Bringing very complicated Illustrator files with spot color into ID?

I'm putting together the files for printing the first collection of my current comic book. Normally I'd just output 300dpi TIFFs, but I'm using a spot color overlay in this project.
Does anyone know the best way to get this into InDesign with the spot color intact?
These are SUPER COMPLICATED files, and experience has taught me that just saving a PDF to drop into InDesign results in a note from the printer that the file refused to print. I also can't do tricks involving moving it into Photoshop and selecting one particular color to put onto a new channel, as there's a lot of overprinting going on.

I think maybe you should check with other printers, as well.
Bob

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Problem exporting file with spot colors to pdf

I have a book which I designed in InDesign CS3. It has 150 images in it which are Photoshop eps files: black line drawings with a spot color fill. InCS3, when I needed to send files back and forth to the publisher, the eps files came out fine in any pdf I made. Now in CS5.5, no matter what I do, only the spot color shows up in the images -- their black outlines won't show up. I'm sure it's got something to do with settings of some kind but I can't figure it out for the life of me. Help!

I'm viewing the pdf in Acrobat Pro X. I do see that if I turn Flattener Preview on, I can see the whole image in a separate preview box, but that's not going to work very well when I send it to an editor who is technologically challenged. Is there not a way to ake the pdf behave the way it does if I make it from CS3, where the flattening shows in the pdf by default? As it is, this seems like a step backwards, unless of course, there's something I am missing.

Using multiply effect on illustrator file with 2 color job?

Hi,
Encountering a tricky problem and not sure if its an InDesign fix or an Illustrator fix.
I am working on a 2 color job—pms color + black on a book cover. The cover needs to seperate into these 2 colors.
Also, I need to make a high res and lowres pdf that look like the cover to send out to marketing, sales etc.
WHAT's THE PROBLEM?...
Well, I am creating a collage with black ink vector graphics on top of the pms background. I created this art in illustrator. it is saved as an .eps file. The illos were done by someone who used a white fill to knock out black areas. There is also a wide 50% grey outline around the illustration.
I like the idea of the line of the illo being black and the fill being red so that it looks seethrough on the red background. But the 50% grey outline causes a problem...I'd like the 50% outline to blend with the red color, so instead of appearing like there is white in the ink it overprints.
The only way I could think of (and quickest way) was to apply the multiply filter in illustrator to the vector illo. This seemed to work great.
I brought the illo into InDesign where I created my cover layout.
Looks great, Prints great. Separations appear to be good, although it shows the yellow, cyan, and majenta layer they appear to be blank, so I think it will seperate nicely into 2 plates–PMS + black.
BUT, when I make a pdf, using "smallest file size" or using "high quality print", the pdf it makes does not show the illustrations in the collage. They are kind of beige and dulled out. The publisher needs pdfs too.
Does this at all indicate that this job will not print correctly using this multiply filter, or is it all well and good final product wise, but its just an issue making the pdf? I am slightly nervous I am going to send this off to the printer and they will have some issue.
I am a professional designer of 10 years with lots of print experience, but I have never used multiply in illustrator so I just want to make sure there is no rule against doing this I should know about. Does multiply at all mess with the color separations or is it fine? And how do I get my pdf to come out right? I'm hoping there's some dumb thing I'm forgetting, or a simple fix.
Thanks for any insight you may have!
L.

I did figure out after posting this that I was using one .ai file and one .eps file—the .ai was showing up fine in the pdf and the eps was showing up screwy.
odd thing though, when I just re-exported using pdf/x–1a settings, now both images appear muddy! but fine when I turn "overprint preview" on. I just don't want my publisher to have to tell everybody to turn overprint preview on...they shouldn't have to do that for editors etc, non design people.
maybe the new "smallest file size" will be fine though since this is a press preset...we'll see.

My illustrator CS6 crashes when i try to open an AI file with RGB color mode

My illustrator CS6 crashes when i try to open an AI file with RGB color mode. I worked on this file yesterday and changed it to RGB mode. Today i tried to open the file again but illustrator won't open it and crashes. It does work when i want to open a file with CMYK color mode.
Anyone know how to fix this ?

Have you tried trashing the prefs?

Smart Object with spot color

how do I import an illustrator file with a spot color into photoshop as a smart object without it being converted to four color

Try thread http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1121348?tstart=0

Convert PDF Document to PDF with Spot Color

I want to convert a regular PDF document with RGB/CMYK color profile to one with Spot color. Can this be done using Acrobat X Pro, if so How?

