Weird Separation Preview

[chadthebad]

A customer sent me a PDF of his letterhead with PMS 583, Cool Gray 7, and black. He saved it out of ILL. When I previewed the seps in Acrobat, his black was 4 color. I emailed him asking him to fix and return, but he said in illustrator it was black only.

So I opened it in ILL and saw that it was. Sent plates using InDesign and they output correctly.

Anyone know why Acrobat would read the black that way? Do I have a color setting outta joint?

Just wondering,
ctb

[triple one]

is his illustrator file in RGB? A lot of our customer files come in RGB, and of course black seperates into the cmyk version of rgb black in seps preview.
tounge twister...
another thing that could cause that is the illustrator preference "output all blacks as rich black" is checked, which should only be checked if printing in process colors.

[Lukas Engqvist]

If black gets converted and you are nor working in RGB you have embeded a profile, and Acrobat uses another (version) of the profile. Or you could have chosen Preferences:Appearance of Black: "Output all Black as Rich Black" rather than "Output all Blacks Accurately"

Lukas