Is there an easy way of converting an object to grayscale inside of indesign? Say i have a 2 page doc, logos on both pages, the 2nd page prints in color but they want the placed logos to show up gray. I dont want to create a separate grayscale logo and place it, im sooooo lazy, and theres a ton of them, i just want to apply an effect to the already existing color logo.
Sort of...
https://www.hockingdesignsolutions.co.uk/image-black-white-indesign/
And QUARK can do it!
I figured it was going to be an effect overlay like that. That method will works.. Although transparent areas turn up black, easily fixable by putting a white (or paper) filled object behind all the objects. This does the the trick..
In illustrator you can just rasterize the graphic by dpi and colorspace, still a sin but an effective one.
Thanks Joe!
Are you running the output through a RIP? You should be able to tell it to convert to gray at that stage rather than messing with it in InDesign.
its the 2nd page of a variable data project. the whole page needs to remain color, there are some color objects at the top of the page, they just want the logos to print in gray. yeah, i dont know why but thats what they want. I just didnt want to dick around grayscaling 30 logos in PS and placing them back.
sometimes i take some shortcuts that would horrify all of you. i try to be technically accurate and pristine on the files i send out to other printers, but some of the in-house work just runs through the rip as a polished turd, i have no remorse.
Also, if you rip a PDF, you can use the Acrobat selection tool to draw a box around the objects you want to affect, right-click and choose "edit." Raster items will open as a group in their native app and you can edit them and then click "save." to re-insert them automatically back to the PDF. Make sure you have ALL the items you want to edit selected and NONE of the ones you don't want to change.
We do a lot of NCR where the PDF A/W is the same but the 2nd copy needs to be B/W. We found that our RIP will convert most things, but not embedded vector art with spot colours. I use the overlay method - works pretty well.
I cant vouch for it, but I came across this site a while back that has a indd plugin:
https://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/indesign-downloads/color2gray/
That plugin should be an inD "feature". I guess they have their reasons.
I used the overlay method, it worked perfect.
Quote from: Kermy812 on January 22, 2019, 11:10:18 AMI cant vouch for it, but I came across this site a while back that has a indd plugin:
https://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/indesign-downloads/color2gray/
Ahhhh, I forget about his Plugins! He does some genuinely cool things, I'd be curious about that Color2Gray and which Grayscale conversion it uses under the hood and if it can be tweaked.
looks pretty interesting, you have to buy it tho
Slappy - Don't want to derail here, but his SwatchWatch is awesome too!
You can use it to print out on an entire Pantone Library of you wanted:
https://www.rorohiko.com/wordpress/swatchwatcher-case-study/
Oh, now that's cool! I just had to make a stupid swatch test for a client who can't understand Pantones on press vs. iGen too. I may try this with the same test swatches, I bet it'll look a lot more professional at least. Thx man!
I am anal about this and always go through each logo and covert to CMYK from RGB or to grayscale as needed. If I was going to do it a "quick" way you could export your PDF for print, then using preflight in acrobat and convert to grayscale, save as a grayscale version. Then just merge the files so you have colour on one side and grayscale on the other.
You could do a batch action list in Photoshop CC. You'd technically still have to do it in photoshop, but you could make an action to convert to gray, even adjust levels if you needed to, then save as, and then close. Then you can choose batch under File > Automate > Batch.
:'(
Quote from: wonderings on January 24, 2019, 08:42:18 AMI am anal about this and always go through each logo and covert to CMYK from RGB or to grayscale as needed. If I was going to do it a "quick" way you could export your PDF for print, then using preflight in acrobat and convert to grayscale, save as a grayscale version. Then just merge the files so you have colour on one side and grayscale on the other.
In this line of work, anal can be a good quality to have, or it can just be a pain in the ass.
Hmmmm... that did not come out right....