Hi Steve
I am still working on the process to automate the conversion of PDF file with RGB color profile to Spot.
I am nearly there, here is the method...
1. Have a prefight profile with the spot color fixes. For now I put in 10 colors.
2. Wrote a Javascript that will invoke the preflight profile
3. Cretated an application (AutoSpotFix) in VC++ and Acrobat SDK that will open the document and assign the javascript function to 'WillSave' document action. The AutoSpotFix will then trigger the save on the document.
Java script had to be involved because SDK cannot invoke the preflight profile.
Now my problem is the document can contain any spot color, I need to
a) Either put in the thousands of spot color into my preflight profile, which will take days to do. Or I can create a preflight profile file (*.kfp) and load it, which is an XML file.
b) Dynamically load the preflight profile file with the few current colors, for which I need to dynamically create the preflifgt profile.
Either way I have to create the *.kfp file, Is there a way to create the Preflight profile file?

InDesign Workflow with spot colors only

Please can someone explain me why InDesign treats working with four spot colors differently than working with CMYK? They are just four colors or channels, right? What is the difference between Cyan or PANTONE Reflex Blue?
It is true that 99% of the time CMYK is used. It is also true that you can work in CMYK and tell the printer to put a different ink instead of the a Cyan, Megenta, Yellow or Black ink. The project I work on now involves four Pantone spot colors and a few illustrators how need/want to see what they are doing, so...
The question is mainly because InDesign is soooooooooo slow working with spot colors. It feels slower than Quark Xpress 4.11 on a Mac OS 9 G4 machine.
Many thanks!
[-> InDesign CC, MacBook Pro 7i 2011, SSD, 16 G RAM, 1 G GPU]

I have never seen ID slow down with spot colors, but, I have not gone past CS5.5 nor do I work with OSX, both of which have many threads releating to screen draw times, and general lag.
SproetS wrote:
Please can someone explain me why InDesign treats working with four spot colors differently than working with CMYK? They are just four colors or channels, right?
I would suggest working mostly in Overprint Preview when working with Spot Colors.
What is the difference between Cyan or PANTONE Reflex Blue?
Excepting that they are both defined colors...everything about them is different.
Consider this - c, m, y, k are all spot colors. They are base colors, not different (to me) than Warm Red, Rhodamine Red, Reflex Blue, Pantone Green, Pantone Purple, Pantone Violet, Pantone Rubine Red, there are a few others..
In you color pallet, Yellow is not a spot color - it is a mix of (typically) y and 0~20% m.
Same for each color in the default pallet - 0~100% of c,m,y,k
It is true that 99% of the time CMYK is used.
Many spot colors cannot be accurately reproduced in the cmyk spectrum.
It is also true that you can work in CMYK and tell the printer to put a different ink instead of the a Cyan, Megenta, Yellow or Black ink. The project I work on now involves four Pantone spot colors and a few illustrators how need/want to see what they are doing, so...
Those days are gone. You would need to be more familair with the hammer and screw approach to avoid overprint mistakes, tints are not the same as transparencies, many hurdles here that have long been forgotten. What you would see on screen would be nothing near to the actual project.
It should be determined before preceeding if the project will be printed cmyk or as 4 spot colors.

Example file, illustrator file with variables linked to xml

CS5 – Where can i find an example of an illustrator files with variables, linked to an xml file. We want to export it immediately to .pdf format when the file is linked. Is this possible? The illustrator help files are not so clear about this matter.

Follow the Help documentation's steps to create at least one of each of the four supported types of variable bound objects.
Capture the DataSet.
Edit the bound objects' content.
Capture the DataSet.
Save Variable Library. That's your XML file.
JET

I just got a new macbook pro, i had cs6 on my old macbook, i downloaded cs6 on my new computer today. When I open my illustrator files with vector images they appear blurry on the new computer. I have had this issue in the past and I don't

i just got a new macbook pro, i had cs6 on my old macbook, i downloaded cs6 on my new computer today. When I open my illustrator files with vector images they appear blurry on the new computer. I have had this issue in the past and I don't

cnsst,
Are we talking Edit>Preferences>General>Anti-Aliased Artwork?

How to import files with static variables into a block with methods?

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<%!
//here i want to import a file named settings.inc
//whitch is used to set jdbc constants like url,driver,...
private void method() {
private void method2() {
%>
<%@include file="xy"%>//dosn�t work above
//only in <%%>tag

This should be done using either the Properties class or ResourceBundle. Ex.
<%
ResourceBundle resBun = ResourceBundle.getBundle(String resource);
String username = resBun.getString("username");
String password = resBun.getString("password");
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Should the print company I use be able to change a file to spot color for me?

