Spot color to Process color conversion

I have a book that my boss is wanting printed. This book is filled with RGB / Spot colors. I've discovered that if I go to the "ink manager" I can check the box "All Spots to Process", but the strange thing is after doing that I check in my swatches pannel and discover that nothing was converted. What's up with that? I also found a handy script for converting all RGB colors to CMYK, but I have yet to locate a script to convert all spot to process colors in the swatches pannel. Anyone know where I can get a script for that?

If you are using OSX try this AppleScript:
tell application "Adobe InDesign CS6"
    tell document 1
        set accurate LAB spots to true
        repeat with a from 1 to count of every color
            try
                set model of color a to process
                set space of color a to CMYK
            end try
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell

Similar Messages

Finding spot color and process color

Dear all,
I used the following code to find the spot color used in the document.
var length=app.activeDocument.spots.length;
for(i=0;i<length;i++){
alert(app.activeDocument.spots[i].color);
It is showing CMYK Color as the output.
Can anyone tell me wheather it is a correct output.I want to identify all the spot color in the current active document.
Also please help me finding out the Process color used in the document.What is the diffence between these two ?
Regards,
Sanat

Sanat,
Even if a color is Spot, it still has to have CMYK or RGB values (depending on the color mode of the document) to tell Illustrator what color to display it as.
Beyond that, though, you're going to run into another problem anyway: Any Swatch that is defined as Global is going to be counted as a Spot Color. (I've been complaining about this for years.)
For example:
var docRef=app.activeDocument;
var count=docRef.spots.length;
alert(count);
for(i=0;i<count;i++){
alert(docRef.spots[i].name);
Run that in a CMYK document in which you have removed all unused palette items. You'll find that it returns [Registration] as a spot color, just because it's set to Global. Now doubleClick the Black Swatch. Set it to Global (but not Spot). The sript will tell you there are two Spot colors.
JET

[CS4-5.5][JS] Problem convert spot colors to process

Hi,
I'm trying to convert all spot color swatches to process, but for some strange reason, some weird behavior occures.
First I tried this piece of code...
app.activeDocument.colors.everyItem().properties = {space:ColorSpace.CMYK, model:ColorModel.PROCESS};
After running the script, the color icon changes, indicating the colorspace/model is changed. But when checking the color in detail, it's still a spot color.
Just as a test, I tried this piece of code...
function convertColors2Process(){
     for (var i = 0; i < app.activeDocument.colors.length; i++){
            var myColor = app.activeDocument.colors[i];
            if ((app.activeDocument.colors[i].name != "") && (app.activeDocument.colors[i].name != "Registration")){
                    if (app.activeDocument.colors[i].model != 1886548851){
                          while(myColor.model != ColorModel.PROCESS){
                                    myColor.model = ColorModel.PROCESS;
                                    myColor.space = ColorSpace.CMYK;
                                        myColor.colorValue = [50,20,30,40];
Now, the color thumbnail changes to the new color, but again, when checking the color. It's still a pantone color with the old values.
No error occures when running the script and I'm able to change the color manualy in Indesign.
How do I change the colour mode of all spot colors to CMYK?
Thanx
John

Hi Larry,
I've tried using ...
function convertColors2Process(){
     for (var i = 0; i < app.activeDocument.inks.length; i++){
                                app.activeDocument.inks[i].convertToProcess = true;
This will modify the ink manager to process the spot color as process color, but the color itself is still unchanged....
How do I modify any spot color to process color and change the colour mode to CMYK?
Thanks

Spot to Process Color in Page Maker

Hello Everyone.........
Can anyone help me in changing spot colors to Process Colors in Page Maker. I'm new with this.
Thanks & Regards

double click the color.
In color options click on spot and change it to CMYK

Pantone Colors with CMYK Colors?

