Spot colors merging?

Hello everybody!
I was recently assigned to do the layout / editorial design of a small magazine.
It consisted of illustrations by various artists and was printed with two inks. A typical situation I would say.
I asked all the illustrators to send me their files as .ais or .pdfs and that they already had assigned to (random) spot colors (with a hint on their names about the order and their desired overprints).
I had in mind that it would be rather simple that upon importing them in InDesign I would just merge the corresponding spot colors of each illustration to the two ones that were actually used.
Well, of course I learned the hard way that this kind of merging in not possible in InDesign (unlike Illustrator).
So, what would your technique be to merge spot colors that import with files to the ones are actually going to be printed / chosen.
Thanks in advance!

@P Spier and @Steve Werner
Thanks for your quick replies.
I actually knew about the Ink Alias feature (this is eventually the way I did it) but it is not that convenient
as I got around 30 spot swatches in my Swatches panel and a lot of aliases in the Ink Manager so it was at least confusing.
The Separations Preview does help but when actually designing is distracting to have all the imported graphics using different colors.
Again, thanks for your help.

Similar Messages

  • Merging Spot Colors in Distiller

    I am using ArcGIS (ArcINFO License) Production Line Tool Set to output an EPS file containing about 15-16 individual spot colors. These spot colors are divided into 5 different main colors: Black, Gold, Magenta, Blue and Green. Each plate refers to a specific tint percentage (For instance, there is a 100% Black, 49% Black, 25% Black, etc.) What I need to do is to merge all the Blacks, Golds, Magentas, etc. into the five main colors as individual plates. Can this be done in Adobe Distiller? Any ideas on how to do this?
    Thanks.

    Also check the EPS' are they vector or raster separations? Haven't used PLTS but when I was looking intro setting overprints with Arc I found the only way was with PLTS but this generated raster files for the plates. If they are raster you may be able to combine in Photoshop with an action without any degradation.
    One thing to keep in mind layering these separations is what happens when a tint overlays a solid ink or vice versa?
    But I'm pretty sure you should be able to output the tints on the same fileWe have a meeting with ESRI's PLTS product manager tomorrow so while I won't be able to go into depth I'll run it past him.
    Also I wouldn't recommend Illustrator due to the complexity of maps that are usually output via this method and also the fact some postscript objects sometimes go a bit haywire when opened into Illustrator and these are often things not immediately apparent.

  • Dear Spot Color Printing Gods......... Please Help Me!

    Ok so here is my story...
    I have been doing graphic design and 3D work for about 7 years. I have NEVER worked in print before, and no NOTHING of color separation or spot color, etc... I am learning all this right now on the fly for my new job, and its not going well.  I was hired and expected to hit the ground running, even though I made it clear I did not have any screen printing experience. (I was mainly hired to help with web design) I have had some mistakes doing the color separation (not 4 color) and its costing the printer money to see if I did it wrong or not.  The printer has no experience with the software (and only speaks English fairly well), nor does my boss know the software, but they both know how its SUPPOSED to look, and they are getting impatient.. Needless to say, I have to turn to the internet for help, so please be gentle with me not knowing much...
    SO....Im a PC user working on a Mac & Illustrator Cs3(I know Mac fairly well).  I have learned the basics pretty fast for screen printing.  The printer is using spot colors only.  After I get the Illustrator file (yes its vector), I delete all swatches except the "Pantone Solid Coated" colors used in the art - or I have to add them from the Solid Coated color book.  After that, I would separate the colors by 1) Duplicating the image however many times that there are colors. (So a splat of soup has 3 colors, I duplicate it 3 times with register marks)  2) I remove all the color except the one Im trying to show. (Im showing the green peas, so I remove the red and yellow colors from the other objects) 3) then I make what the printer calls the "Flash" (the white undertone that the paint adheres to on the garment)  I make this by taking the art, and reducing the size to 1pt smaller.  Once all the colors are seperated, I make each color 100% black, convert the image to grayscale and THEN Im done.  Problems I have been running into have been registration marks somehow not lining up and some colors do not end up 100% spot tones.. One other wierd thing is when I convert to grayscale on the Mac, the art work retains its color on the screen.  When I tried to do that at home on my PC, the artwork turns gray????
    WHEW!  So what I am asking for is a fast, simple way to color seperate a vector file and then create the flash.  And/or how to create a template that I can reuse, that is ready for me to just drop artwork into for spot color seperation.   I have included an image to show you a project I am working on.  Its an  ice cream spill on a shirt.  I have tried to start a template with reg. marks, and that is what you will see here.  There are 5 colors that I have to specify.  The printer actually told me that I do not need to split up the art work the way I have been, nor do I need to change it to black, and all that I have to do is specify all the colors,(spot colors/100% only) and then the printer does the seperation on the clear film. (it only prints in black)  I was also curious why my PC would change the artwork gray and the Mac does not when converting to grayscale.  I thank you VERY MUCH for even reading this maddness that is my life right now, and hope you can give me some helpful wisdom to assist and lead me on my journey.  The job pays well, and I need the money badly!  Thank you very much for any and all help you can give me!
    ~LiQ