I recently sent a document in to a major print company to have a folder printed. The document was created in Illustrator using only two colors. They said they could not print it because it was still more than two colors and that I needed to change it to a two color document using Pantone Spot Color.
I've never had to do that for a print company before but I've also never had a two color project before. I opened the file back up and selected my objects and "recolored" the work and deleted all the swatches aside from the two colors I needed that were now Pantone Spot Color (HSB). It literally took me 2 minutes.
The reason I am asking is because they pretty much said that I don't know what I'm doing, which to a designer is completely insulting. We all do new things from time to time but that is an insult. Shouldn't they, a large print company with years of experience, know how to do this for me? They had the original design file.. Maybe they don't know what they are doing?
Any clarity on as to why I needed to do it and not them is greatly appreciated. Also.. any direction as the best way to use spot color over cmyk is appreciated too.

...which to a designer is completely insulting...
What's so special about "a designer"?
Prior to the mid 1980s, designers could get away with prima Donna attitudes, because they (or their employers) were paying pre-press "color houses" around $350 per hour to tweak colors to sooth their oh-so-erudite discernment and hyper-developed color sensitivities, and to gain reimbursement for the $100 per plate lunches on proof-check days.
That all changed when designers (and their employers) got tired of paying those fees and took on the responsibility for the technical side of assembling their designs into something printable. That was the so-called "desktop revolution" and "revolution" was not a bad word for it. It turned a huge industry on its head. Color houses which didn't adopt PostScript devices and workflows were soon dropping like flies--and so were designers who didn't climb down off their lofty pedestals and buckle down to learning the technical realities of what they were doing.
Don't be insulted, but the simple fact is, you still don't know what you're doing if you think converting any given process color job to a two-spot job is "just a couple of minutes' work." Only in the very simplest designs would it be as simple as re-defining a couple of process Swatches as spot color Swatches.
In Illustrator in particular, doing so won't even work if the original Swatches were not originally defined as Global Swatches.
If those two process Swatches were used in any Blends, converting them to spot will likely not update the intermediate steps of the Blend. In earlier versions of Illustrator, the same problem applied to grads.
You can often get away with not having properly trapped the file with process swatches, because there are potentially four component inks which may be shared between adjacent different-color objects. Spot inks are not so forgiving. Trapping is essential if the two spot colors touch.
So you really expect a printer to just have a policy to do that for you? And thereby bear responsibility for anything they may misinterpret or overlook that may cause a registration sliver on press and thereby loose every bit of profit on the printing (which these days is cut-throat competitive)?
No. It's your responsibility to build the file correctly. The printing houses I use know better. They know I would have a coniption fit if I ever caught them modifying one of my files. They know they are to return any problem file to me for correction.
JET

Placing an illustrator file with "white" objects add process black to PDF

Ran into this problem today with InDesign CS5:
I am trying to create a document with only one (spot) color, pantone 293 in this case.
Placed some illustrator files in this document, all of them also only contain pantone 293. However, they also contain some "white" objects. Now my problem appears to be that "white" in illustrator is defined as "0% gray" by default. So when I export my document as PDF from inDesign, i get a PDF with both spot color pantone 293 and black. Strange thing is, I tried making the "white" objects 0% pantone 293 instead of 0% gray, but the PDF still exports with black process color.
Just plain telling my printing company to ignore the black process color altogether would be foolish i guess, since there are objects underneath the illustrator files which need to be knocked out by the "white".
Any ideas?

If the problem isn't a profile conflict as Peter suggests, you might try setting up a preflight profile for 1 spot color that will catch uses of CMYK black. When you export a PDF from ID the CMYK channels always exist in the exported PDF, so you may need a preflight check to make sure CMYK plates are empty.
This allows only 1 spot color, defined as Lab. Any use of black would throw an error:
Here the white box is defined as Paper 0|0|0|0 CMYK and I get an error
Defining the box as 0% Orange is OK

