Mesh gradients using pantone colors

Hi,
I'm struggling to create gradients for screen printing purposes. The artwork will be printed on 12oz canvas using 3-4 pantone spot colors.
1) if I fill an object with a single Pantone color, create a mesh gradient from it using a variety of different opacity settings, say 100%, 50% and 25%, then play around with the mesh handles to produce a pleasant, mixed background, will a gradient of this type work for screen printing? I don't know if a gradient of this type will require halftones, as a linear or radial gradient would.
2) it's my understanding that when you prepare artwork for screen printing using spot colors, each color should be on its own layer. In an attempt to add highlights or shadows to an object, if I copy an object and paste it in front of itself, then apply a gradient using another Pantone spot color, say Pantone Process Black(100% to 0% opacity), does it matter what the blending mode is? Obviously you'll get different results based on the option you choose, but again, I'm concerned here only with screen printing. I can then place the gradient on the Black layer.
The problem is that I'm familiar with off-set printing, and apparently gradients have to be converted into halftones when screen printing, so I'm trying to figure out the best way of creating shadows and highlights.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Mark

Mark,
Getting your head around a few age-old fundamental repro principles will clarify this stuff for you:
First and foremost: Think in terms of INKS, not "colors." Take off your designer hat and think like a mechanic. You're dealing with real-world substances: scoops of thick, gooey, solid-color ink that will be squished onto some object.
Line Art: Artwork designed to be reproducable using only areas of solid ink coverage. No graduations of any kind whatsoever. In other words, nothing but 100% "tint" (often called "solid") of the ink(s).
Tint Screens: Uniform coverage of a given ink, but at any percentage other than 100%.
Continuous-Tone Artwork (often called "contone"): Anything involving varying percentages of a given ink, be it a "grayscale" gradauation of a single ink or graduation involving two or more inks.
Halftone: A photomechanical process used to distribute small dots (or lines, or some other pattern) of ink so as to SIMULATE tints and/or gradations. That's the important concept: There are no "graduated inks." Any given location on the final print either has ink or it has no ink on it. The ink is always a solid color. So anything other than the actual color of the solid (100%) ink is a mere SIMULATION. That simulation requires that the ink be laid down as a series of tiny dots (or array of lines, etc.) so as to suggest things other than the 100% color of the actual, physical ink that is loaded into the press (or silkscreen).
Spot-color (opaque) versus process-color (translucent) is a SEPARATE ISSUE from line art (no tone screening) versus contone art (tone screening required). You are confusing those two separate and distinct issues.
Now put this in the context of screen printing:
All artwork involving tints or continuous tone requires halftoning. Compared to offset lithography, screen printing is very limited in its ability to handle halftoning. Many small local screen printing shops can't do halftoning at all. Typical medium-size screen printing shops (local T-shirt shops, etc.) can often do halftoning at a very course frequency (i.e.; large dots), often no smaller than 30~50 Lines Per Inch (LPI), and both color fidelity and sharpness suffer. Only larger and more sophisticated screen printing shops, running expensive, high-end automated equipment utilizing very fine screen mesh fabrics can reliably hold small halftone dots and consistently maintain color.
Bottom line: The way you prepare artwork for screen printing is highly dependent upon the kind of shop that will be doing the printing.
Screen printing is done on a wide variety of materials (substrates). Substrates are quite often not white. They are often dark. So spot color inks designed for screen printing are usually very opaque. That puts them in a whole other world from the almost-always translucent inks of offset lithography, AND from the real world that Illustrator's interface is capable of simulating. Illustrator does not provide any means by which to specify the real-world opacity of a Spot Color Swatch. So when you use blends, grads, and overprinting, Illustrator cannot do a good job of simulating what you will actually see in the final screen printed results.
Bottom Line: If you are building continuous-tone artwork involving blends, grads, tints, etc. (i.e.; anything requiring halftoning) and/or overprinting, you need some real-world experience to reasonably well anticipate how your halftoned artwork is going to look when printed. Best advice is to start simple. Design around your limitations, and those of the screen shop you will be using. Limit your designs to spot colors and entirely line art.
Now to your specific questions:
I'm struggling to create gradients for screen printing purposes.
Grads are going to require halftoning. Have you asked your screen printer what halftone frequency (LPI) he is able to reliably hold?
The artwork will be printed on 12oz canvas using 3-4 pantone spot colors.