    Some misconceptions evidenced in your post.
    You don't have to use a Pantone library to create spot colors. Pantone is just one brand of spot color definitions and inks intended for offset lithography; not screen printing. You can define any color you want as a Swatch and then specify it as Spot. A Spot color is simply a color that represents an individual ink that will be physically used in the printing process. Therefore, if you want to please your boss:
    1. Get the color chip brochure for the particular brand(s) of screen ink your operation uses.
    2. Open Illustrator. New CMYK document. Delete all the Swatches that can be deleted.
    3. In the Swatches palette, for each color of your screen inks, create a new Swatch. Use the CMYK sliders to make its color match the ink as best you can. Name the swatch according to the name of the actual screen ink (ex: Nazdar_BrilliantBlue). In fact, the ink manufacturer(s) you use may already provide a ready-made Illustrator Swatch Library for their various series of inks. Check their websites to see.
    4. After creating the swatches, save the Library, and/or save the file as a tempate file. Now you'll always have your Spot colors available for new projects.
    Now just draw your design and apply the spot colors to the paths as fills and/or strokes. When you print the file as separations, you'll get a separate print for each spot color used. One of the simplest ways to "proof" (test) this is to "print" as separations to the Adobe PDF virtual printer. That will result in a PDF file that has one grayscale page for each ink in your design. That way, you can check what overprints and what knocks out on screen without wasting time or materials. Once confident everything is right, you can then use the PDF to print the actual film positives.
    One of your swatches should be a spot white for your underprint. ( "Flash" is not actually an ink color. It's a production step in which a dryer semi-dries an imprinted ink before overprinting it with another. You usually flash a white underprint, but you just as often flash any color with significant density that needs to be overprinted with a following color.) Understand, you don't have to make this swatch actually appear white. For example, I often make it a pale magenta just so I can see it on screen when working with it.
    Just because the white underprint is going to be printed underneath the other colors, doesn't mean it has to be layered under your other colors in your Illustrator document. Remember, each ink is going to be printed to its own plate anyway. So it's simpler to just put your white underprint objects on a Layer above the rest of the artwork, and set it to overprint, so that it doesn't knock out the rest of the artwork on layers below it in the stacking order.
    Assuming the white underprint has to underprint all the other colors, creating the white underprint should be the near-last step. It's simply a matter of duplicating the colored artwork objects, moving them to the Underprint layer, filling/stroking them with the spot white color and (for efficiency) merging them into as few paths as possible. The Merge or Union Pathfinder commands are typically used for that.
    JET

  • Spot colors not being saved.

    In CS6 I have been having random situations where the spot color channels are not saved when saving a .psd, regardless of the settings in the save dialog box. Any idea of why this might be happening? I've even had the program dump the spot colors from a multichannel document today while trying to find a workaround. I considered converting the spot colors to alpha channels as well, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to do that. Odd, as alpha to spot color conversion is just a radio button away. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

    This is on an Intel I Mac running Maverics 10.91 (lots of problems with that).
    These are RGD documents at 8 bits per channel. The layers have always been merged at this point.
    The spot colors involved are mostly book colors (Pantone Solid coated), though the program drops custom spot colors (u-white in the screen shot) as well on the occasions when it happens. This began occuring with CS6. I have noted in the forums that the book definitions may have changed, I am revising my actions to move to the current book definitions, though why this would affect a user defined spot color is unclear.In the cases where this occurs, only the "Art Mask" channel would be saved (it's an alpha).

  • Cannot change spot colors to process

    Using the Swatch Options feature to change a CMYK spot color to a CMYK process color does not work. I click on the Save button and nothing happens. Cannot change global feature either. Nor does "Delete Swatches" work with multiple selections, or "Merge" Anyone else having this Swatches malfunction?

    You can delete multiple swatches and you can merge swatches and if global swatches all instances of that color will change to the new color. If thye new color is cmyk swatch that will be the result for all instances of that color as long as it was applied by the fiormer swatch.
    Now the idea of merging multiple swatches does work but all selected swatches mergte to that one swatch.
    You might want to look at the Edit>EditColor>Recolor Art Feature.
    But it is possible you have something locked on your artwork and that might prevent the change.