Dear all!
I am LUCK. I am wondering about Pantone Colors with CMYK Colors. It's that I got 1 Pantone Color from my customer and then I changed it to the equivalent CMYK Color. Will I get different colors when changing from Pantone to CMYK because I will print with CMYK Printing Process? Anyway, I am wondering whether the Pantone color is the fix and specific color or not. I mean when I print the Pantone Color, I will get the same result as I print before. Is it right?
Please help to explain to me whether Pantone Colors will keep their colors the same and stable or not. Or would you mind telling me what kind of colors that can produce the same color every time I print, especially for the Formal Uses?
Sorry for being unaware of my knowledge here. Thanks a lot and best wishes to all!
I am looking forward to hearing from you.
My best regards,
LUCK

Pantone is a company, not a color. Pantone produces spot color inks, process color inks, and color references.
Understand first: Five color printing ("process plus one") is not uncommon, because six-color presses are not uncommon. When a project is printed on a 6-head press, it does not dramatically affect the costs, because the job can still be printed in one pass. Brochures and other marketing collateral are often printed in 5 inks when a company specifies a spot color as its identity color. When done right, the company's identity specifications also provide a CMYK mix to use in lieu of its spot color(s) when restricted to only CMYK (as in magazine placement ads).
So I'll assume your customer specified a Pantone spot color, and does not provide a preferred CMYK substitute, and your project is restricted to four color process (CMYK) printing.
CMYK mixes do not exactly match spot color inks; they can only approximate. How closely they can approximate depends upon which spot color you are dealing with.
Pantone provides its recommended CMYK values for approximating its spot color inks. That's why Illustrator provides a Pantone solid to process Swatch Library. But such lookups are recommendations; they are not absolute equivalents. There are many many colors in nature (and in spot ink pigment) which simply cannot be matched in CMYK. And any time you try to convert between color models (spot to CMYK, RGB to CMYK, etc.) you encounter ambiguities, because there are multiple algorithms that can be used to generate four values from fewer values.
I often find Pantone's spot-to-process recommendations to be unsatisfactory, and use my own CMYK approximations instead. This is not necessarily due to any failure or shortcoming of the Pantone libraries, but just differences that exist in specific printing houses and workflows. The printing process is full of variables.
Will I get different colors when changing from Pantone to CMYK
Yes, the colors will be different. But whether the difference is noticable depends upon the specific spot ink you are trying to match. It also depends upon the specific use of the color. Fact is, human color perception is very adaptive. Colors that are "mathematically" equivilant according to some colorimetric algorithm are not necessarily perceived as equivilant by human eyes, because much depends upon environment (adjacent colors, etc.)
You can refer to a printed process color reference against which you can compare a printed spot color swatch book and judge for yourself which CMYK values best approximate the spot color. Or, you can set up simple test sheet of your own, and have it printed to determine a "best match" in a particular printing environment.
All the above is just one reason why contract proofs are still important. If your customer is very picky about his spot color, then he needs to understand that converting it to CMYK is merely an approximation, and perfect matching is simply not possible. That's one reason why spot inks exist in the first place. If he is not willing to pay for five-color printing, then he will likely have to settle for a minor compromise.
JET

Spot and Process colors - Color Mode confusion?

I have a question about how to choose colors in the New Color Swatch window. I think that I understand the difference between spot and process colors, but the dropdown options confuse me because whether I choose Spot or Process in the Color Type dropdown, the same list of libraries appears in the Color Mode dropdown. How does that work, or why does that happen? Is it a conversion? For example, if I choose Process as the Color Type, but then choose Pantone Solid Coated in the Color Mode, it shows me the colors available, but aren't the Pantone libraries for spot colors? And if I choose Spot as the Color Type, but then pick CMYK in the Color Mode, it gives the CMYK sliders. But shouldn't I be forced to pick from a Pantone library for a spot color? I would appreciate any explanations of this as I want to make sure that I pick the appropriate colors for my printed projects. Thank you!

You can create a spot color with a custom CMYK mix (and even name it the same as a library color if you want). The utility here is that you can create a custom spot color with a custom process conversion, or use your own own conversion numbers for one of the book colors if you think you have a better mix. I recently had to do a special mix for a Pantone spot conversion to fit a particualr press in order to get a better match to some other materials. That's how we handled it, though I did it by aliasing the pantone swatch to my custom spot and then changing that to process in the ink manager, rather than messing with the library color directly, which meant I could have either the custom or the book values, depending on the settings I chose, if the job went to another press.
There are, I believe, four sets of process libraries included in ID. The Pantone Process libraries are sets of stepped percentage mixes of the four process inks and have names that start with DS followed by some numbers. I think TrueMatch is a simialr system, though I've never worked with a printer who used it. Pantone Color Bridge and Solid to Process libraries are both process simulations of the Pantone Solid spot libraries. The Color Bridge is newer, and I think is largely replacing the solid to process.
You can get printed swatch books for any of the included libraries (spot and process) and you should do so for any library that you are going to use to specify color. Spot colors in particular may not render well on your monitor, and the press operator couldn't care less what you see on your screen. He's going to pull out his swatch book to verify that the color he puts on the page is the same as you specified.