Understand: Pantone is a company. The Pantone company publishes its own standardized formulae for its own branded inks, which are offset lithography inks, not silkscreen inks. In other words, it's just a commonly-used color reference. You would be better off refering to actual color swatches of the actual screen printing inks your screen printer will be using. Set up your Spot Color Swatches in Illustrator corresponding to the actual inks.
1) if I fill an object with a single Pantone color, create a mesh gradient from it...
Always state WHAT VERSION of Illustrator you are using. Grad mesh did not always support spot colors. Blends still don't.
...using a variety of different opacity settings, say 100%, 50% and 25%...
Don't confuse "opacity" with "tints." What Illustrator calls "opacity" and "transparency" usually involves rasterization and/or conversion to process color.
... then play around with the mesh handles to produce a pleasant, mixed background, will a gradient of this type work for screen printing?
It will work for screen printing IF:
The particular screen printing setup adequately supports halftoning.
The mesh is built appropriately for the color separation model (spot, process, or process-plus-spot) that will be used to print it. Again, you have to be aware of the number of INKS that you are designing for, and make sure your design does not require more than that when it is color-separated (think "ink-separated").
Current version Illustrator provides a color-separation preview feature, which can save you alot of grief if you use it. If using an earlier version, but have Acrobat Pro, save the file as a PDF, open it in Acrobat, and use its Separation Preview feature. If using an earlier version and do not have Acrobat Pro, "print" as color-separations to a PDF virtual printer like Adobe PDF. Then open the PDF in Reader and study the separate pages. (Screen print jobs are, in fact, often delivered as such a pre-separated PDF.)
I don't know if a gradient of this type will require halftones, as a linear or radial gradient would.
Based on the above, you should now know that. Yes, ANYTHING that involves graduated color requires (at least a simulation of) "graduated ink". Since "graduated ink" does not exist, halftoning (or some other kind of tone screening--there are others) is required in order to simulate it.
2) it's my understanding that when you prepare artwork for screen printing using spot colors, each color should be on its own layer.
No. Absolute nonsense. (Don't believe everything you find written by self-proclaimed "experts" or "tutors" on the web, no matter how fancy you think their demonstrations are.) If that were true, then how, (for just one example) could you possibly screen print a rectangle with a spot-to-spot grad fill? The path containing that grad resides on one Layer, doesn't it?
In an attempt to add highlights or shadows to an object, if I copy an object and paste it in front of itself, then apply a gradient using another Pantone spot color, say Pantone Process Black(100% to 0% opacity), does it matter what the blending mode is?
Yes, it matters. Blending Modes has to do with so-called "transparency" effects. Again, anytime you muck around with "transparency" you increase the liklihood of rasterization and/or conversion to process at output. You would be safer setting that copied, pasted, grad-filled object to overprint. Halftoning will still be required, at least on the separation corresponding to the ink(s) for that grad.
Obviously you'll get different results based on the option you choose... I'm concerned here only with screen printing.
If you are designing for SPOT COLOR screen printing (as opposed to process color), stay away from transparency effects unless/until you understand what you're doing.
I can then place the gradient on the Black layer.
Again, forget Layers corresponding to ink separations. A total misconception. Utterly unnecessary.
The problem is that I'm familiar with off-set printing, and apparently gradients have to be converted into halftones when screen printing, so I'm trying to figure out the best way of creating shadows and highlights.
The best way to create shading is HIGHLY dependent upon the technical capabilities of the specific screen printing shop. Always ask:
Can the shop support halftoning?
If so, what is the maximum halftone ruling (LPI) they can reliably hold on the particular target substrate? (If they don't understand this question, either stick to line art or find another screen shop.)
This does not mean that you cannot do shaded artwork without halftoning. (In fact, much of the most stunning screen-printed work is done entirely as line art.) Designer fully acquainted with the limitations of screen printing commonly employ artwork shading techniques to avoid the need for halftoning altogether. They use hatching or stippling or contour linework to build "shading" into the artwork, and all inks are printed as line art. In this regard, preparing artwork for screen printing is often more "creatively rewarding" because you first, understand the real-world limitations of the reproduction method and, second, devise clever and original artwork methods to work within those limitations.
But it's not something anyone can give you a step-by-step, one-size-fits-all-situations crash course in, in an online forum.
JET
JET

Similar Messages

Mesh tool and pantone colors.