  • Help converting to 2 spot colors

    Hello All,
    I am ashamed to say I am a teacher in a vocational high school that doesn't know much about
    computer programs.  I am an old camera/stripper person. I have been teaching 24 years and am well
    versed in PageMaker, In=Design and Photoshop.
    What I am trying to do is the following.
    I am trying to convert a vector image into 2 spot colors.
    For example:  I have a wreath and bow    I would like to print the wreath in a
    PMS 348 and the bow in 185 Red.
    I can of course do this with process colors, but often the job does not warrant
    using process so I would like to be able to print using solid PMS colors.
    I think that is it in a nutshell.  I have tried to work in Photoshop but have had no luck.
    My questions are:
    1. - I am using a Vector image from an artbook CD. - Is this good?
    2. - Can I convert a picture downloaded from the internet?
    3. - How can i learn to do this? - I have looked for online help and the school will not pay
    for me to take a course.
    Lastly, I understand layers well but have little to no knowledge of Channels
    I sure would like to be able to show the students how to do this.  Does anyone know how to do this
    or where I can view  tutorial on this matter.
    I sure would appreciate any help.   Thanks   Print Dad

    You don’t say what version of Illustrator, but regardless if you already have vector art I’d stay away from converting a rasterized image to vector.  There are relatively easy ways of doing what you want with a vector image with the merge swatch feature, but that depends on what sort of vector image you have.  Presumably the vector wreath you are working with is made up of a number of rgb or cmyk values.
    1         OK, so you are starting with a vector image, that’s a good start.  Are you positive it is vector?  In Illustrator can you see all the points when you select the object, and not just one big square?
    2         You could convert a picture from the internet, but that would not work nearly as well.
    3  See below:
    Delete all the swatches from you pallet.  Drag a 185 & 348 swatch from the pantone pallet to your swatch pallet.
    Set the Magic Wand to a useful value (double click on the wand to bring up the dialog box).  The lower the value the more work you’ll have to do, but you’ll wind up with more shades of red and green).
    Click on the most saturated area of red with the Magic Wand Tool.  Click on your 185 red swatch.  Hide the newly minted resulting 185 red (Ctrl-3).
    Click on the next most saturated area of red with the Magic Want Tool.  Click on your 185 red swatch.  On your color pallet, reduce the pantone 185 red to less than 100% to taste.  Hide the result with the Ctrl-3 command again. 
    Keep going until there is no red remaining visible, and then do the same with the green.
    When you can see no more remaining parts of the wreath, you should be almost there.  Just to be sure, do Ctrl-A and make sure nothing gets selected (for instance white objects) when you do so.  If nothing gets selected, you should have only the items you have colored.  Use the command Ctrl-Alt-3 to reveal all the items you have hid.  (The hide and unhide are under the OBJECT menu, but the shortcuts are a bit quicker).  If you do have white objects, you can still use the pantone red/green and set the color percentage to 0%.
    Select the print command and print to a postscript device.  (A .pdf output will work if you are not hooked up to a postscript printer).  In the resulting print dialog box click on the “Output” command in the upper left corner.  Under the Mode select “Separations” Hopefully if all went well, under the Document Ink Colors only 185 Red and 348 Green will have a little printer icon next to them.
    No need to concern yourself with channels.

  • Preserving spot colors

    Hello!
    I'm setting up a 2 color poster for printing. I have chosen my colors, Pantone 5425 and Pantone 476, from the color books.
    When I save this document as pdf, spot colors are turned to CMYK - any idea what goes wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated.

    No doubt about it Scott has this correct they are using Solid to Process as the color model.
    The answer to your question is to go back and select eh right color book. The replace the colors with a spot color swatch from either the Solid Coated, Solid Uncoated, Solid Matte, Solid Metallic or Solid Pastel Coated or Uncoated.
    These are the spot color libraries for Pantone.
    The reason you want to go back and select a real spot color is that you do not want to leave it up to Illustrator to match the ink mixture by converting process color information into a physical ink formula.
    So taking the global process color and selecting spot in the swatch option is not a good idea IMO.
    If you only have those two colors in the swatches you can change all the colors by creating a spot swatch from the proper swatch library and then merging the process with the spot.
    An easier way IMO is to use the Edit>Edit Color>Recolor Art you first select al you art and then go to Edit>Edit Color>Recolor Art and at the bottom of the dialog select the Library you want and you will get your match you can make your color group as well and they will be added to the swatch library.
    Here this might make it easy to see.
    http://mysite.verizon.net/wzphoto/Spot.mov
    I only mae the video as the OP seems a bit confused about spot colors.
    I still do not have the volume adjusted for the mic so you have to turn it up if you want to hear me stumble over my own words.
    I actually realize from making the video in this case Illustrator does an accurate job of changing the colors no matter what method you use.
    This method would be more useful if you did not have an already defined color swatch.
    I wish they would make the edit color a panel instead of a dialog.

