rich black, warm black, blue black? WTF?

[Dudley "booger" Dawson]

where do i find formulas for making different shades of black and information on them.

thanks

[jamodu]

It may sound confuddling, but it's pretty straightforward:
Rich Black generally uses all four inks in a CMYK file. Blue/Cool Black uses 100% black ink with an undercolour of cyan ink 45-60%.
Warm Black uses 100% black ink with an undercolour of magenta ink (60%) and yellow ink (30%)

Rich Black = 75c 68m 67y 90k *EDIT* (taken from Photoshop)
Cool Black = 45c 0m 0y 100k
Warm Black = 0c 60m 30y 100k

Try to avoid using 100% of all four inks as it can over-saturate the paper and cause your friendly printer a few headaches later down the line!

[jimking]

Printers have different formulas for rich black, at my place it's 50c 45m 40y 100k for saturation purposes.

[jamodu]

Sorry, yeah I should have said that the formula above for Rich Black is taken from Photoshop but obviously different people/printers have slightly different formulas. :)

[Only Seen Here]

Photoshop's rich black is way too oversaturated. The first answer was pretty good, though. Ask your printer what they like for each, but typically, like said, cool black has more blue and warm black has more red.

[Keyare]

Make your own! Why use reduculously numbered presets from someone else? Like:
Puke Black: C-0 m-0 y-100 k-90
Dried Blood Black: c-0 m-100 y-100 k-90
Ink Slurping Black: c-100 m-100 y-100 k-100
Dog dodoo black: c-20 m-50 y-100 k-80

[Only Seen Here]

Absolute Zero in Antartica Black: C-%100, M-%0, Y%0, K-%0

Green is The New Black Black: C-%50, M-%0, Y-%75, K-%0

[TwoFedoras]

The widely accepted formula is C40 M0 Y0K 100. The reason is this, too much of multiple inks creates possible build-up of ink and possible spread. In Rich black, Yellow does nothing to draken black. The other option you have that will be most compatible for 4-color presses is C30 M30 Y0 K100. The main difference between the two, is if you are working with and Old-school shop that doesn't have a great plate maker or other "out-dated" equiptment then just think K.I.S.S. use C40 K100.

That's the longanswer, the short answer is CALIBRATE your monitor and use the color setting appropriately for your program. In Adobe CS2, you can use the Adobe bridge to assign common profile settings across all Your adobe applications.

[jimking]

The widely accepted formula is C40 M0 Y0K 100. The reason is this, too much of multiple inks creates possible build-up of ink and possible spread. In Rich black, Yellow does nothing to draken black. The other option you have that will be most compatible for 4-color presses is C30 M30 Y0 K100. The main difference between the two, is if you are working with and Old-school shop that doesn't have a great plate maker or other "out-dated" equiptment then just think K.I.S.S. use C40 K100.

That's the longanswer, the short answer is CALIBRATE your monitor and use the color setting appropriately for your program. In Adobe CS2, you can use the Adobe bridge to assign common profile settings across all Your adobe applications.
The reason you would use Yellow would be to achieve gray. Equal amounts of CMY= gray+100% black gives you a good rich black. Some folks do use only cyan and black which is ok however, I've seen this shift too much to the blue side on certain presses. Using too much yellow is a no no. Makes the blacks muddy.

[Ned]

I've also seen 50% of each CMY, and 100% K as a simple to use Rich Black formula.

[Neuro]

So my suggestions from what you can see here, is ask the printer. They should be able to give you the specifics that work on their presses. As you can see there seems to be a lot of different numbers, with a few that are the same. Printers know how their presses run and will be able to give you the best information. Don't be afraid to ask. They would rather you asked and had it come out right, rather than later complain the black doesn't seem right. Good luck!

Key - those are some pretty discriptive colors! LOL!

[mylkhead]

I learned the hard way, I used whatever black #000000 gave me in illustrator. And it gives a pretty saturated black. And when I got something printed, my entire project came out really dark and I was pissed.

[Step]

Ask your printer!!! They all have their own formulas for rich black. Some don't have a clue where they came from, but they have their reasons.

Our presses run black at 30C, 30M, 40y, 100K for 4/Color Rich Black (Other than type) Because Magenta usually prints as a dominate color when all percents are the same, we pushed the yellow contaminate to make it more neutral. We also use a screening techinque that removes the traditional Screen dot patterns and this formula kept the black neutral.

I personally prefer the more blue 60C, 100K....but that's just me..