What is the 300% rule in printing?

It’s the common limit on total ink: the C, M, Y and K percentages at any one point shouldn’t add up to more than about 300%. It’s a rule of thumb rather than a standard. Some presses on coated paper allow 320–340%, uncoated paper often needs 260–280%, and newsprint less again, so use your printer’s number.

Will reducing ink make my dark colours look lighter?

Barely, when it’s done properly. Past about 300%, extra ink adds almost no visible darkness; it mostly adds drying problems. A good conversion replaces some of the cyan, magenta and yellow with black, which keeps the colour and cuts the total.

Is this the same as the rich black problem?

They’re related. A black built from all four inks at 100% is the most common cause of too much ink, and the rich black page covers how to build black correctly. Too much ink also comes from dark photos and dark colours, which is what this page is about.

The printer said

“Total ink coverage is too high.”

Short answer

Total ink coverage (TAC) is the four CMYK percentages added together at the darkest point of your file, and every press and paper has a maximum, often around 300% on coated paper and 260–280% on uncoated. Above it, the ink can’t dry properly, so it smudges, sticks sheets together or rubs off onto the back of the next sheet. The fix is to rebuild the darkest colours and re-convert dark photos with your printer’s colour profile, which keeps ink under their limit.

Updated November 3, 2026 · by Azaan Ali, print designer

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Why printers ask for this

Paper can only take so much wet ink. Where cyan, magenta, yellow and black all pile up in one spot (a deep photo shadow, a black built from all four inks at 100%), the sheet gets more ink than it can absorb. It dries slowly, rubs off onto the sheet stacked on top of it (printers call this set-off), cracks along folds, and can make sheets stick together in the pile.

The usual culprits are photos converted to CMYK with the wrong profile, black backgrounds built as C100 M100 Y100 K100 or in the “Registration” swatch, and dark colours picked by eye in a colour picker. Printers’ preflight measures the heaviest point in the file, and if it’s over their limit for that press and paper, the job stops until it comes down. The limit varies by printer: commonly about 300% on coated paper (some sheetfed presses allow 320–340%), 260–280% on uncoated, and 240–260% on newsprint.

How to bring total ink coverage under the limit

Ask your printer for their ink limit and their colour profile. Profiles carry a limit built in: US Web Coated (SWOP) v2, for example, caps ink at 300%.
Find the problem areas. In Acrobat Pro: Print Production → Output Preview, tick Total Area Coverage and enter the limit; everything over it is highlighted. In InDesign: Window → Output → Separations Preview, and set View to Ink Limit.
Photos: in Photoshop, Edit → Convert to Profile and choose the printer’s profile, even if the image is already CMYK. This re-separates the shadows within that profile’s ink limit. Check the darkest areas in the Info panel afterwards.
Backgrounds and vector colours: edit the swatches. Replace four-colour 100% blacks with a rich black such as C60 M40 Y40 K100 (240% in total), and pull back the cyan, magenta and yellow in other very dark colours until the four add up to less than the limit.
Never use the Registration swatch in artwork: it’s 100% of every ink, 400% in total.
Export the PDF again and recheck it in Output Preview before you send it.

Or send it to us

Find every area over your printer’s ink limit, in photos, backgrounds and logos
Re-separate dark photos with your printer’s profile, keeping the shadow detail
Rebuild heavy blacks and dark brand colours so they look the same with less ink
Send a PDF that passes their ink check, with a short note of what changed

Fix my file · $25 Same day, fixed price, one round of changes included. Or ask a designer first.

A real job like this

MenusShibuya takeaway menuTypographic cover on dark stock, the counterweight to Saffron

Questions

What is the 300% rule in printing?: It’s the common limit on total ink: the C, M, Y and K percentages at any one point shouldn’t add up to more than about 300%. It’s a rule of thumb rather than a standard. Some presses on coated paper allow 320–340%, uncoated paper often needs 260–280%, and newsprint less again, so use your printer’s number.
Will reducing ink make my dark colours look lighter?: Barely, when it’s done properly. Past about 300%, extra ink adds almost no visible darkness; it mostly adds drying problems. A good conversion replaces some of the cyan, magenta and yellow with black, which keeps the colour and cuts the total.
Is this the same as the rich black problem?: They’re related. A black built from all four inks at 100% is the most common cause of too much ink, and the rich black page covers how to build black correctly. Too much ink also comes from dark photos and dark colours, which is what this page is about.

Terms on this page: Total ink coverage (TAC), CMYK, Rich black, Coated vs uncoated paper.

Other things printers say

The printer said“Your black will print grey (or too much ink).”Plain black ink (C0 M0 Y0 K100) prints as a dark grey on large areas; adding some cyan, magenta and yellow under it makes a deep “rich black”, often C60 M40 Y40 K100.The printer said“The file is RGB, it needs to be CMYK.”Screens make colour from red, green and blue light (RGB); printing presses make it from cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink (CMYK).The printer said“There’s white set to overprint.”Overprint tells the press to print an object on top of the colours underneath instead of cutting them out.

More on this kind of work: Print file fixing.

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