Black elements set to overprint as a default.

[prepress_brillance_43]

Is there a way in Illustrator to set your black type to default as overprint?
Instead of having to manually set it each time you type.

[prepress_brillance_43]

I let my customer know that character styles can do this but it's not a default... it still has to be set up. She was wanting to know more, if there was a way to make it a default so that when you create a new document and start typing in black, it would already be set as overprint??... I will be looking for the answer in illustrator too, I'll post back if I find an answer.

[pcmodem]

Why do you want to Overprint Black? I have nothing but problems when people do overprinting in Illustrator. They have their text as Balck and then switch it to White.

Overprinted white text doesn't show up

[prepress_brillance_43]

alas, the answer IS within the character styles palette. If you highlight "normal character style" before doing anything else to your new document>in the character style palette click options arrow>character style options>character color>check overprint fill box and close the options box. When you begin to type anything it will automatically be the color you set(blk...) and overprint. Tahdah. it resets when the program is shut down and restarted, so technically it is not a default. Any other suggestions would be helpful.

[prepress_brillance_43]

The artist who sends me most of my jobs was curious about it because i asked them to always set their black type to overprint because I'm sick of some of my jobs getting on press and finding all this black type is set to knockout and my pressman has to work his ass off to get it to fit. Part of the problem is that she is flattening the document as a whole, so pitstop does me no good. This is because the other guy she had been working with was having trouble with her layered pdf's + the flattened transparencies in them. So he asked her to flatten everything. Well this guy is producing my plates temporarily until my Screen Platerite arrives in a couple weeks. So, I told the artist just keep doing what you were doing for him so to avoid problems there, but please set blk type to overprint before flattening. Answer your question?... or am I telling her something wrong??..

[pcmodem]

Your RIP/Trapping software should be trapping the black text so you don't have to have her set her black text to overprint.

[prepress_brillance_43]

I feel like either way is fine, right now my plates are coming from offsite and I'm not sure what trap software he's putting it through, if any, so until I get my platesetter in a few weeks, I was just attempting stop problems. I mean really why not try to educate the designer just a little, overprinting your black text usually looks better anyway, right?...
not that it "really" matters all that much we deal with a lot of low quality direct mail peices. The artist works for the same parent company and we're attempting to find a system that's easiest for everyone, because the press is brand new to the shop, they were just a bindery and mail house. The parent company Ad Pages, who the artist works for, is used to web quality register on the fly anyway and our shit looks 100x better than that, even with a damn white drop shadow around the blk type. I just want it right, for me. Fucking OCD.(another story, another day) pcmodem, Why would you say perfer to trap the type to overprinting?...
just curious...

[beermonster]

firstly i dont think i would ever try to educate a designer on trapping. i've never had a designer trap a job correctly anyway, and i find trapping to be a press driven thing mostly

when ya rip you should be able to set black to overprint, and you should be able to adjust the rip to do it automatically

putting solid blacks on some colours can be dodgy?solid black overprinting 100c 100m will be a nightmare. i even have to put tints under blacks sometimes?especially if the surroundung colour is say a dark bloo?it makes the black look greyish?imho its a design/press driven thing not a standard

again though?if it works for you?cool! its another method for another application

[prepress_brillance_43]

What yer saying fully makes sense beermonster, and if it wasn't an artist who works for the same company, and the same boss who says, "just run it, and make it look pretty." I would attempt, and will attempt once my equipment is here, to pick up on things such as your examples and make the prints look as good as possible(things you really can't teach a designer) But for all simple purposes now, it was just best to get her to set all black to overprint, or not flatten(leaving me helpless in pitstop).

[Sparky]

Coming from a Stripping background and being brought up in trade shops I ALWAYS overprinted my black text up to about 28-32 pt size depending on whether it was a fine serif font or a bold san serif. As the type gets bigger and the eye can actually see a difference in the ink color I wouldn't worry about over printing black text that was under 24 point in size.

And if you tell me you can see the difference, I bet you hunt for mice in the dark at 2,000 yards also :wink: