PDF's turning Blacks Grey

Dear all,

No matter which PDF devise I use to plot or publish a 2D line drawing the blacks appear mid to dark grey. Has anyone else experienced this and does anyone have a solution.

Do you have any lineweights set to less than default?

Hi Eldon,

Checking the drawing and PDF I notice even the text with the vport is dark grey. The title block blacks are proper black though.

The line widths on layers are 0.05 to 0.5 plus the default width.

Everything I see in that pdf points to the object colors being exactly what you see, in that they are not truly black. Since you are obviously using a color plotstyle, or no plotstyle at all, i would say that your layer or object property colors need to be looked at, and changed if you want them black, or at least the same shade of dark gray.

!f you are using the index color selection, the darkest color is 250, which is not true black. Index 250 is the equivalent of true color 51,51,51. On the true color scale black is 0,0,0. That hatch area is significantly lighter than color 250, so much so that it looks like either a purposeful choice, or the color just to the right of color 250 on the index was selected by accident.

If you want everything plotted in BLACK use the Monochrome.ctb as a plotstyle. That ctb file plots every color in true color 0,0,0.

test2.pdfHi Dana,

That's quite a revelation to me. Thank you for taking the time to explain that. I wonder if there is a way to filter all my 250 blacks and change them to 7 Black. I do need to keep the colour elements in the drawing.

(I've done it now via layers)

I assume you are not using the color dependent plot style method of controlling output line colors and weight.

In that case Changing the layer colors for the black objects to 0,0,0 is the best way for you. You can also use the layer manager to control lineweight properties.

Do you have objects with the color property set to something other than By Layer?

If so, once you have the layers set up, and all objects on the correct layer, simply select everything. Open Properties. You will see that probably all the properties say "Varies". Click on Color, select By Layer. Done.

Before you change the color property, you may want to look at the drop down list of what was selected at the top of the properties dialog, and change your color property by object type, one type at a time. for example polylines, or dimensions, etc. Sometimes, depending on the complications of the objects in the drawings, when everything is selected at once, the property values are not available for change unless you look at the selections drop down list.

You also need to remember, that someone doing follow up or modifying your drawing will have to be informed to use a white or lighter color modelspace background. Otherwise, these "black" lines will be invisible.

The objects that need to be in some other color will of course, be on other layers. You should avoid object property color overrides and stick to layer color control as much as possible.

If you need to have two black lines close to each other differentiated, use the Layer line weight property. Make sure you have the Plot Object LIneweights box checked on your page layout dialog.

Thanks Dana, I'm going to have study the issue of plot style methods. I tend to leave it to the default settings. (There's so much to learn.)

Thanks Dana, I'm going to have study the issue of plot style methods. I tend to leave it to the default settings. (There's so much to learn.)

Do you know about the color "white"? It shows up in most of the color choice drop down lists, in the first several that are the most commonly used. That is the 'color' that will show as black on a white background, and white on a black background. It always plots black.

When AutoCad first introduced the ability to make the drawing (modelspace) background change color, they introduced that little trick with the object color so we could reduce eye strain by darkening the screen light output, and we can still see the lines.