Dark colors may appear as black or dark gray when you print a publication as CMYK or as separations in Publisher 2003 and Publisher 2007

When you print a publication as composite cyan, magenta, yellow, black (CMYK), or as separations, some images may exhibit too much Undercolor Removal (UCR). In these images, some dark colors may separate as black or dark gray.

The images have a Red-Green-Blue (RGB) color model. The color profile that Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 and Publisher 2007 use to convert RGB to CMYK uses aggressive UCR.

To work around this problem, convert the image to the CMYK process color model. If the image is embedded, follow these steps:

1. Open the publication in Publisher and select the image that you want to convert.
   
   On the Tools menu, click Graphics Manager.
2. In the Graphics Manager task pane, click the arrow next to the image, and then click Save as Linked picture.
3. In the Save As dialog box, click Save.

To convert the image to the CMYK process color model, follow these steps:

1. Open the image that you want to convert in an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop.
2. Follow the directions in that program to convert the image to CMYK.
3. Save the image in either the Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) or Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) format.
4. In Publisher, in the Graphics Manager task pane, select the name of image that you want to replace with the CMYK image.
5. Click the down arrow next to the name of the image, and then click Replace Picture.
6. In the Insert Picture dialog box, locate and select the TIFF or EPS image that you saved in step 3, and then click Insert.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

Publisher 2003 and Publisher 2007 use a color profile to convert RGB graphics to CMYK. Most of the time, this profile gives good results. However, if the image has a lot of very dark areas with detail, these can separate completely to the black plate. In this situation, you may receive better results by converting the file to CMYK and re-inserting it.

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.