How Can I Change Rich or CMYK Black to True Black in PDF Files?

It’s a common scenario in the print publishing industry: you have PDF files with rich black objects (CMYK – 50, 50, 50, 100 or 70, 35, 40, 100 or 35, 60, 60, 100) and you need to convert those objects to 100K.

Enfocus PitStop Pro can do this for you. It makes selecting rich black objects and changing them to true black easy!

PitStop Pro is a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional and it is compatible with Mac and Windows. With PitStop Pr0 you can convert any PDF to an iPad-ready PDF, a print-ready PDF, or an optimized PDF for client approval.

How do we convert rich black objects to true (flat/real) black objects?

First, we’ll setup an Enfocus Action List in PitStop Pro.  You can find details on how to start an Enfocus Action List here.

For the “Select color” actions, you will specify the different colors that you want to select.

Notice that the action is showing as “Select fill color” instead of “Select color”. This is because we have the fill checkbox selected in the action.

You add the “OR” operator to make sure that you select any of the three CMYK combinations specified in the Action List. Translated for humans, it would read: Select any CMYK – 50, 50, 50, 100 as well as 70, 35, 40, 100 as well as 35, 60, 60, 100. If more than one color combination object is present, both will be selected.

In the “Change fill color” action we specify the color wanted.

Notice that if you need the strokes converted, you must enable that check box.

And that’s it!  Save the Action List, run it, and get all your rich black objects converted to true black objects.

Extra features

If you would like to select within a color range, for example 30 to 40 C, 50 to 55 M, 50 to 60 Y, 90 to 100 K then that is possible as well. Instead of using the “Select fill color” action, you use the “Select color range” action.  If you want to search for RGB or Spot colors that is also possible.

Benefits of this Action List?

First, this Action List will save you the hassle of searching for rich black objects manually, and secondly, multiple color combinations can be configured to be converted with a single click. It’s a huge time-save and it’s a lot more accurate than manually searching and replacing colors.

You could run this Action List in PitStop Pro (the Acrobat plugin version), batch process large numbers of files via PitStop Server’s hot folders, or even route jobs through a fully blow automated workflow in Switch. The Enfocus product range can provide the tools to match any scale of print production needs.

And there’s a great deal more to discover about Enfocus products, so if you’d like to learn more, please contact us today.