CMYK layers showing up when spot color illos placed in InDesign CS3

When I place an Illustrator CS3 (13.0.2) illustration into InDesign CS3 (5.0.3), Preflight tells me that CMYK colors are being used, even though the imported illustration has only 2 Pantone spot colors matching those used in the InDesign document (the 2 spot colors show up in Preflight as well). I double-checked to make sure they were spot colors, not CMYK. When I go to Separations Preview, my 2 spot color show up but nothing shows on the CMYK layers. I deleted all unused color swatches in my InDesign file (and the Illustrator file), and when I delete the illustration Preflight just shows the 2 PMS spot color that I'm using in the document. I'm using Mac OS 10.5.4 on a brand-new Quad-Core Xeon, if that matters.
I've tried saving the illustration as both AI and EPS, and using CMYK and RGB color modes. I deleted all unused color swatches from both Illustrator and InDesign. For another test, I created a fresh Illustrator file that just had a box in 1 spot color and placed it in a fresh InDesign file, and again Preflight said that CMYK was being used. Besides the usual work-around of telling my service bureau to not output the CMYK film, does anyone have any idea of how to correct this? I've encountered it several times. (BTW, my service bureau didn't know what the problem is).
This is my first visit and post here, so if I have violated some forum etiquette, please forgive me.
James

Save a PDF and place that.
Bob

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Hello, I hope someone can help me with this issue:

Hi Rob,
I make big format prints for customers. So I get many PDF files from my customers. Each customer gets his files from all over the world; I cannot explain the hole world how to deliver PDF files.
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I just had a very similar problem using CS5 Master Suite.
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It's telling you that if you are printing full process CMYK, then the spot colors will be converted to CMYK and it's not guaranteed that the spot color will look the same. There is always a shift in color gamut when converting to CMYK. As you are only printing to spot colors or grey, the warning doesn't apply.

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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?
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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.

How to spot color in a character style?

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Hi
Sorry that I didn't make myself understood. Below are the details for your information:
We're running the XML-first workflow under InDesign CS4. When importing the XML file (with many paragraph/character styles [pstyle & cstyle]) into the pre-defined InDesign template, we find difficulties in recognizing whether there are any new paragraph/character styles that have not been defined in the existing InDesign template. It would be great if the non-defined styles could be shown in a special (spot) color, or placed into a new group. Would you please check the feasibility and advise us?
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Hi,
I created a PDF using Adobe Illustrator CS4, and although I am only using 2 spot colors, both, Illustrator and Acrobat are showing CMYK plates in the Separations Preview and Output Preview. When I turn off the Spot plates, there is nothing in the document. Could you please help me figure out why is this happenning?
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Every file has CMYK plates in Illustrator or Acrobat. I think you are over-thinking things.
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Are there any items actually on the plates??
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It was correct for Adobe to use the Lab alternate color space for display of Pantone spot colors. Why? Two reasons:
(1)     InDesign and Illustrator are now consistent with Photoshop's behaviour with non-process color channels. This interoperability issue has been complained about for years.
(2)     When one referred to the CMYK alternate color space values of Pantone colors, the question naturally comes up as to which CMYK color space those deviceCMYK values represent. Are those values for SWOP or Gracol or what? According to what Pantone told me personally years ago, they were SWOP, but not so-labelled. Thus, unless your output CMYK color space is SWOP, use of those CMYK colors is simply wrong!!! Using Lab alternate colors will allow whatever renders those spot colors in either RGB or CMYK to properly render them in the actual final color space!
Unfortunately, there is nothing that Adobe can do to cause Apple's preview product to properly display these colors. By the way, this problem also afflicts the built-in PDF viewer in the iOS products as well as MacOS X. Fortunately, under MacOS, you can easily download and install the free Adobe Reader and have it do all the PDF display in lieu of Apple's preview. Although we do have Adobe Reader available for iOS, Apple does not let us replace preview in iOS for PDF preview. You must view in preview and send the file to Adobe Reader.
Of course, if enough Apple users complained to Apple management about the numerous anomalies of its preview program, maybe after all these years, they might actually fix it to properly handle Lab colors (as well as transparency).
          - Dov

CMYK layers showing up when spot color illos placed in InDesign CS3

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