PDF files with wrong colors

Hi All,
I apologize if this has already been discussed, but I probably cannot guess the right search string to find the relevant thread.
I've recently upgraded from FM6 Mac to FM9 Win. My old FM6 documents have two kinds of problems in FM9:
1) replaced fonts horizontally scaled to 80%
2) colors looking good on the display, but bad when converted to PDF
As for issue #1, I couldn't do other than editing all the paragraph styles. But eventually I could solve it in a way or the other.
But issue #2, I cannot seem to come to an end with it. The original color was a Pantone swatch, that I can also find in the Win version of FM. In fact, when opening the FM file, it looks at it used to do on the Mac.
However, either I save as PDF from the File > Save to PDF menu command, or print a file using the PDF driver (with the Press Quality selected), the resulting color is wrong. What used to be a Grey-Blue Pantone 191-7, is now some sort of Cyan. Tones change slightly whether I convert using the Print > Do not save file trick, or use Acrobat Distiller 8 on the Mac with different settings; but the original color is never reproduced.
Oddly, an EPS file in the same FM file looks perfectly good - the original color is there. What a contrast with the oddly-colored text and lines in the remaining parts of the document!
Maybe someone has already gone through this issue, and has a solution for me. I'm literally loosing my sleep to try to solve this issue.
Thank you in advance!
Paolo

Paolo Tramannoni wrote:
Obviously, before spending a considerable price for additional software, I would like to see if I can solve the problem with what I have.
Paolo,
I've done some in-depth color testing with FM9, and the results can be downloaded here: http://www.meissner-dokuteam.de/Files/Frame/colortest_fm9_p250_FM_elements_EN.pdf
In short words, for the "Save as PDF" CMYK version:
- Spot colors from imported definitions are converted to CMYK
- Spot colors from FM Pantone library are correctly output as Pantone colors *
- Spot colors in imported EPS files are always correctly output
* I was able to nail down the spot color bug: The critical element is the "Name of color" entry in the color definition dialog (below the dropdown/entry field "Name"). If there is a name, then the color will be correctly output as a pantone color. You can see this, if you define a color taken from the FM library, they all contain a "Name of color" entry. Self-defined colors or colors which came in by graphics import don't contain a name there, and are output as CMYK colors.
You can fix this behaviour, if you save your FM files as MIF, and add the required lines at the color definitions yourself. I for example used self defined spot colors, and added the lines
<ColorLibraryFamilyName `WambaSamba self-defined'>
<ColorLibraryInkName `WambaSamba Blue'>
Now even self-defined spot colors work. You can see this in this pdf: http://www.meissner-dokuteam.de/Files/Frame/colortest_fm9_p250_FM_elements_EN_MIFedit2.pdf
and download the editet MIF file (for analyzing) here: http://www.meissner-dokuteam.de/Files/Frame/colortest_fm9_p250_FM_elements_EN_MIFedit.mif. zip
One more bug, but this time in Acrobat: Spot color tints are always displayed at 100%, when you open the PDF, unless you enable Output/Overprint preview.
Regards,
Bernd

Trapping problems with spot colors

MAC 10.5.4 CS3
I have had two books present similar problems with one of our printers. Both books are 2 color. The first is 2 spot colors and the second is spot and black. The problem is that the traps are showing up as white. It looks like anything that is trapped has a white stoke applied. One book has headers using the spot ink for the text, in a black box. These are all getting the white outline around the text. The other book has the the darker spot for text overprinting screened boxes of the lighter spot. The overprinted text looks ok.
I had previously posted about the illustrations in the 2 spot book and have been able to take care of the issue regarding Transparency vs. postscript. But as we are still having this issue with some text and there is no transparency used I am wondering if there is some setting I can adjust to fix this.

How is the trapping being applied? Did you set it yourself in InDesign?
I think the default for InDesign is to use an InRIP trapping. And I always thought that was not part of ID's setup.
Maybe I'm wrong. So let me know.

Backwards compatibility of .psd files with spot channels

Over the years Adobe Photoshop has done a really excellent job of keeping image files backwards compatible. Unfortunately it is still possible to save files may not be opened by previous versions of the software. This happens when a spot color is specified in a color book that is not available in earlier versions of the software (for example the "Pantone+ Solid Coated" book that appears to be the new default).
Photoshop CS6 seems to be able to open files that contain spot colors from unavailable color books.
Photoshop CS4, CS5, and CS5.1 all give the error message:
"Could not complete your request because the specified color book cannot be found."
when trying to read a file with a Pantone+ spot color.
I know that there is probably nothing that CS6 can do to fix this situation, but it would be great if there were an update for the older software that turned this error message into a warning.

Yeah, that used to be a problem, and it's not the file format but the color book resolution code that is broken.
No, there's not much we can do since it affects every previous version of Photoshop.

Bringing very complicated Illustrator files with spot color into ID?

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