Solid black in grayscale?

Posted By

Jill_Walker

Oct 23, 2006

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1264

Replies

Status

Closed

PSC2 on a G5 dual tower:

I am working on a grayscale image and want to have a 100% black background. When I choose that in the color picker and apply it, it becomes 91% black. I have played with the color settings, assigned profile, but nothing I do lets me use 100% black.

I know that in printing, solid black is better achieved by using a lesser amount, but shouldn’t I be able to decide that on my own? What if I want to achieve solid black by using 93% or 94% black?

Is there anyway to give me control over my color choices!?

TIA,
Jill

Bernie

Oct 23, 2006

Details please!

Where does it become 91% black?

I’ll take a wild guess and asume the following:

You are choosing the colour by typing in 0 Cyan, 0 magenta, 0 yellow and 100 black in the colour picker. The when you are bakc int he greyscale document, and paint with it, it’s not 100%K

If that is indeed the case, then this is perfectly normal behaviour. That black is not the darkest colour in the CMYK gammut (rich blacks are darker) and PS is converting that less than black black to a dark grey.

Use 0 Red, 0 Green, 0 Blue instead (and notice the CMYK values that pop up)

Jill_Walker

Oct 23, 2006

Very interesting! I did what you suggested and it is indeed now 100% black.

As for more details, I would input 100K in the color picker, but when I then applied it and checked with the eye dropper, it was 91% black.

This is definitely new in CS2, because I’ve never had this problem before. I understand that rich black is darker than 100K, but in a grayscale situation it’s a mute point. And it doesn’t fix the issue of why can’t I pick 93% black and have it recognized as 93% black?

This is feeling very Microsoft to me – instead of letting me input what I want, photoshop is making decisions for me. I really hate that!

-Jill

Peter_Figen

Oct 24, 2006

Are you sure that you’re reading grayscale numbers and don’t have your info palette set to automatically read CMYK equivalents?

Mike_Ornellas

Oct 24, 2006

I really hate that!

sweet~!

Keeps me a wealthy.

Bernie

Oct 24, 2006

but in a grayscale situation it’s a mute point.

Not to mention a moot point…

This is definitely new in CS2

I have CS and it behave the same way, as do PS6 and PS7…

Different colour settings will change the exact behaviour.

You’ll need to read up on colour management to understand everything about this.

charles badland

Oct 24, 2006

Use the Grayscale Slider from the Color Palette. Choosing a black value from there might make more sense to you. (Color Palette 100K = Black)

Jill_Walker

Oct 24, 2006

Thanks Charles – that helped me with my issue.

-Jill

John_Slate

Oct 24, 2006

Solid black in grayscale?

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