  • Printing more than 27 spot colors HELP

    I have been printing a document that I use more that 27 spot colors, I use a Xerox Docucolor 240 which supports printing pantone colors.  I have been printing this document for 3 years now when I try to print this document I am getting an error.  It wants me to convert my spot colors to process, but when I do this my colors do not print properly. Any Ideas?  It is very important my colors print correctly for this document, I can not convert them to process.  Why has this stopped working for me now?

    Hi Tracy. I found this post when searching for a solution to the same problem! Our workflow incorporates a lot more spot colours than 27 as we are merging a document which imports graphics/images according to a customer's branding. We have to use spot colours so that we can tweak them to a closer match when temperature/new fiery updates etc change the colours away from the orginal created (our customers have literature printed months, sometimes years later than when created). We simply wouldn't have time to manually input tweaked colour values to all the artwork documents we handle.
    Anyway, Tracy I also ran into the same problem. We used to be fine merging, with each page being created and added so we end up with a multipage file after the merge, and then we can spool to print in one hit. Now all of a sudden we have this error too. No I haven't found a solution either! Please do let us know if you find an answer.

  • 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

  • Can I have "All spots to process" checked at all times, even for new spot colors?

    When I check “All spots to process” in the pdf export settings and save my settings the settings remember that I've checked this option. But, if new spot color objects using new spot color swatches are added to the document (or another document) and I go into the pdf export settings the check mark has been changed into a dash (with the actual checkbox highlighted) – signifying that only some of of the spot colors will be changed to process colors during export. I absolutely fail to see how this could possibly be seen as a feature and not a bug … if the user has checked “ALL spots to process” wouldn't the user expect ALL spots to be converted to process colors, rather than just any spot colors that happened to be in the document that happened to be open when the user first checked that checkbox and saved that setting?
    Am I missing something here? What's the point of even having that checkbox as part of your saved export settings if it doesn't include any other spot colors than those used when saving the settings?
    What's the point of having settings if you can't trust them, and still need to manually "override" them every time?
    I see that some users have taken to writing scripts that instead turn all spot colors in the swatch panel to process colors, and while I commend them for creating that workaround, I'm still pissed at Adobe for not getting the function right.
    If this is a feature, who is it for? People who want to add just certain spot colors and turn those into process colors rather than turning all spot colors into process colors are surely better off doing that in the swatches panel, where they're in total control of what's what. And if they don't want to "permanently" change their spot colors to process colors, and prefer to (temporarily) convert them during exporting/printing only, they can do that in the ink manager. But when someone checks convert "All spots to process" couldn't we safely assume they really want ALL spot colors to be converted and not just some of them? I mean, the way that checkbox behaves now, it's like it's a button and not a checkbox. As in: hit the button "All spots to process" to switch all currently viewed spot colors to process colors in the ink manager, OR check the "All spots to process" checkbox to always convert ALL spot colors to process colors during exporting/printing.
    Anyone got any light to shed on this?
    And is there a way to actually get the advertised behavior, because if you have to run a script every time you export/print you might as well just manually select the checkbox every time instead, but either way it's just really unnecessary as far as I'm concerned … Adobe should get the feature right instead.
    If you save a setting and recall it, it shouldn't be possible for that setting to change into something else (in this case changing a checkmark to a dash).
    Clearly CMYK printing is the norm, so for most users it would make a lot of sense to have the "All spots to process" checked most of the time, and then you just go into the swatches panel or the ink manager and set things correctly for those print jobs that really do need spot colors.
    I myself am not one of those who add spot colors to my swatches unless I'm really using them as spot colors, but I often work with magazines and folders featuring adverts made by whoever, and typically there's always at least one advert that features spot colors, and therefore it would be very nice if the "All spots to process" feature actually worked as advertised without any required actions from me.
    We stopped sending ads back to the advertisers for adjustments a long time ago, unless we absolutely had to, because there were so many things wrong with so many ads that it was simply too much work to write back and explain everything to people who most of the time didn't even understand what we were talking about. We found that it was usually a LOT faster and easier to just adapt the ads ourselves, as long as it was something that could be worked out really quickly from within InDesign itself, which pretty much included most typical errors.
    But with this feature I find Adobe is trying to make my job harder rather than easier, and it's pissing me off. Arrrghh… ;-)

