knockout in Indesign

[malcolm]

Hi I struggling with a small prob in ind
I have a black box and I can see the underlying images.
Q, Ho do I specify knock out to that box, so i just get solid black?

thanks in advance

[urstwile]

You can select Knockout in the attributes palette.

[malcolm]

i can only select overprint fill or non printing. should there be a more options.

[DesignVHL]

can you post a screenshot of the box and images?

[hewligan]

If it's not overprinting, then it's knocking out. Are you sure you haven't set either an opacity of less than 100% or a layer blending mode other than Normal in the transparency palette?

[garricks]

Applies to Indy CS3. Your milage may vary by version.

If you search for "knockout" in the online help, it will show you four articles which are all pretty good.

To do what you describe (and assuming you DO have opacity < 100%), select the two objects and group them. Then go to the Effects panel and check knockout group.

Also take a look at the last article, "Best practices when creating transparency." And talk to your prepress people if this piece is for print. They've fixed this type of work over and over and over again, I'm sure!

[WadeVC]

And talk to your prepress people if this piece is for print. They've fixed this type of work over and over and over again, I'm sure!

As one who does prepress, I would suggest the designer/user NOT to do anything like assign knockouts, traps, strokes, chokes, creeps, spreads, overprints, etc. to thier files. Allow us to make those changes as there are many factors to consider with these settings, such as:

The colors involved (both inks and paper)
The media printed on
The type of plates used and the printing type: Offset press, gravure, flexo, etc.

...and believe it or not, we do strive to make your finished product look as best as it can; and no we won't "screw up" your file. :rolleyes:

[garricks]

...and believe it or not, we do strive to make your finished product look as best as it can; and no we won't "screw up" your file. :rolleyes:

And that's exactly why I suggested talking to you and your bretheren. Find out what to set and what NOT to set. I would never presume to set choke and spread, or creep or trap in my files. Not without guidance from you lot! :)

It all comes down to communicating with the folks who take your job to the next level. If you (the designer) don't explain your intentions, you can't blame the resulting product on "The Printer."

Prepress is the wind beneath my wings. Cheesy sentiment, yeah. But it's true. You guys are the ones who make me look good! :D

[WadeVC]

You guys are the ones who make me look good!

Thank you for the sentiment, but it is you, the designers, who decide on how good your finished piece looks. Our job in Prepress is to do a bunch of technical "thingy's" to your file to get it from the electronic form onto paper (or whatever your printed medium is).

[urstwile]

You can select Knockout in the attributes palette.
My bad, a throwback to Quark times. :o

More accurate would have been to say that as long as overprint is not selected, the object is knocking out. My apologies.

[thelob]

100% black may automatically overprint on some rips.

[jimking]

As one who does prepress, I would suggest the designer/user NOT to do anything like assign knockouts, traps, strokes, chokes, creeps, spreads, overprints, etc. to thier files. Allow us to make those changes as there are many factors to consider with these settings, such as:


Be careful about the strokes, Wade. Some of the younger designers may get confused about this, thinking that a stroke is a bad thing, not knowing what it is exactly what you mean "creating an overprint stroke for trapping purposes not for design." :)

[budafist]

100% black may automatically overprint on some rips.

That is very true! Talk to your printer when you have sent them the file and let them know your concerns before going to print.

[Loren_S]

I came upon this thread while trying to solve this problem myself. It didn't quite solve my problem - however, after further internet searching, I seem to have found it, and so I'm afraid I'm going to perform a bit of a thread necro to relay the information I have found!

I work in the graphics department of a newspaper that has recently made the switch from Quark to InDesign CS3. Our workplace is deadline-based, fast paced, and everything needs to be done yesterday. As such, we don't always have the luxury of "communication" that was talked about in this thread! Also unlike what some people were saying, our press does expect us to have things done for them, which includes knockouts in our graphics. We have been trying to find out exactly how to do that, as InDesign doesn't have a "Trap Presets" type window as Quark did.

I also read here that InDesign automatically knocks out for you - we have seen that this is not necessarily true, not with ALL the swatches. In our version of InDesign CS3, for Mac, the black swatch automatically overprints. To change this setting, one must go in the Preferences menu to "Appearance of Black". In that options menu, there is a section that reads "Overprinting of [Black]", with a check-box to "Overprint [Black] swatch at 100%". This must be unchecked. Black automatic overprinting will THEN be disabled, and it will knockout like all the other swatches.

Further information can be found here:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=331751

edit - I should add, that in order to have this setting apply to any new documents you create, you should apply this setting with NO DOCUMENTS OPEN. For documents you have created prior to changing this setting, you will need to re-open them, and change the setting again for each document to have this change applied to each one. The setting is saved within each document, not the program itself, and the default for any previous files will have been the wrong one.