Accurately finding spot colours in placed images

Hi all,
I'm trying to collate a list of the colours physically present in an artwork, including those in placed images which is where I'm having trouble.
When an image is placed into an artwork, any spot channels present in a PSD (we only work with PSD's here) are brought in as swatches into Illustrator. However if a spot channel is then removed from the image and saved, Illustrator reloads the image but doesn't realise that the channel has been removed and the colour remains in the swatch list.
The Custom Colour suite reports that the colour is still there and used externally and separation preview still shows it as existing in the artwork. Up to now I've been using exiftool to list the extra channels and parsing the output, but I'd prefer not to have to rely on an external dependancy. There's nothing in the placed image's dictionary either.
We also use a suite of (very expensive) plug-ins from large, Belgian graphics software company. One of their plug-ins lists colours similarly to separation preview but it's completely accurate in it's representation of which colours are physically present in the artwork. I'm not attempting to re-create it's functionality, rather generate the same information.
Any suggestions would be hugely appreciated!
Thanks
-W

Ok, it seems like I couldn't see the wood for the trees with this one. I finally found the solution with AIFOConversionSuite::EnumerateContents(), which with closer inspection of the documentation, provides exactly what I needed... including that 'god I'm such an idiot' feeling
I first tried traversing the artwork manually, then I discovered AIPathStyle::AdjustObjectAIColors() which provides some colour information but seems to have no knowledge of placed images.
I guess you live and learn!
-W

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Have you read all of this?
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>or working examples around
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SciTE Documentation
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that will work,
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Not going to happen.
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http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bbaa316.59b84fd8
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Hi there.
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Hello!,
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> that Indesign does not deal with spot colour transparency very well
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How many pages are we talking about? The key to file efficiency is Placing images at their final size, so you are on the right track. Let me try to help...
"I need to resize several images in Photoshop to place in Illustrator and I'm wondering if I should save them as CMYK jpegs, or tiffs, etc. I need the file to be the smallest it can be for upload to the printer. I need the basics on different file types and their pros and cons."
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"Also, when I'm sending out the proof to the customer, any tips on saving the pdf so the images aren't too blurry and the file is still sendable?"
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-Get Adobe's Print Publishing Guide. It has enough information in it to help you wade through all of the disinformation out there. Get in touch with a couple of local print shops and have them take a look at your files. Good shops can spot problems and give you some handy tips. Not all shops will take the time, so finding one can be tricky.
Thanks!
-You're welcome. Let us know how it all shakes out.

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I hoped someone would know by having hands-on experience of this, clearly. Someone who works with printing inks rather than pixels.
Photoshop gives me the option to preview at different solidity settings – what's most common? Are darker inks more dense and therefore more opaque (meaning I should preview at a higher solidity). Or is the reverse true.
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Hello
Probably a dumb question but I will ask anyway. Is it possible to turn off a spot colour in CS4. I can effectively do it by creating a spot white and merging the spot colour I want to delete to the spot white using the ink aliasing. However, this leaves a spot colour in the high res pdf at th end of the job. This then causes a problem as we use an online proofing system which then fails the flightcheck as there is a spot colour in the pdf.
Cheers
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The spot colour is used so that we can perform a find on any text with a fill of the spot colour and delete it. The spot colour is put in for this purpose when the original artwork is created in the US.
Kathlene - I can't believe I didn't spot that! This would work! We could just convert the swatch to 0% cmyk as you suggest. The majority of the pages in the catalogue are on a white background so the pricing would simply disappear resulting in no spot place when pdf's are made. There are some pages on a coloured background but these are very few and the pricing could be deleted manually.
Thanks for the help!
Beefcake

Accurately finding spot colours in placed images

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