Ungroup & Change PS spot color channels in illustrator!!

In illustrator, how do you change a photoshop spot color channel that has been imported into illustrator. Ever since Illustrator CS2 you could import a psd into Illustrator and you could ungroup the channels and change the colors. How do you do that in CS3-6? I have been trying to figure this out for years. My old computer with Illustrator 10 is about to die and so will my ability to do what I descried above unless someone can clue me in.
Thanks!!!

It's not clear what you are having problems with. One would simply flatten the object and colorize the resulting "channels" with tints.
Mylenium

Similar Messages

PSD Spot Color Channels in Illustrator CS4

Hi all.
Screenprinter here. Trying to migrate my way into CS4. No such
luck so far.
Way back in Illustrator CS2 I used to be able to place a PSD file with Spot Channels,
and have each channel show up as a separate object in Illustrator. This was incredibly
useful, nay, necessary for creating/laying out separations and adding vector work.
From what I've read and tried, this is no longer possible in CS4, which leaves me running two versions,
which is no fun.
I suppose my question is, has anyone come up with a workaround for this, or does the newest
release support this type of operation? From reading the boards, I've found that I'm not nearly
the only person who needs this feature, and so would hope that there is an alternative to
running CS2 still.
Us poor lowly screen printers get dumped on by nearly all Adobe products in terms of usability
(ever shoot the stock reg marks from photoshop?) give us this one feature!

In Illustrator CS2, the individual Spot Channels from Photoshop used to become Opacity masks when imported.
In Illustrator CS4, they are not converted to Opacity masks. Your spot colors are still there - look in the Swatches panel. There is a Spot channels image in the layers panel with 100% Multiply blend mode applied to it.
So it is not correct to say that it is no longer possible to bring spot channels from Photoshop into the Illustrator CS4. See the comparison snapshots below.
Hope this helps.

Creating a Spot Color Channel in Photoshop

Can anyone teach me how to make a Spot Color Channel on Photoshop? I am using this image as an example. The blue color in the background needs to be printed mostly with a spot color that is close to the original painting color (ex: Pantone Blue 072C) . But the CMYK color still should be present in within the blues to resemble the subtle nuances of the brush strokes. I can’t figure it out on my own.
For more samples of painting images, please go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/batzorig
The reason I am doing this is because the artist’s works were represented on many publications over the years from many different countries. And we found out that CMYK color alone cannot duplicate the blue color very well (I mean the blue only, no problem with other colors). I know, it is hard to believe, but if you see all the publications and compare it to the original art, you would see the huge difference in color saturation and luminosity. That is the reason, I think it is necessary to use a spot blue for an upcoming catalog of the artist.
It will be a huge help in my work progress if I learn to make the Spot Color Channel. Then I can talk with the printers about this method.

Understanding color space diagrams for CIE(1931) and CIELab isn't easy,
but gradually one gets used to interpret them by intuition.
(1) helps understanding CIE(1931) chromaticity.
The horseshoe contour contains all possible colors with luminance left
out. Indicated colors are just for orientation. Yellow is the 'locus' for
bright yellow and brown (dark yellow) as well. White is the locus for
white and black - colors without saturation at a certain center. For two
colors on the same ray to the center, the color with larger distance is
more brilliant or vibrant.
You're right - adding green and orange ink in Hexachrome doesn't
extend the gamut at the blue side. But Cyan and Magenta (and Yellow
and Black) are different to common CMYK inks as well, and this
delivers more brilliant blues.
(2) shows the effect, now in CIELab in a horizontal slice for constant
lightness. Besides theoretical aspects, the diagram can be (again) inter-
preted by intuition.
The complete diagram is threedimensional. A shown color is not just
a placeholder (as in the CIE chromaticity diagram) but a more or less
correct reproduction, as good as possible, depending on the medium.
It seems indeed that there are few print houses using Hexachrome,
but (3) is one of them.
What's to do for the actual catalog? Printing by inkjet would be a
solution, because inkjets can use additional inks like Green, Orange,
Blue, mostly by replacing standard inks like LightCyan, LightMagenta,
Gray. The inkjet can be calibrated by GretagMacbeth ProfileMaker's
Multicolor Module. That would be very expensive. Even without
additional inks the blues can be reproduced fairly good.
As already said - just adding a Spot Blue would cure the problem
for some paintings, but there is no systematical workflow.
If Hexachrome is not an option, then one may try to modify the
blue in the image by shifting it towards cyan with less lightness,
which is better printable.
Of course wrong, but what finally counts is the impression.
A friend of mine is a famous German photographer for calendars
and tourist guide books which contain plenty images with blue skies.
So far he got almost always pleasant print results - by applying
appropriate image processing with Soft Proofing in Photoshop.
Examples are in (4).
It would be nice, if somebody who is practically working with
Hexachrome or other Multicolor processes could contribute.
About this question:
I don't know if it is about LAB colors or Hexachrome colors.
The CIE (1931) color space appears mainly by two representations:
1. CIE xyY Chromaticity diagram (horseshoe)
2. CIELab = Lab
These are color spaces which contain all possible colors. Spot inks
and primary inks (Pantone, CMYK, Hexachrome CMYKOG) can
be shown in all diagrams.
Best regards --Gernot Hoffmann
(1)
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&as_q=&as_epq=CIE+chromaticity+diagram&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_n lo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_righ ts=
(2)
http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. pantone.com%2Fdownloads%2Farticles%2Fpdfs%2Fart_hex_primer.pdf&ei=CTJQUKnOEaWr0QWfg4DoDg&u sg=AFQjCNFx7-5XXealXZGPTQ5ek-A7FWb8gQ&cad=rja
p.2
(3)
http://www.ellerhold.de/index/page/357/subContent/423/index.html
(4)
http://www.fho-emden.de/~hoffmann/labproof15092008.pdf
Edited by author