Hello,
I'm trying to make a logo using the mesh tool. I have to use pantone colors, since it will be used on a bussinesscard.
Now, I'm experiencing the following problem: I select a darker color on the bottom part of the object, and the gradient is going from dark, to light, to normal.
Why is this happening? Is it because I'm using pantones? it just looks icky.
Thank you!
Image:
[IMG]http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b338/Aetza/drop.png[/IMG]
I clicked three times, so I have three horizontal and three vertical lines. The light part is happening between two lines.

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Also, I have no knowledge of printstuff.
And because of that, others here are trying to help you avoid getting yourself into trouble. Before anyone actually starts charging money for doing design or prep work for commercial print, they really should consider it their responsibilty to (what a concept!) actually be at least familiar with the printing process. Otherwise, if you present yourself as a for-print designer, you really are defrauding the customer.
Take a course at the local tech school; work part time in a press room for peanuts, just to learn. At the very least, get someone to give you a functional tour of a press room whenever you can.
It's not rocket science; it's mostly just simple mehanics. But it is also not just a simple matter of re-purposing your RGB web work. (In fact, that's backward; usually you should design for print first and then repurpose for web.)
As soon as you start talking about real ink-on-paper, you're talking about real labor and materials and real time on some really expensive equipment. Commercial offset printing is very competitive. Printing houses by necessity quote jobs according to the assumtion that jobs incomming from external preparers are built right, i.e.; that the external designer knows what he's doing. You can't expect a printing house to eat the costs involved in fixing your file-preparation mistakes.
In short, the printing world is chock-full of very bad relationships between angry designers who think they know what they're doing (often these days just because they've been doing some design work for the web) and printing houses who know they don't. Trust me: You don't need that stigma. A print designer should consider it a matter of necessity to develop very strong relationships with printing houses, based on mutual professional respect. Without that, you really won't be competitive, no matter how artfully talented you consider yourself.
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
But it really is a pantone
There is no such thing as "a pantone". Pantone is a brand; it's a company. The various Pantone libraries are just sets of standardized spot color or process color specs published by Pantone, and used to communicate colors to printing houses. Pantone is not the only set of spot colors, but it is the most commonly-recognized in offset lithography printing; it predates graphics computers by decades.
When designing a file intended for color-separation (i.e.; mass printing), your concern is whether it will be printed in spot color or process color (or, in some cases, a combination of both). In order for your file to color-separate correctly, you have to build it correctly.
And color separation is not the only issue; there are other issues that affect whether the job prints correctly, such as trapping and total ink density. For example, spot color is by its nature less forgiving when you neglect the matter of trapping.
All printing is a matter of production economy. In the matter of process vs. spot color, several practical factors come into play, including the paper type, the specific press which will run the job, and even the nature of the artwork itself (ex: line-art vs. continuous-tone, tightness of the color registration, and others).
When designing for color-separated print, don't think in terms of "colors"; think in terms of real-world, physical inks. Basically, Your job is to deliver to the printing house a file which contains one image per ink--especially with spot color (i.e.; what far too many people think of as synonomous with "Pantone"). Don't think of a spot color as a "color"; think of it as an ink.
Offset presses have a separate ink well for each ink that will be printed. Each ink hits the paper at a different time as the sheet passes through the press. At the typical small-to-medium printing house, bread & butter jobs like business cards are usually run on smallish presses. Those are seldom more than 4-color presses, and are often 2-color presses. If, in your artwork, the number of separation colors exceeds then number of ink wells on the specific press, the job cannot be printed in one pass; the paper has to be re-run to apply the full number of inks and that entails another press set-up operation--which you pay for.
So if (as it sounds) you take the admonition to "use Pantone colors" to simply mean 'make sure all the colors you use are selected from the Pantone Swatch Library', you are already in trouble. Each time you add a color from a spot color library to your file, you are necessitating another ink well on the press.
If you've read and seriously considered the above, you'll understand that, by and large, it is rarely practical (cost efficient) to design a piece containing more than three spot colors. As soon as you need more than three colors, you should be considering 4-color (CMYK) process.
(Higher-end printing is frequently done involving more than four inks; it is not uncommon for sheetfed work to be process-plus-1 or process-plus-2 spot inks. Multi-pass jobs can involve foils, metallic inks, and varnishes. But such "glitzy" printing is knowingly extravagant and is still carefully prepared for to maximize economy within the requirements. Although it certainly can be, such extravagance is not usually the kind of thing used for the typical business card project.)
JET