    But It's not a preference it's a shortcut
    It's a bad joke, is what it is. ;-)
    So, why in your opinion should it be presented the way it is? I keep saying in it's current functionality it shouldn't be presented the way it is (and that: if it is, it shouldn't work the way it does). If it's not a preference or even a proper checkbox, why present it that way?
    If you put it right next to the table at the top of the window (so that it's directly associated with that information, rather than information right above it) and just called the checkbox “Spot(s) to process” and had it only visually reflect the content of the sleected spot colors in the table, then I'd see your point with likening it to the “Hyphenate” checkbox.
    If a story has two selected paragraphs that uses two different hyphenation settings then the checkbox should present the way it does now, but if you hit the checkbox so that both paragraphs now use hyphenation and create a third paragraph inbetween the two previous ones it better inherit that setting and not turn off hyphenation for the new paragraph (unless of course there's a defined next paragraph style that switches to a style with hyphenation turned off). And if that checkbox said “Hyphenate all paragraphs” instead, then I would expect it to do just that, and not just the selected ones, and not just the current paragraphs but quite literally all paragraphs even newly created ones – otherwise it doesn't do what it says it does, and simply shouldn't be labeled that way.
    And seriously bad interface design aside, you'd have to rename “All spots to process” to “Switch all currently displayed spot swatches listed in the table above to process” to actually describe what that checkbox does. So even if you're a fan of the current functionality, as opposed to one that actually lets the user set and forget a setting like that, and think it's better that users manually check it repeatedly (which I'm not saying that you are, but you're not giving me any feedback suggesting you even see my point of view with any of this, so what do I know?), then why wouldn't you still support an interface that visually matches/signals that functionality better? If it's a “Select all” checkbox supplementing a table containing a column of checkboxes, then present it that way. Don't put it at the bottom of the window next to another checkbox that works just like a regular checkbox and label it “All spots to process” – because that way you are signalling a different behavior.
    Seriously, if I was to do design using the same mentality that Adobe uses when designing their user interfaces it wouldn't be long before I lost all clients. There's a lot to be said for de facto monopolies, I suppose. Oh no, there's nothing wrong with the design, just as long as you accept it on it's own terms and don't compare it to anything relevant, and just as long as you give people enough time to understand and accept it … and surrender to it.
    For real … I wouldn't win one single pitch that way.
    Today's threads have in many ways been a thorough reminder of the following quote from the second link I provided:
    Is there an Internet rule yet stating that even the most obviously indefensible mistake will eventually be defended by someone somewhere? Awful marketing efforts get explained as genius viral campaigns, broken features become solutions.
    And whether or not you're able to see my point of view or not is really besides the point too.
    The real point was, and remains to be:
    That for those who receive lots of ads or other external files that may or may not contain spot colors it would be far more useful to be able to set a checkbox to always convert all spots to process when exporting, than the current functionality is (and I'm not suggesting eliminating the current functionality, just change so it's presented like what it really is, and then just let that separate checkbox do what it says) … causing unnecessary manual action on the user's behalf shouldn't be the business of Adobe – preventing it should.
    And here's further reading on the subject of bad Adobe interface design for those who might feel so inclined. ;-)
    Cheers!

  • How can I place a transparent psd into Illustrator CS4 without effecting my spot colors?

    So, I'm very naive about printing processes and am working with an online book building company. I've asked them how I need to fix this, but don't expect great advice from their design team.
    When saving in Illustrator, I've been receiving the error:
    "When spot colors are used with transparency, changing them to process colors outside of illustrator can generate unexpected results."
    This effected the printing because it left a halo in the shape of the placed transparent .psd. So I need to know how to flatten the transparent psd or something in order to not have it effect the colors below it.
    Thanks!

    Thanks Monika and John. I've been working in Spot colors simply because my client has limited my palette for the screen printing we've been doing on ceramics in the past. Now we want this book to match the colors on the ceramics. But if Pantone bridge back to CMYK would work, I'll do it. I have been saving to PDF by making a combined pdf directly from the .ai folder. My links are all embedded.
    Is there a way to convert all the colors in the document to CMYK at once? Otherwise I'm looking at a very long week.

  • 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

  • How can I convert CMYK PDF file to Spot Color from a standard Spot Library?

    Hi,
    I have PDF file that is in CMYK colors. Can I use Adobe Pro X to convert the document to Spot Color from a established spot library like the PANTONE PC? Is there a plugin to do it?
    Amit.

    In method HMAC, you have towards the bottom
    catch(Exception e) {}please change this to
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