: How to check a PDF which is presumably only supposed to be using black text with no coloured elements? I have been provided with a text-only PDF which is supposed to only be using black in

@Shanna688

I'm gonna jump forward. YOu don't need to check the pdf for color. You want to change possible color things to 100%K.

So A) you can use it in Acrobat using Preflight "change to grayscale" profile.
B) you can use site like greyscalepdf.com/ that's does exactly the same only for free. The plus size of site is that can be used on a computer with internet but without programs. So on a smartphone. It's nice tool for a designer on the go.

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@Phylliss782

Lucian, I suggest you create a custom preflight profile in Acrobat.

See example below (French version but I'm sure you'll figure it out):
New Preflight profile > Color > CMY plates + any spot color



Unfortunately, you'll notice that Printers marks are also considered as "errors". That makes sense, since they use "Registration color".
You can use an individual correction > Page > Delete all elements outside crop area to get rid of them, and then run your "black only" preflight:

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@Si6392903

I don't have an acrobat reader on my computer, But Adobe Illustrator can usually open any PDF file. I can definitely help if you want to check and analyze the spot colors in illustrator.

First open your PDF document in illustrator and select all of the artwork. Next open your swatches panel and to the right select the little drop-down menu and click on menu item “ Select All Unused Colors “



Next, open that drop-down menu again and click on menu item “ Delete Swatches”. This will remove all swatches from your swatch panel that are not being used in your document. Your swatches panel should now only contain the colors being used in your document and maybe a white swatch also. Notice the black swatch in this next image. It has no tiny little triangle in the corner, which indicates it is a process color.



If you double click on that Black Swatch it will open another panel, showing you it's properties



Where it says color type, you want to select the drop-down menu and choose the spot color option (if it is not already chosen) . Doing this, will ensure that any black process artwork will be converted into a spot color (which would remove any other CM or Y values). Now you will see a little triangle in the swatch which indicates it is a spot color. This is what you want



Now in this next image you will see that you can select any other artwork in your image and view it's actual percentage of the color fill.



The sure fire way though to know for sure if there is any other CMYK values in the artwork is to open your print dialog box, as in this next image. If black is the only color with the little printer icon visible, this absolutely shows there is no other CMYK artwork in your image



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OR YOU COULD

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Open your PDF document in CMYK color mode in illustrator and open your separations preview panel with the overprint preview option selected and toggle visibility on each one of the elements and you can see items are colored by which method

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