> Black vs Black?

published by: Christopher Gaines

published date: July 8, 2023, 3:21 a.m.

Which black should a designer use?

This was an issue that came up today while I was at my day job. The customer had artwork already made for a label. As usual I just took their art and placed it on the label template, creating the file for the customer to view. Evidently the customer viewed the template which I had created on the screen and the background which was black, made by another artist was not dark enough.

I cannot say that I am an expert on what should and should not be used or perhaps when would should be used. However, for me 100% of the time I like to use the blackest color for black whether for print or for screen usage.

So what does this image mean?

If you are working in, for example, Adobe Illustrator, which is what this illustration is built in, when the color profiles are set to CMYK (Used for process color printing), as shown here, if all colors but the black color which is "K" are all set to "0" while "K" is set to 100%, you will get a color just a slight be darker than charcoal. It will show up closer to a very dark gray. If you want your images to print with the darkest black or what I like to call a "True black" color, I usually set each of four colors to 100% making the black color at it's richest.

To add I'm finding in Adobe Illustrator the colors C:0 M:0 Y:0 K:100 in RGB (Used for on screen colors only) color format is the equivalent to R:35 G:31 B:32. Which should be R:0 G:0 B:0 for a true rich black.

I hope this helps some of you who might struggle with this or perhaps you have had customers who complained about this issue.