: Different shades of black in Photoshop and InDesign I'm currently putting together a CD cover, and haven't been working that much with printing, so CMYK tends to confuse me a bit. I'm going

@Si6392903

One trick is to simply make the background of this logo in Photoshop a lot bigger and use the same black recipe for it!

Then you won't need to use another black in Indesign and you'll make sure the same color is applied and will be printed.

Here are more details on rich black and what to verify when working with black background as your design uses.

Additionally, you can verify your color recipes properly by using Adobe Acrobat Pro "Output Preview" and see where the problem is by checking each separation of colors.

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@Shelley591

a better workflow

Instead of going to the trouble of adding a rich black to the logo, make it transparent where it should be black and save in a transparency-supporting file format eg. PSD.

use acrobat to review

Instead of relying in the InDesign preview, output to PDF and open the Output Preview window (Tools > Print Production > ...). There you will be able to eye dropper the exact CMYK value of any point in your art. It's the definitive way to know what you're outputting.

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@Voss6371140

That CMYK code for black is known as True black and is not that black on screen, but different appearances could be caused by the different colour profiles in PS or ID, and of course .pdf export settings, even though you used CMYK.

Also, about looking different from different angles....
Is your monitor properly calibrated? Does your monitor have that wide View angle? etc. Don`t worry if that black is not that dark on your screen, on paper it would be.

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