I want to print or export (PDF) a design with a indication of the used pantone colors without the separations so that our customer can see them (not CMYK)

Before i used CS illustrator i was able to indicate the used pantone colors on a print or PDF with coreldraw.
Can anyone tell me how to make such a print with CS6.
My clients have to see the used Pantone colors in the design (not CMYK)

Add your spot colors to your swatches panel (Window> Swatch Library> Color Books> Pantone+ Solid Coated>)
In the fly-out menu on the swatches panel, select all unused swatches and delete. Also delete any unused swatch groups.
File> Document set-up> make the bleed .5".
Use the type tool to indicate the spot colors on the outside edge of the bleed area, make the type color match the indicated spot color.
Save as PDF. This PDF printed with bleed will show the spot colors. Alternately, you could select "add crop marks and color bar" in the print settings, which should also indicate the spot colors.
In InDesign you can add a Slug area to your page, where the spot colors would typically be added.

I am using pantone color codes, but my printer is not getting a close color match. What can I do to get a close color match?

Is there settings in CS5 Illustrator version 15.0.0 that I can set to get a closer match on the pantone color codes?

Tara,
What happens if you save the file to PDF and print from Acrobat/Reader?
Is there a PostScript (emulation) printer driver for the printer, and if so, what happens if you use that?
If you print a CMYK document through a non PostScript driver, you will have a conversion from CMYK to RGB and then a conversion from RGB to CMYK, so you may expect any colour to be off.

Created a multi-colored brush using pantone colors

Hi, I am trying to create a multi-colored brush comprised of a single pantone color at different opacity settings, i.e. 100%, 75% and 25%. All of the multi-colored brushes I've seen have a variety of different colors, this is not what I need. Is this possible, or perhaps there are already brushes that will allow me to alter the color patterns. I would like to change colors and their respective opacity if possible.
Any help you can provide would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Mark

Mark,
As I (mis)understand it, you may create an object with the desired colours and transparencies and shape(s), and then turn it into an Artbrush, which will then be stretched to fit the path and adapted in width through the Stroke Weight, or proportionally adapted, depending on your settings.

Pantone color changes modes from Illustrator to InDesign

I have a logo designed in Illustrator that uses Pantone color 5275 C. When I place it in InDesign, the color is dull and dark. In my Color palette, it says the spot color is based on the LAB mode instead of CMYK. I've never seen that happen before in earlier InDesign versions. How do I get the color mode to match what it is in Illustrator?

In Illustrator you get the Pantone libraries via Window>Swatch Libraries>Color Books>Pantone + Solid Coated. When you have the library open a selected swatch will show in the Color panel :
InDesign is different. You get a Pantone color via Swatches>New Color Swatch>Pantone + Solid Coated>choose a desired color swatch

How do I match a pantone color in Photoshop

I need to match a pantone color in CMYK for a shape I need to print can someone help

Adobe Photoshop contains support for the PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE libraries. PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE is the physical guide which displays a side-by-side match between PANTONE solid colors, and explicit CMYK simulations, including the CMYK values used to print the Guide. These explicit CMYK values are provided within the PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE libraries.
Adobe CS6 contains native support for the updated PANTONE PLUS SERIES versions of PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE, with the exception of the 336 newest PANTONE colors launched in April 2012. To access the 336 newest colors for Adobe CS6, or for older versions of the Adobe suite, the libraries can be exported from PANTONE Color Manager software, which is provided free of charge with purchase and registration of any PANTONE PLUS SERIES product. Details of how to obtain and use PANTONE Color Manager software can be found at http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/pantone.aspx?pg=21054&ca=12. You can also e-mail Pantone support directly at [email protected]
Best regards,
John Stanzione
Manager - Technical Support
Pantone, LLC

Can I easily match Pantone colors using Illustrator?

