InDesign's Separations Preview

Have you discovered InDesign's Separations Preview? Adobe's InDesign is the page layout program I prefer. It does so much ... and I'm still discovering many of the things it does. One such discovery I'd like to share with you is the Separations Preview. Do you like to use non-printing items, but wish you could turn them off in order make sure you've made all of your non-printing items non-printing? Or perhaps you need to make sure all of your text is 100% black and not a mixture of C, M, Y & K. At my shop, choosing "print as grayscale" in the print dialog box does not print as dark a black as when I make sure everything on the page is black or grayscale and send it composite. So, I often need to make sure everything is only on the black channel. This is what makes the Separations Preview so invaluable. Found under Window and then Output, the Separations Preview allows you to see the document as the printer sees it. When you choose "View: Separations", the first thing that happens is all of the non-printed items disappear. Then, you can turn off the separations you desire (like in Photoshop's channels pallet) and watch the colors disappear. To make sure everything on the page is on the black channel, click the eye next to Black and make sure everything on the page disappears. Hopefully, you will find the Separations Preview as helpful as I have.

Creating Grayscale PDFs

It's very frustrating that there is no easy way to create a grayscale .pdf file. You can print in grayscale; why can't you create a grayscale .pdf? Anyway, for those times when you need to send a client a grayscale .pdf, there are steps you can take to make your color .pdf grayscale.

You'll need Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Distiller.

Open your .pdf in Acrobat and choose Save As. Change the format to PostScript and click on Settings. Under Output, change Color to Composite Gray. Save the .ps file and then drop it into Distiller to remake the .pdf. Voila, a grayscale .pdf.