CMYK issue in Pages 6

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Level 1

15 points

CMYK issue in Pages 6

I make family histories from interviews with my clients, and I have a 300 page book, created in Pages 6, that includes black text and both b/w and color photos. I exported this as a pdf in order to send to the new printer I'm using, and they are telling me that the text is not black; that the entire document is color. When I go to the color select in the document, I definitely selected black for the text.

The printer is having me go through all sorts of things in Acrobat, to check the colors and the CMYK, but isn't it possible to export a file from PAGES that has the text as black?

(I've been told by Apple folks that I really need to do such projects in InDesign instead, but I have 5 manuscripts ready to go, all produced in Pages.

But for now, I'd appreciate advice... can I save these documents, have the text be BLACK for the printer, from Pages?

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), switched recently to Siera 10.12.2

Posted on Jan 2, 2017 11:26 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 2, 2017 11:44 AM in response to mbpellie

All the text that you see in Pages is actually RGB/cmyk not 100% k. You can create a pure 100% k color swatch and systematically apply that to everything but there is little to no feedback that you have got it right and on every single object. It was possible to do this in Pages '09 but since Pages 5, it has got more difficult, if not impossible.

You can use the ColorSync Utility in your Applications/Utilities folder to select your pdf file:

Menu > Open > browse to your pdf files > Open > Filter: Black & White > Apply

Make a copy of your original if you don't want it to change.

Peter

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Answer 2

mbpellie Author

Level 1

15 points

Jan 2, 2017 1:43 PM in response to VikingOSX

Viking OSX,

Mine says "gray tone" but not gray tone quartz filter. I assume that is the same?

Also, I have color photos in the document. This eliminates the color in those as well. Is there a way to get the text all black, but not the photos?

I suppose I could import the new gray scale into Acrobat and insert the color pages--though if I have 45 color photos, that's rather time consuming.

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Answer 3

Jan 2, 2017 2:33 PM in response to mbpellie

The pdf files are where you saved them, just open them from inside the ColorSync Utility to convert them.

If you don't want to change everything, then you will have to create a 100% k swatch in the Color Picker in Pages and apply that to all your text and graphics. Hopefully you created and systematically used Paragraph and Character Styles so you can apply the swatch to those. Even then there is no guarantee that you will have caught every instance.

I would not be using Pages 5 or 6 for commercial printing. Pages '09 is substantially better but still not a Pro DTP App.

Peter

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Answer 4

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,254 points

Jan 2, 2017 1:21 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

With a PDF open in Preview, one can select File menu : Export..., and leave it as a PDF, but select the Gray Tone Quartz Filter, and save the document to a new name on the Desktop.

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Answer 5

mbpellie Author

Level 1

15 points

Jan 2, 2017 1:36 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

thanks Peter -

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Answer 6

mbpellie Author

Level 1

15 points

Jan 2, 2017 1:52 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Peter, I don't see how I use utilities to reach my pdf file. When I find that folder, there are no pdf files there. what am I missing?

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