Hi all,
I run a small invitation supply company.
Our primary design tool up until now has been Photoshop Elements.
We recently purchased a $6000 printer from Xerox which is the 'gold standard' for graphic arts and Pantone approved.
We also have a pantone color bridge. When I print a color using the hex code, the color looks NOTHING like the pantone swatch.
I contacted Xerox and they told me that because Elements has a very low degree of color management that we will never be able to easily color match our pantone swatches and that they aren't surprised the color is way off.
I suppose I naively figured that spending $6000 on a printer would get us easy and flawless color matching. Xerox says- not so.
They suggested investing in Illustrator and they are convinced that it will be much more likely to get us to the point that we want. Ultimately I want to be able to pick a color from the pantone deck, enter the code, and feel confident that the print will come out 100% the corresponding color.
Am I living a pipe dream?
I would like some feedback before proceeding.
On top of the financial investment, obviously there is a lot of time that my partner and I will have to spend learning Illustrator.
Any input would be great.
Thanks,
Aaron

Am I living a pipe dream?
Yes.
More precisely, you are just failing to understand the fundamental difference between spot color and process color.
I want to be able to pick a color from the pantone deck, enter the code, and feel confident that the print will come out 100% the corresponding color.
Not gonna happen, even if you do all the tedious color management setup you can.
The above assumes you are, in fact, talking about matching Pantone spot colors. (Pantone does not just publish spot color swatches, but that is the usual sense in which beginners refer to Pantone.)
A spot color is, by definition, an actual, physical, single ink which is loaded into a press. The only way to achieve your 100% pipedream is to load that actual, physical, single ink into your $6000 printer.
But that's how a printing press works, not how your $6000 printer works. It works by printing four "primary colors" of inks and then arranging tiny dots of them in proximity to each other in order to "trick" the eye into seeing them as a mixture of colors on the page in proportions which try to approximate the spot color as best it can.
But physical inks are simply not accurate enough to actually do that. There are many, many spot colors which simply cannot be replicated by mixing arrays of primary colors of inks. That's what all this "gamut" talk is about. That's one reason why spot color inks exist.
The Pantone spot color matching system is a means by which to consistently communicate proportional mixtures of actual, real, physical inks of known specific colors. All anyone (including Pantone) can do with the CMYK inks (or dyes) in a desktop printer is try to recommend percentages of those CMYK inks to best approximate a match to an actual, physical spot color ink.
It gets worse. Your monitor cannot actually match a spot color ink swatch, either. Your monitor glows. Ink doesn't. Even on tediously calibrated systems, there is more to perceived "color" than just numerical values of CMYK or RGB or HSL or Lab. There is chroma. There is reflectance. There is opacity. There is grain.
Then there's the whole matter of the incredibly context-sensitive adaptabability of human vision.
So if you are selling the output of your $6000 printer as the final product, you should not use Pantone spot color swatches as any kind of contract color specification, because your printer cannot actually print spot color inks. If you're doing color-critical work that the customer will refuse when specified colors don't match, you and your customer must specify colors which your device can actually produce.
JET

Extract Pantone color from the PDF using c#.

hi i have an requirement to extact pantone color from PDF. So i had decided will go for acrobat.dll or illustrator library to get pantone and other color from the PDF.Can you please help me out how to proceed and get pantone color from PDF using c#.thanku in advance

If the PDF has Pantone colors in it, you can use output preview to see it. If you want a Pantone equivalent of a CMYK value you can do this:
In Illustrator, make a cmyk swatch of the desired color, open the Color Guide panel (Window > Color Guide), then press the Swatch Library button in the panel's lower left corner and choose color books> Pantone+solid coated. Clicking the first color in the Color Harmony section (the Base Color) at the top of the panel will add the closest PMS Spot Color equivalent to your Swatches panel.
There is often no exact 4/C match for a spot color, but this method will get you in the ballpark.