Making a spot color channel of a selection

I want to make a spot color channel out of the current selection.
How can I use the seletion to make the new channel?
tell application "Adobe Photoshop CS6"
    activate
    set useropacity to 50
    set teller to 1
    set userchannelname to "kleur " & teller
    set kleur to foreground color
    tell current document
        make new channel with properties {kind:spot color channel, name:userchannelname, channel color:kleur, opacity:useropacity}
    end tell
end tell
Maurits Brock

tell application "Adobe Photoshop CS5"
activate
          set useropacity to 50
          set teller to 1
          set userchannelname to "kleur " & teller
          set kleur to foreground color
          tell current document
copy
clear
make new channel with properties ¬
                              {kind:spot color channel, name:userchannelname, channel color:kleur, opacity:useropacity}
paste
invert selection
clear
          end tell
end tell

Photoshop cc vs Photoshop cs 2 / spot colors channel problem?

spot colors channels photoshop cs 2 spotcolors cc recorded when I turn the channel comes in colorless How can I solve the problem by alpha?

Maybe you should try making clearer what you are trying to communicate.
Posting some screenshots might help, too.

Created a CYMK vector shape logo in photoshop, now need to change to spot colors HELP!?

I have created a 3 color logo with vector shapes in photoshop CS6. The problem is the client wants it to be 3 spot colors rather than CYMK. Does anyone have a quick and easy way for me to change the individual vector shape layers into various spot colors instead that maintains the vector quality? I don't want to have to redraw all these shapes. Help would be VERY appreciated with this.

Your client is speaking in the language of Illustrator, in which spot colors represent specific, sometimes specialist colours. I can think of no reason why you can't use Photoshop, but ask the client if they want to provide you with values for the spot colours? If I understand it correctly, the printer will interpret each of the three spot colours you use, to represent the specific inks/colours the client needs.
Use spot colors | Adobe Illustrator CC tutorials
You encounter it sometimes when printing catalogs which contain sponsor logos. I can remember once getting an incredibly detailed PDF from Canon on how we could use their logo, with warnings of dire consequences if we got it wrong.

Changing a Spot Color Swatch with a script

I have about 150 files where I need to replace a Pantone color with another.
So far I've been able to rename the old color, delete it and add the right one. But I cant find any info on how to change an existing color without messing up the existing art work (if I rename it, it converts the spot color to CMYK).
For example I could rename it:
i if ( app.documents.length > 0 &&
i app.activeDocument.swatches.length > 0 ) {
i var lastIndex = app.activeDocument.swatches.length - 1;
i var lastSwatch = app.activeDocument.swatches[lastIndex];
i lastSwatch.name = "Pantone 414 C";
i }
But that doesn't change it to 414 C. If you have any idea, I would be very grateful...
Regards Simon

Why not change it in Illustrator?
Since you're using Creative Cloud you should be aware that the new
applications will not install on Windows XP. The minimum configuration
is Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.
Bob

How to import a spot color image in illustrator

when importing a sport color tiff created in photoshop to illustrator the spot color image is not getting imported properly.

kandasamy:
PSDs will do nicely, and remain editable as well. Don't quite know what you mean by spot color TIFF as spots are not supported in this format.
You should, however, be able to "paint" a grayscale tiff any spot you like in Illustrator.
J

Change Spot Color to CMYK?

Is there a way in 8.1.4 Professional to change a spot color to another color space? I know colors can be convert in Print Production > Convert Colors but what I'm trying to do is change colors in a PDF from 0AA0 ( 100 magenta, 100 yellow) to 0A50 (100 magenta, 50 yellow).

