Specific Building a black separation

[JohnBusser01]

Had a client send us a CMYK photo that had practically no black in it. This led to some printing issues. I'm being asked to "build" a black separation using the other three seps. Any advice on doing this would be appreciated.

 

[chrisdesign]

Can you post the image in question please?

 

[JohnBusser01]

The photo LOOKS predominantly gray but if you look in the channels you can see that there is very little black in the background. This led to some press issues trying to balance it out to look gray.

 

[JJLAPIN]

I was a Journeyman Scanner Operator for 18 years and seperated Tens of Thousands of images.
You don't need black for a good gray balance. With this image all I would have done is drop the yellow by 2 %. Yellow should always be a couple of percent under the Magenta for a neutral gray. Black usually shows up in the sep at around 20% of Cyan.
Attached is an image converted using GCR. and another with that Black from the GCR sep pasted into you original image.
For GCR convert your image to RGB then follow attached screen shot. Edit>Convert to profile>custom cmyk

 

[JohnBusser01]

Thanks for the information. I just have to mask out the necklace so I don't affect it and go from there. Thank you again.

 

[JJLAPIN]

You're Welcome.