Not sure how to match color more closely...use Pantone?

HI,
I've done everything possible to get a certainly red color I want in my ID manuscript, from setting color profiles, snyching across applications, monitor calibration, soft-proofing etc.etc etc. What I see on my monitor with the publishers profiles is NOT what I'm getting on my printer (R1900). I guess that's to be expected.
The publisher has it's own CMYK profile for their printer so i can't use theirs. There are so many different ways to configure printer management from letting ID manage color, using various Epson settings....all this stuff. Even if I get the color right on my printer, that doesn't mean it'll match the publishers, so why even try to get it right on my printer?
Actually, my document may even print fine with the publishers. Not being able to have more reassurance of the publishers outcome leaves me queasy! But I guess I have to play my hand.
So is the only way to know is wait for the hard copy? what about using Pantone? I don't know anything about that, but aren't they for spot colors, or at least I could find something closer that way. If there is a color I like, use those numbers rather than the ones I am.
Ideas?

Color management is an attempt to put into play .icc color profiles. This starts in your application's color settings. But, working with your print vendor is the best policy in preparing your files and getting what you want consistently. The Epson R1900 is a photographic printer. It is not an inkjet proofing device like an Epson Stylus Pro 3880 with a Colorburst RIP. I sense that, because the R1900 is not backed up with a RIP, you'd benefit from "Let InDesign determine color". However, the print driver is responsible for interpreting the information supplied from the application in an attempt to convert that info to an actual print. The challenge for you and your applications, along with your hardware limitations, is to give you a reasonable "red" that you are looking for. In short, you would benefit from assigning a Pantone Spot color for the specific Red you are looking for. The only problem is getting that Red to print on your R1900. And, the only way to get that to happen is using CMYK equivalents which you have been wrestling with. In a RIP ( Raster Image Processor ) scenario, you would use the printer's profile in the Print setup dialogs. Let's assume they are using "SWOP Coated v2 Sheetfed". You would assign that profile in your application's Color Settings under CMYK Workspace. Then, in your "Print" dialog, you'd set the same profile in the CMYK print space. But, in a RIP scenario, you'd let the RIP determine color rather than the application. That's the value of a RIP over a photographic printer where color matching is not a priority. It sounds like you'd benefit using a Pantone Spot. If you decided to use a Pantone Spot Red in your document, you would need the RIP and Proffer to produce an accurate color matched conversion in the Print process. With your current setup you will get mixed results from your print vendor. In any case, at a minimum, you should get a contract proof before you approve the project for press. This will give you an opportunity to adjust the CMYK equivalents or finalize a decision to go Pantone Spot before the job is ultimately printed. Now, again, a Postscipt Level 3 RIP matched up to a professional printer/proofer will convert your file's assigned Pantone "Red" Spot color and, in the case of the Epson Stylus Pro 3880, the printer will use it's 8 internal ink sets to produce a relatively close match to your Spot color.
"I've done everything possible to get a certainly red color I want in my ID manuscript, from setting color profiles, snyching across applications, monitor calibration, soft-proofing etc.etc etc. What I see on my monitor with the publishers profiles is NOT what I'm getting on my printer (R1900). I guess that's to be expected."
Yes. Get a hardcopy proof instead of relying on the R1900.
"The publisher has it's own CMYK profile for their printer so i can't use theirs. There are so many different ways to configure printer management from letting ID manage color, using various Epson settings....all this stuff. Even if I get the color right on my printer, that doesn't mean it'll match the publishers, so why even try to get it right on my printer?"
It would help, if you continue to do this type of work, to get a desktop proofer like the one I've mentioned in my post. You want to "try" to get color matched output so that you are communicating what it is you want before getting to the printer, especially if you have an internal approval process you have to go through.
"Actually, my document may even print fine with the publishers. Not being able to have more reassurance of the publishers outcome leaves me queasy! But I guess I have to play my hand."
Not necessarily. Get the proof. You do not want 200,000 copies of your manuscript floating around out there with a rose pink instead of a flaming red.
"So is the only way to know is wait for the hard copy? what about using Pantone? I don't know anything about that, but aren't they for spot colors, or at least I could find something closer that way. If there is a color I like, use those numbers rather than the ones I am."
Yes. A Pantone Spot color is actually a very smart decision. And your InDesign document must be setup using that Spot color, not CMYK. For instance, let's say you settle on Pantone 206C for the cover and Pantone 206U for the uncoated text pages ( if any ). It's a simple 2-color job. Black + Pantone 206. If you want to print the file on your R1900, then you will convert a swatch using 0%C, 100%M, 30%Y, 3%K in a COPY of your Spot Color file. Send the Pantone Spot Color file to the publisher and keep the COPY in your folder for reference if need be.
This is my recommendation and I know it will work for you. Should the publisher insist on using a CMYK color mix, let them do it and supply you with a hardcopy proof before it goes to press. This is avery important no matter what you decide. The proof is very important part of the entire process.

