Trap Settings in PDF

To do this you will have to create a custom preflight profile. Create a new profile, and then click the fix up the fix up column, type overprint in the search box in top right and set black text to overprint will appear. Select it, and then click the arrow pointing to the left, this will include it in the profile, save it and then just double click the profile in the preflight and that should do it for you.

Hope that helps?

In reading my post I think I did not explain what I am looking for correctly.
Basically I want to take a 4 color text and change it to black only.
Smitchell15 thanks for your answer, but I my question was misleading.

Thats ok not to worry!

To turn rich black into CMYK black you need to either do the same method again, but this time choose convert colors and tick preserve black objects. That will work!

Another option is to use the convert colors menu options. And choose convert black. Thats does the same thing.

You can only do this tho if your document is in RGB only.

I don't think there is a way that you can tell 4 colors to be converted to 1 color ie Black.

If there is a way tho i would be interested to hear it from someone out there as i've wanted to tht my self before!

Sorry forgot to mention the bodge way round!

If it is in 4 colors, choose the touch up tool and select the text, ctrl-click and choose properties, and change the color to another black(which is RGB black), then repeat the method described in the previous post.

What you will want to after that tho is set the black to overprint, described in the first post.

Hey Smitchell,
Well I have run several test on thepdf in question and have come to the conclusion that this can not be accomplished within Acrobat. You can not take 4c text and convert it to solid (rich) Black. The only solution I see is to take it into Photoshop and fix it there.
Thank you for your help.

I think I finally realized why this is not working.
Chose the select tool when I went to select the "text" I am having trouble with, it is not text, could not be selected.
Ran OCR recon. and try method suggested from previous post. No luck.

Ok that sounds like it is converted to outline.
Or when you run OCR does it regognize the text, if it does, run it again but this time choose format text & Graphics option. This may or not give you the desire font substitution. Then you can try the above method.If that does not work, then you are nearly stuck from within acrobat. The only thing left you can do is choose the touch up object tool and this time click the text and choose edit object, or click the page and choose edit page. You can edit the color in an external drawing app such as Illustrator if you have that?

Feel free to email the PDF for me to have a final check if you like and i'l check to make sure it cant be done, if you want send it to seanmitchell23 [at] ntlworld [dot] com and i'l have a look this evening :-)

Hey Smitchell,
Well hate to bother you, but...

I'm going to send you the pdf if you get time to look at it please feel free.
If you can find a solution I would really appreciate it. I tried several things with the pdf.

I converted the file to sRGB saved as a different pdf to be sure.
Ran OCR - formatted text and graphics, but it changed the pdf (can't have that).
So ran OCR - searchable image exact, better.

Then I tried to use the technigues you had suggested but I did not have any luck.

Yea thats ok send it over and i'l have a look for you and i'l let you know how i get on :-)

sorry the email address is sean [dot] mitchell23 [at] ntlworld [dot] comI missed the full stop out!

Hi thanx for the email,

In the email i've sent you, i managed to convert the majority of the text for you to 100k instead of 4 color black. That is the best i can do i'm affraid. Because the PDF you supplied had effectively only a scanned image inside the PDF there was only a limited amount i could do to the file. With the file you supplied, it was impossible for acrobat to detect the colors and change them. What i did was run OCR on it but as i have Acrobat 9, it has the option 'Clear Scan', which is quite good (personally i dont think it is good as the text and formatted graphics) even tho sometimes it changed the look of fonts depending on the style, you could still go in a and edit the properties of the font! I constantly refer back to my 8 version for that method alone.

But in you case, clear scan was ok for you, what that effectively does it turn the object in the pdf to editable objects within acrobat, you cant retype over it but it does let you have control over them. I then selected it, chose properties and changed it to RGB black and then done the convert colors command in the previos post and that did the trick.

If you open up the output preview and turn the black of you can see what wasn't done, which was not much. The text is not great but it rasterized (bitmap) text and will never print out perfect compared to true text and vector objects.

Let me know what you think? Its not perfect but i think its the best you can get.

I've sent the PDF to you. Hope it is ok?