Not saving spot color to process

I have Acrobat 8.1.2 on Mac
In Ink Manager I convert spot color to process.
I save and close the file. I reopen the file
Spot colors are not converted
I appreciate any suggestions.
Faro

Try the acrobat forums at
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bbeda8b/

Cannot change spot colors to process

Using the Swatch Options feature to change a CMYK spot color to a CMYK process color does not work. I click on the Save button and nothing happens. Cannot change global feature either. Nor does "Delete Swatches" work with multiple selections, or "Merge" Anyone else having this Swatches malfunction?

You can delete multiple swatches and you can merge swatches and if global swatches all instances of that color will change to the new color. If thye new color is cmyk swatch that will be the result for all instances of that color as long as it was applied by the fiormer swatch.
Now the idea of merging multiple swatches does work but all selected swatches mergte to that one swatch.
You might want to look at the Edit>EditColor>Recolor Art Feature.
But it is possible you have something locked on your artwork and that might prevent the change.

How do I convert a process color back to spot?

I have a file submitted to me that has been mangled by another designer. A PANTONE named spot color has been changed to a process color in the Swatches panel. When I try to change it back to "spot", a pop up window appears to say "Cannot edit this color property".
Are there any suggestions to get this to spot?
I've gone through the placed EPS/AI/PDF files to make sure that the named color in those are truly the spot color and not a process color.
I'm using ID CS 5.5.

Add the proper spot color and delete the process one.
You’ll be prompted to replace objects with the process color. Choose the spot.
Bob

Color Picker with Pantone conversion

In Photoshop you can sample an area with the eyedropper, click on the swatch in Color Picker and have it give you the PMS equivalent from the "book" list. I would love the same feature in Illustrator.
It makes more sense to have the spot color conversion capability in the the program designed for spot color use.
Thanks!
-Danlyn

CS3
Art containing two non-global process colors has been selected, and the Live Color dialog opened:
Below, the Pantone solid coated library has been selected from the Limit to Library popup menu, which causes an immediate lookup of the closest matching color in the library to
every color in the selected art
(notice that the brown is a tiny bit redder and the green a little yellower, showing you that the replacements have happened):
The sliders above have also been switched to Tint and a new color group was created by clicking on the little folder with the + sign above the color group list. These two steps are not necessary, I just wanted to show that they were possible. Also it was the best way to display the names of both Pantone colors.
If all you want to do is recolor your document with the same number of Pantone colors that your design uses distinct mixed colors, you're done!
All the rest of this post is just showing more variations of what you can do, especially reducing the number of spot colors used when the original document has more color variation than you want.
Here I have switched to the metallic library:
If the selected art had contained more original colors than desired number of spot colors, then you can enter the number of desired spot colors to reduce to, and it will pick the best color set of that size from the chosen library to "posterize" to, as shown below:
After reduction to two colors:
After limiting to ANPA library:
Next I've switched to the Color Wheel view, and rotated the color markers to a different position. When limiting to a library, the entire color wheel is drawn using only the colors in that library, so that you can easily navigate to nearby colors:
Swatches from Color Books and other libraries can be accessed in the Color Picker, but only when it is opened from within the Live Color dialog (by double-clicking on any color well) while limiting to that library. This gives you another method of picking a different color if you don't like the default match.
There is not yet any ability to switch libraries while the Color Picker is open, but we hope to enable that in CS4.

Converting from a spot color to a color for a RGB document?

How can I take a spot color from the Pantone Swatches Library and convert it for use in a RGB document? Thanks.

kat,
You may:
1) Click the Pantone Swatch, or a path to which it is applied;
2) Switch to RGB (for RGB, CMYK for CMYK) in the Color palette/panel, and ;
3) Click New Swatch in the Swatches palette/panel flyout, see that Color Type says Process Color, give it its name (and make it Global if relevant), and press OK.
With that you will have the corresponding RGB colour (closest match) as a swatch.

