Overprint preview spot colors

Hey All,
one of my collegues brought something to my attention and we are wondering why Illustrator does it. Here is the situation.
We create two layers. Layer one contains some objects filled with process colors.
The second layer contains an object filled with a spot color and the layer is set to non-printing.
When you open the separations panel and turn on overprint preview it seems that the spot color is converted (temporarily) to process. When you turn of the spot plate the object still show and starts to disappear when you turn of the process plates.
The spot object does however disappear when it's plate is hidden once it's layer is set to printing.
Why does Illustrator do this?
We expect the spot object to disappear when the plate is turned off in any situation.

You are right experiencing the same here, and agree with you that the spot should not show in cmyk when the layer is set to not print. 
Turn off show (or the visibility eyeball) for the spot layer if this bothers you.
Looks like a bug, I believe have originally seen many versions ago, and never been resolved cause not many people asked to get this fixed.

Similar Messages

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    Absolutely.
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    Not sure about Proof Colours but you can select Overprint Preview in the New Document dialogue.
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  • Why would my spot colors not show up under my separations preview?

    I just sent a job back to press that has 2 spot colors. I let the rip do the separations and I got 3 plates. Black and my 2 spot colors. There is no black that I'm aware of in the document but when I previewed it at the rip, it showed stuff on the black plate.
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    IDCS2

    Perhaps add the swatch icon to the sep preview, and use a combo icon, the process sq with the spot circle in the middle. But the swatch would out of necessity be unselectable and grayed, so perhaps that would be sufficent. And then there would be the problem of using with more than 10 spots (not unusual for me, BTW), when the preview would be all grayed.
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  • Only 1 spot color of Linked 2-channel Photoshop image appears in acrobat 9.0

    I just installed CS 4 design premium. I have a 2-color business package that was created in Illustrator CS2 with 2-color Photoshop links (spot color multichannel files saved as Photoshop DCS 2.0/eps).
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    All I want to do is send my client a final proof. How can get it to appear accurately on my pdf?

    Output Preview invokes Overprint Preview. Since the file displays as expected with Output Preview open, the Overprint Preview may be necessary to view the file properly.
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    If you are sending a PDF to your client to view, they will need to look at the file with Overprint Preview on. They can download Reader 9 which will allow them to turn on Overprint Preview. Reader's default is also PDF/X compliant files, but this can be changed in the same Preferences area.

  • 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.
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    [-> 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. 
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  • Overprint preview + white ink = trouble

    Is there _effective_ and _efficient_ way to preview % tints when artwork ink is lighter color than background paper/shirt/etc.? (Have same prob in Illus and InD.) This prob is similar to other threads but not quite same issue, I believe.
    Examples: (1) Vector t-shirt art, one color ink (prob opaque white) on darker shirts, or (2) silver ink on black cover stock invitations.
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    --romy
    Lo-res from screenshot attached, as example.

    I fully understand your problem. Does an opacity mask help?
    Say you have a black background (the colour of your t-shirt which you can keep on a back layer, locked so that it's out of the way).
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  • Using 'Screen' effect overtop of a spot color

    Hi there,
    This forum has been great to me so far and I hope it continues. I have a line drawing that I have set at 100% black (0,0,0,100). I have placed it overtop of a spot color and added the 'Screen' 100% effect to it. Unfortunately when view it in overprint preview and save a pdf print file the effect doesn't show and the entire line drawing dissapears? Looking for answers. Thank you.

    As long as it's white I don't think it'll be a problem - but the screen effect probably won't do that much anyway in this case.
    Preparing for press printing with spotcolors mixed with other colors needs planning accordingly to ensure good results - and I'm not sure where this one is ending up.
    I this case to ensure correct separation, I would just tint the spotcolor until target reached.
    Torben.

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