PS CS4 - blacks turn to grey

[DethBronX]

Hi!

I was wondering if anybody else has experienced this? When I save my PSD as a JPG, PDF or anything the blacks all turn into a grey color.

It has never happened to me before so I am thinking it might be the templates I'm using. I'm not sure what to look for or how to fix it.

Templates I'm using:
PIRATES PRESS 2.0!

Thanks!

[dspring]

are you switching colour modes between design and viewing? if you design in cmyk and view/save as rgb your blacks turn/view grey... or if you design in ilustrator on a cmyk file and switch to rgb or bring it into an rgb PS file, they go grey as well...

[kim_a]

Make sure your blacks are rich black (cmyk : 100, 100, 100, 100 or similar) and not just CMYK : 0, 0, 0, 100.

In Indesign and Illustrator you can set the program to export all blacks as rich/true black, but I couldn't find the setting for that in PS.

[dspring]

if you are going to ask and get help, the least you could do is show your support and get a premium membership

[matthewthirteen]

I wouldn't recommend 100 100 100 100 for rich blacks, that's just a world of problems. I'd say 40 30 20 100 will make the printers in your life much happier.

But ya, plain 100 black will always appear gray in overprint preview.

[Steve Chanks]

Matt is right. Never saturate your blacks in CMYK where the combined amount equals 199 or higher. I use the classic 30 30 30 100.

I did notice that CS4 does display 0 0 0 100 blacks as a dark gray preview. there is a preference to set display colors to rich black.

[kim_a]

True about the 100,100,100,100... wet paper and potential streaking may ensue