Trying to find process colors (CMYK) in a file that shouldn't have any...

I work in prepress. I have an Illustrator CS6 file that is made up of 3 Pantone Spot colors. I save the file as an eps from Illustrator and rip the file with our prepress software. When previewing the ripped file with our prepress software it shows me that I have process colors (CMYK) somewhere in the file. I can not see these colors visually in the ripped file so I go back to Illustrator to see if I can edit them out of the file. I use the Preview Separations tool but can't find those process colors anywhere. There are no placed images, everything is vector art. I double check any white color and make sure it doesn't have any tiny percentage of process color in it. I make sure my spot colors are indeed spot colors and not process colors. I add used colors, I delete unused colors. I can't find the CMYK being used anywhere in my Illustrator file. Any thoughts on how to clean up these "hidden" colors? This was also a problem in CS3. I'm using an iMac 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, Mac OS X, Version 10.7.5 Thanks for any help!

I've done all you said, John, but still get the process colors appearing, just not visible. It could be a rip problem; it only happens ocassionally. I am able to exclude the unwanted colors when I rip the file but I was hoping to clear them from the start in Illustrator. It doesn't help that the Preview Separations tool ALWAYS includes the CMYK process colors even if there aren't any being used in the file. I wish Adobe would change that. Anyways, I'll continure on... I appreciate the help and if anyone else has any ideas, please feel free to add them.

Problems printing spot colors overprinting registration color

In order to get a spot color to overprint a registration color on a proof, I have to change the spot color to multiply and then select convert all spot colors to process in the output dialog. I've never had this problem before using CS4. I'm running Mac OS X 10.5 and printing to an EFI RIP. I can see the error in the preview window inside the print dialog box in Illustrator before I sent to the rip.

Absolutely.
Remember I only have this problem when a registration object interacts with a spot color. I've tried putting either object on top and either item overprinting or multiplying.
For the record, I can get it to work by checking "convert all colors to process" in the print dialog box, but nothing works without checking this box and I would like to avoid checking this box if at all possible.

Packaging shows 4 process color when there is none

My packaging shows 4 process inks even though there is only a black and white image. My pdf image was first saved as a grayscale. When that didn't work, I converted it to a Gray Gamma 2.2 Grayscale in Acrobat and "saved as" my image. It still shows up as a 4 process color. Interestingly, when I check separations, it shows up as only black.
To check my InDesign, I completely removed everything from the document and left a blank page. The packaging still shows 4 color process.
Verified in Ink Manager that Convert Spot to Process is not checked.
Is there anything else I need to check?

No, but undo the Gray Gamma 2.2. I am not familair with the result, and may be appended, but it is not necessary.
There will always be the CMY channels listed in Adobe Products; you correctly verified only black is in use via the Seperations Preview.
InDesign package always lists cmyk inks.

Process Color Tint: Illustrator versus Freehand

I'm a FreeHand user from the first hour and now I'm forced to start working with AI which gives me the creeps!
In FH it is very easy to create a "tint" of a spot or process color. in AI, I only manage to do so with spot colors and not with process colors. For example, I have an object filled with 100% process color from the Swatches panel. Now I can change its transparency to 50% but that's not what I want; I want it to be filled with 50% of that same process color. In FH that's a piece of a cake. And even so in ID! why not in AI?

You need to use Global Process swatches, which are essentially process colors that function as spots.
In the Swatches palette, in List View, you should see a grey square next to the color model square (in Thumbnail view you will see a white dog-eared lower right corner of the swatch with no dot (the dot denotes a Spot).
In the Color palette you can change the tint of your Global Process color just as you can with a Spot. If you want to make a Tint Swatch, set it to some value, say 40%, and click the New Swatch button at the bottom of the Swatches palette (second from the right at the bottom).
Now when you edit your base color, all the tints change along with it.
Note: this will not magically apply the color to your art. It is best done at the beginning or while you are working, NOT as an afterthought. If you have existing art you should probably look at Live Color to get you by.
PS: Sorry if I came off brusque, but it's disheartening how often people come in here immediately bashing AI. I personally hate Freehand (and I had to use it for a long time) but it has no relevance to these discussions. And I'm not saying it didn't have its good stuff, it did - I just never cared for it compared to AI.

Spot color to Process color conversion

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