Pantone color(s) information for web use

How to embed the Pantone color(s) information in a Logo PDF? I have tried to upload a logo pdf, however the Pantone colors information could not be recognized on the web platform. Is it possible to embed the color information for web use?

Here was the javascript error message:

I want to use multiple colors in the same box - Pantone plus process. I am trying to create a support plate of cyan under a PMS.

I want to use multiple colors in the same box - Pantone plus process. I am trying to create a support plate of cyan under a PMS.

How is the external drive formatted?
Allan

Using Mesh Gradient CS4 Without Strange Shapes

Take a look at the above picture its the start of a mesh gradient. Why are these lines not stright how do I get them stright? It seems be because I'm using a shape that's not a circle or square but I just want stright lines so that when I use the control handles and move points of the gradient mesh I know where they are going to end up. Right now its like I move the point where I want it and because of this bend in the line I have no control over it doesn't work right very frustating how do I fix it? Second problem when creating the mesh gradient itself I click one the boundry lines of the object it creates a new gradient mesh point and then it picks the other side for me or the end point for me what if I wanted to pick it myself? What if I want a gradient line to start in one place and end in another I cannot do that? How do I do it? Third problem once the gradient lines have been made how do I move them without warping the object?
I've looked at two video tutorials now with no explination all they show is examples with circles and squares which isn't any help. Can someone give me a hand here thanks.

Yes, that's a rather erratic behaviour. It's NOT as Mylenium
describes (without naming it) the task 'topological skeleton'
or 'medial axis'. Such a medial axis would end inside of the
shape instead of going from boundary to boundary. And it
would consist in non-trivial cases of more branches than
required by the mesh curves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medial_axis
For your shape it would be fair, that AI said 'sorry, cannot
make the mesh automatically'. Your task doesn't have a unique
and plausible solution.
My suggestion: start with a circle and choose here the mesh
automatically. Then apply the necessary modifications (new
Bézier points, sharp instead of smooth corners, deformations).
And always keep track by deforming your mesh manually, by
appearance.
I'm drawing any closed path (except polygons) starting with a
circle.
Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann

How do I get transparency in my mesh gradient?

I'm trying to create a simple mesh gradient that fades from white in the middle to transparent on the outside. But as soon as I touch any node of my transparent (just unfilled, not 0% opacity) shape with the mesh tool, the entire shape fills with 100% opaque color and won't allow transparency. How do I make the outer nodes transparent/unfilled again? Clicking the "no" slash in the color palette doesn't do anything, and the transparency palette only applies transparency to the entire shape, not individual nodes. Do I have to make a black-and-white mesh gradient as an opacity mask?

You did not mention which version your using or OS.
So I am not sure if this is different in earlier versions.
Select the point on the mesh and instead of selecting a color fron the color swatches, at the top of the screen you should see opacity and a percentage. just drag it to 0 for 100% transparency.

How can I use custom colors and not presets when using Smart Brush Tool Color?

I don't see a way to use the color picker tool or change the color to custom colors. Please help.

seodude wrote:
I don't see a way to use the color picker tool or change the color to custom colors. Please help.
This tool employs a gradient adjustment layer. In the layers palette, double click the layer thumbnail, not the name.
Then, double click the gradient bar to bring up the gradient editor.

Mesh gradients using pantone colors

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