Now you can convert CMYK values to another pantone inside Acrobat 9 but not the other way around. Saying that, if you know if there's a pantone which has an alternative colour space of 100M and 50Y then you can remap it to that. Advanced / Preflight.
You can also achieve this with Enfocus Pitstop (www.enfocus.com) when you have complete control over either single or global changes of object properties including colours.
Hope this helps?
Jon

Please, can I with help of Javascript change spot color values? for example by my color VARNISH with c:0,m:10,y:15,k:0 to make change to c:0,m:0,y:0,k:0? thank you

Please, can I with help of Javascript change specific spot color values? for example, I have color named VARNISH with values c:0,m:10,y:15,k:0 and it would help me to make change to c:0,m:0,y:0,k:0 as a part of an action. Is it possible? Thank you

Hi Kon Verter,
you can change the values of your spot swatch, but you have to check many things before.
e.g. you can do something like this:
var Vcolor = app.activeDocument.swatches.getByName("Varnish");
if (Vcolor.color.spot.colorType == ColorModel.SPOT && Vcolor.color.spot.spotKind == SpotColorKind.SPOTCMYK) {
    alert("Black value before: "+Vcolor.color.spot.color.black);
    Vcolor.color.spot.color.black= 0; // and so on
    alert("Black value after: "+Vcolor.color.spot.color.black);
This will change the black value of the cmyk spot color with name Varnish to 0
Have fun

Color Books in Illustrator CS6 (Creative Cloud)

I have recently purchased a MacBook Pro and I am using Creative Cloud to download my programs. I have downloaded Illustrator CS6, and I am trying to replace the new Pantone + color books with the older versions. I have done this in the past on Windows with no issues.
On my Mac I can not find the new document profiles folder so I can change the spot color. I go into the Adobe folder and there is no Illustrator folder in there. Does anyone know where it would be, or why it is not in there?
Mac OS: [user]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CS6/[lang]/New Document Profiles
Also open to any other workarounds for getting the old color books. I need all of the old color books, not just a few swatches, so workaround 2 in this document below will not help me.
Document I have been using - http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/pantone-plus.html
Thanks in Advance! Hopefully someone will have a solution for me :-(

The path for the New Document Profiles should be Mac HD/Users/<yourname>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CSX/en_US/ which is a hidden folder in OS10.7 and later. Do a Google search for how to access this folder. The Pantone color books go in Mac HD/Applications/Adobe Illustrator CSX/Presets/Swatches/Color Books.

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).

Problems printing spot colors overprinting registration color

In order to get a spot color to overprint a registration color on a proof, I have to change the spot color to multiply and then select convert all spot colors to process in the output dialog. I've never had this problem before using CS4. I'm running Mac OS X 10.5 and printing to an EFI RIP. I can see the error in the preview window inside the print dialog box in Illustrator before I sent to the rip.

Absolutely.
Remember I only have this problem when a registration object interacts with a spot color. I've tried putting either object on top and either item overprinting or multiplying.
For the record, I can get it to work by checking "convert all colors to process" in the print dialog box, but nothing works without checking this box and I would like to avoid checking this box if at all possible.

Spot colors now missing in PDF!

Issue: spot color channel not showing up in Photoshop generated PDFs. Worked previously, this just started last week.
Workflow: receive PDF ads from client via email. Open file, usually Jpg, Tiff or PDF, in photoshop CS4. save as PSD, with new name, grayscale, 300 dpi for newspaper printing.
some ads get spot/PMS color added. add spot channel. move art from grayscale layer to spot color layer. save file as PSD with spot colors. (for import to InDesign.) Photoshop file looks fine on screen.
for Client proof, Save As "ad proof", turn OFF photoshop editing, so client does not change ad. Turn ON "as a copy", "spot color" and "view PDF".
It worked fine for the past year, now, NOT. The PMS spot channel is not showing on the photoshop generated PDF, If I import the psd file into Indesign, and generate the PDF 1x version, same thing.
Spent 7 hours on phone with tech support, they did not have a clue as to why or what was going on. I have uninstalled, deleted everything Adobe, and spent 7 hours reinstalling CS4.
Newly installed Photoshop not working, same issue. Print to PDF using PDF 9.0 "printer" not working.
HELP!

I just had a very similar problem using CS5 Master Suite.
I had a CMYK job (a business card) that needed converting into a spot colour job.
There was a logo in CMYK that was red, blue and black, so I created 3 new channels in Photoshop and separated the colours into each specific channel. I saved the logo as a Tiff file and imported the logo file into Indesign. On-screen it looked fine (black, red, blue) and I could see the new spot colours had imported into the swatches correctly. However, when I exported the Indesign file as a PDF, one of the spot colours was missing (the red one).
So I changed the logo file (Tiff) into a Photoshop file hoping it would fix the bug, but no such luck.
Out of interest, I duplicated the Red channel and repeated my procedure, this time when I made the PDF the blue channel that was there previously disappeared!!!
When I checked the forum and heard that the poor person spent 7 hours with tech support, I thought bugger that, I just saved each channel as a separate Tiff file, dropped the black file onto the logo so that it was in place, then did a Step&Repeat (ie copied a duplicate of the logo ontop of itself), then dropped the new Tiff file on top of that and changed its colour to Red in the Swatches, and did the same with the blue file.
Now I have a PDF file that shows all the different spot colours and I can go home on time tonight.
I could do all this stuff on CS1. The only 'improvements' I have found in CS5 so far is that my beloved 'Variations' option in Photoshop has now disappeared because they couldn't be bothered to create this feature in 64 bit.

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!

Ungroup & Change PS spot color channels in illustrator!!

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