Comments on Tips & Techniques: Viewing total ink coverage

Coming back to Keith Gilbert: I have adjusted the ...

2011-02-18T08:58:21.445-06:00

Coming back to Keith Gilbert: I have adjusted the overall area coverage for a particular ad in Curves. I need extreme Black background, so I adjusted CMYK levels to get 300% Total Area Coverage (TAC). However, in Acrobat (Advanced>Output Preview) select 300% TAC in the drop down at the bottom shows that I still have one or two spots that need tweaking elsewhere on the picture. Back to Photoshop then. How do you adjust those spots to get them below 300% TAC?

@James, yes, you will need to edit the image in Ph...

2011-02-18T07:33:50.177-06:00

@James, yes, you will need to edit the image in Photoshop via Levels or other exposure controls to reduce the Total Ink Coverage.

Hi Keith, Very insightful topic. I am have an ad ...

2011-02-17T12:32:16.406-06:00

Hi Keith,

Very insightful topic. I am have an ad that will be printed on a newspaper. My CMYK image goes over the required total ink limit in some areas (I used ID CS4 to see this). How can I fix this? Is it a matter of tweaking levels in Photoshop until the red dots stop displaying? BTW, the total ink limit is 240%. Thanks for any info you could lend.

bretlinford, Maybe this is from an update of InDes...

2010-11-04T11:10:01.262-05:00

bretlinford,
Maybe this is from an update of InDesign in the past year, but I think I have a solution. Though it also functions through a pull-down menu of default densities, I've found that you can type in any percentage in the Ink Limit field in the Separations Preview palette and the red masked area changes to reflect whatever percentage you want.

@bretlinford, I don't know of any way to chang...

2009-07-24T09:13:54.575-05:00

@bretlinford, I don't know of any way to change the default value to something other than 280, in either AA or ID.

Hi, Keith. Thanks for the info. Do you know of a ...

2009-07-23T15:14:35.705-05:00

Hi, Keith.

Thanks for the info. Do you know of a way to change the default value of TAC to something other than 280? Thanks!

@Mark: I gave your Printcalc site a whirl...pretty...

2009-06-29T08:40:20.823-05:00

@Mark: I gave your Printcalc site a whirl...pretty slick! I'm afraid I don't have a feel for the marketability of such a product. For what it's worth, I've never been asked by any of my training or consulting clients for such a tool. If there is a niche market for this, I do think offering it as a Web service is the way to go, either on a subscription or ad-supported basis.

Hi, Just found your blog. We have just created a ...

2009-06-28T11:26:21.973-05:00

Hi,

Just found your blog. We have just created a free tool to show CMYK Coverage for Print-Ready PDF files, Its very basic and havent as yet found it viable as a stand-alone product. I Wuuld appreciate you thoughts in where a tool like this might go?

Its available here: http://printcalc.net

Mark Redman
Made4Print Limited