Total Ink Density, or total area coverage as it is sometimes referred to, is the total amount of ink in one area of the page. For example, if the background of your piece is made up of 100C 80M 80Y 100K, the total ink density would be 360% for the background. Too much ink can cause appearance issues, such as muddy colors or ink puddling, and therefore total ink density needs to be capped at 290%. Source Interlink Media Prepress Department will reduce the ink density of any ads that are outside of our specification to 290%. Since color is subjective, it is important that the total ink density be adjusted prior to submitting your materials.

Best Results for Printing

Source Interlink Media has a total ink density requirement of 290%. Anything above this level will cause undesirable results in both reproduction and appearance. If large areas will use rich blacks it is recommended to keep your total ink density below 280%. Our recommended rich black is 60C 40M 40Y 100K.

There are a number of methods to adjust ink density. The best solution is to cap the ink density during conversion from RGB to CMYK using a color profile (such as the U.S. Web Uncoated v2 that comes with Photoshop); this will give you the greatest control over the color quality. If your images are already CMYK, you can use the following technique to adjust your ink density in Adobe Photoshop. It is also possible to convert your CMYK images back to RGB and then use a color profile to adjust the ink densities upon conversion back to CMYK, although this option may produce undesirable results.