InDesign CS3 and CS4 Preferences Bug?

Is there a way to call the Appearance of Black in the preferences menu of InDesign CS3 or CS4? Here’s my problem:

I create a file with the preference “Overprint [Black] Swatch at 100%” checked.
Save the file. Then go to InDesign>Preferences>Appearance of Black and un-check the box. Quit InDesign (or don’t… it happens either way).
Open the file back up. The file still retains the old preference with the box checked.

It seems like something like a program preference shouldn’t be saved with a file… Isn’t that what document preferences are for?

As always, any help would really be appreciated!

Cheers!
Chrissy

Hi, Chrissy. It’s a document preference, if used in the context of an open document, and it requires a save to commit the change. If used without an open document, it applies to all subsequent documents.

Thank you for your reply. I tried testing what you said. I made a new file and made sure the preference was set to enabled. Then saved it and closed it. I did not make a new file, and just left the program running blank. Then I changed the preference to unchecked. Then I opened the file that had it checked, and it remained checked. I need a way to set that to unchecked always. (My main goal is to make sure overprint is only assigned by the designer, not the program).

I did do some tampering and noticed that if you change the swatched named [Black] to anything but 100% the InDesign-assigned overprint is removed. I might be able to a workaround based off this.

Thanks again.

Chrissy

“overprint black” is a document preference you can get/set.

This is the expected behavior. Only new documents will inherit changes you make while no document is open. As SuperMacGuy points out, the overprint black property is accessible from within Applescript, but it works the same way as it would manually; you’ll need to make changes to and resave any old files.

From a workflow perspective, it really makes more sense to have the nonoverprinting black setting be an exception, rather than the rule; typically, designers make far more errors attempting to compensate for trapping than if they had ignored it entirely. :slight_smile:

I agree that designers make more errors trying to compensate for trapping, but I also don’t want to always have black set to overprint. We only want overprint assigned manually, not by InDesign (we prefer to use our imposition software to account for trapping). (ie: I need this setting turned off on every job we open.)

I work for a prepress department and we’ve had a problem where we’ve preflighted a file entirely, and upon viewing the PDF, black was set to overprint incorrectly, but it was not manually set in InDesign, and it was because of the preference. We get files from an internal customer that may or may not have the appearance of black setting checked and it’s just one more thing we’re having to look for.

I’m working on a preflight script that should include a check for this problem, but I’m stuck on how to go about it… here’s the dilemma: If I have a rectangle set to [Black] at 100%, InDesign will force-overprint it with this preference, even if the overprint box isn’t checked manually, so using the document preference wouldn’t work. It has to be done through the InDesign preferences pane. I also don’t want to never overprint black either, as this would be a problem too.

I think I’m going to try to work around it by renaming and reassigning swatches in order to avoid the [Black] swatch that’s causing our problems.

Thank you for your help. :smiley: