (cyan plate > magenta plate > yellow plate > black plate) you can do some interesting things, but not if you get hung up on using rich black always and in all instances. For instance:

Here we have a gradient of 0% to 100% black overprinting 100% yellow. Probably not the best example but you can see why we do it. In the olden days, designers were taught that logos should be a maximum of 2 colors. Not only does it cut down on printing costs for letterhead and the like, it also lends itself to other forms of printing (flexography, etc.). The halftone that occurs when you overprint your black this way makes for a smooth transition. Add to that the fact that you get better output with no chance of moiré from these simple gradients and you can see why it’s a good choice in some instances.

In the above example, you can see that we’re over printing 100% black over 100% yellow and it’s creating a nice little effect, for free! In an instance like this, there is no reason to spec a rich black since it’s built in provided you don’t set your black here to knockout the underlying color. This also provides us with a little bit of fun as witnessed in the example below where we’re printing 100% black over some 100% yellow text giving us a hidden message similar to using a clear varnish. It’s neat and fun but only if you don’t use rich black.

Now we’ll finally look at rich black. Rich black has it’s place and I’m certainly not saying it doesn’t. Obviously, if your overprinting on a photograph with varying density, you’re going to want to use rich black. If you need the deepest black imaginable, you’re going to want to use rich black (just remember that your total ink coverage should not go over 300%). It’s a combination of things that make a print job go from good to great. You have to think about trapping, whether you’re knocking out your underlying color or overprinting. It’s tricky, it takes a little planning but in the end, you’ll be certain to have the best possible output because you took that time.

Educate Yourself

If you want a quick easy primer about print production and the considerations you should be taking in the preparation of your own jobs for print, I highly recommend the Adobe Print Publishing Guide (I haven’t read the second edition but the first is a great introduction and worthy of a place on your bookshelf). Also, in my own workflow, I set my preferences in InDesign to display all blacks accurately and make use of the Overprint Preview option. Obviously this isn’t entirely accurate but it’s a great place to start. Hopefully this will be of some help to someone. I’ll admit that I’m not a great teacher but I will most certainly talk your ear off about this tuff if you ever want to sit down and have a beer and talk about printing. I know! Fun right? Next time, I’m thinking of writing a little bit about specular white, the real sin in design and increasingly common.