Illustrator :: Converting Spot To Process - CMYK Values
Jul 2, 2012
When I use a Pantone color in CS5 and then convert to process, I get certain values for CMYK. However, when I use that same Pantone color in CS6 and convert to process, I get different values for CMYK.
For example, Pantone 2685C converted to process in the both applications yields:
When placing a .psd file with a spot channel into illustrator, and then later copying this and pasting back into Photoshop the color shifts.
Original Photoshop spot color channel (0/100/81/16) Color after pasting back into Photoshop (13/99/88/4)
We are making renders of packaging, so the designs are from illustrator. We correct this by removing the Photoshop spot channel and recreating this as a CMYK layer, but looking to avoid this step as we do many many renders. Even with assign color profile set to none this happens.
Viewing Photoshop channels you can see a difference in values between the linked image and illustrator flat tint.
How the PMS color palettes "simulate" on screen how the color will print on different substrates (glossy vs matte vs uncoated paper). That's great for comps, but if you convert it to CMYK to print it, and the values are representing a "simulated" color it won't look correct (by that I mean come close to matching the spot color). For example, the uncoated palette simulates the color by making them appear a bit washed out on screen - pretty good visual simulation. But it might do so by adding black and cyan to orange for example, etc. - effectively dulling the original color.
So if I convert that to CMYK within the new Pantone + color palette, and then send it to the printer - it won't appear as it did on screen, it will dull the end color even more because it's converted the color to the dull simulated version - what a disaster! It's only doing half the job - showing us what it should look like on screen. In order to be truly efficient for design professionals the CMYK conversion might remove black and cyan completely to effectively brighten the color in the final output on uncoated paper. I would prefer it just stick to the standard conversion, which Pantone did have as a standard palette option (PMS to process), and then I can adjust if I think it's necessary.
Any corporate branding system will likely start with a PMS spot color palette for the identity. Then it will build into many different adaptations - full color brochures, large format banners and trade show graphics, website, advertising. So any corporate branding system will need to have PMS, CMYK and RGB versions of their main corporate color palette. There was a standard for these translations that was automatically consistent in the Adobe software and that is now all over the place, so it relies on individuals manually adapting the color mixes for final use - what a great way to screw things up.
I've been told that I need to change my spot colors (illustrator CS6) to Process colors, but for some reason, sometimes this feature won't work and is greyed out.
I'm a print designer. I have this Action I use to batch Illustrator files convert all spot colors to process. The problem I found recently in some instances where an object is black & white bitmap the Action converts to CMYK and that causes an issue for product representation because it does change drastically. I process a lot this files daily basis. As far as I know I don't think using an Action will prevent this from happening because it does work but I just want to confirm that in this forum. I can Insert a Stop in the Action to see what kind of image has been embeded but that defeat the purpose of running a batch.
here are the stepson the Action: Unlock all Select all Convert to CMYK (Using Edit colrs) deselect
I want a script that can convert RGB value to CMYK values.
I've seen this thread which explains a script to round up and down:
[URL].....
but is there a script that i can actually define lets say the colour is yellow and in RGB it looks ok because its in RGB mode so you change it to CMYK and you have 6% - 9% cyan and you only want yellow
is there a script out there that i can say
if
cyan = 6% yellow = 80% magenta = 0% black = 0%
then change to
cyan = 0% yellow = 80& mangenta = 0% black = 0%
I don't mind writting the code for each colour that needs to be converted as it would only need defining once but how would i make this script?
I work in prepress. I have an Illustrator CS6 file that is made up of 3 Pantone Spot colors. I save the file as an eps from Illustrator and rip the file with our prepress software. When previewing the ripped file with our prepress software it shows me that I have process colors (CMYK) somewhere in the file. I can not see these colors visually in the ripped file so I go back to Illustrator to see if I can edit them out of the file. I use the Preview Separations tool but can't find those process colors anywhere. There are no placed images, everything is vector art. I double check any white color and make sure it doesn't have any tiny percentage of process color in it. I make sure my spot colors are indeed spot colors and not process colors. I add used colors, I delete unused colors. I can't find the CMYK being used anywhere in my Illustrator file. How to clean up these "hidden" colors? This was also a problem in CS3. I'm using an iMac 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, Mac OS X, Version 10.7.5
I am struggling to understand why Illustrator is changing the values inside the RGB and CMYK boxes. I am also not sure of the exact relationship between these vaues. Essentially, it appears that if you set the Document Color Mode to RGB, it leaves the RGB values that you type in alone. If you set the Document Color Mode to CMYK, it leaves the CMYK values alone.
But as soon as you change the Color Mode, it automatically modifies the values. So if you were in RGB mode and you set some RGB values, it changes those RGB values when you switch to CMYK mode. And vice versa.
I had thought that the CMYK palette was a subset of the RGB palette. It would make sense to me if it did this when I switched from RGB to CMYK mode, but it doesn't make sense to me why it does this when I switch from CMYK to RGB mode.
The other thing I am confused about is the relationship of the values in the RGB boxes to the values in the CMYK boxes. I would have thought that the relationship between them would be static. Actually, it is not. When I am in CMYK mode and I enter a CMYK value of 90 16 0 0, the RGB values become 0 158 222. But when I switch over to RGB mode, the RGB values of 0 158 222 result in CMYK values of 75 23 0 0.
I made a simple poster using photoshop to make the background and illustrator to make the fonts and some other stuff. In CMYK my black is just 100% K ( in photoshop)
When placing image in illustrator the 100% K (black) changes to different black with C M Y added. But then when I save it as PDF the preview shows black as a bit grey (which is something normal- in print it will be just black). So my question is .. should I change enything just to be able to see a 100% K in illustrator in order to match CMYK values of Photoshop? Or should I leave it this way? I guess if I am getting a "grey" in PDF preview is something good isn'it? because in photoshop when I set to 100%K in my screeen it looks like grey and not total black.
I need to use a spot black on some packaging. The spot black will be used as a vignette on top of a photograph of the product which is done in Photoshop. I have created the packaging in Illustrator and need to import this file but it needs to have the spot colour intact. So far I have created a PSD with a Spot channel which I thought was the answer but Illustrator can't read PSDs with spot channels. I then saved it as an eps but when I import an eps it only shows a white rectangle as opposed to the actual artwork.
I'm having an issue where I can't convert spot colors to CMYK in the swatches panel. Currently to fix I have to copy elements using the spot colors in to a new blank document, then convert them, then paste back into the original document.
Also if I try to delete the spot color, it doesn't fully delete the swatch.
I'm pretty new to preparing artwork for spot colour printing - it's a hoodie design in this case.
I created the artwork in CMYK originally, and have got some of the way towards converting into a 5 colour print job using Recolor Artwork, so I've got it down to 5 swatches.
However, the printer is asking for colours separated by layers, which makes sense - I think means knocking everything out so there is no overprinting - is this correct?
If so, what is the best approach to take, to avoid unnecessary work, to convert from the current artowrk, with a lot of overlapping artwork, to produce 5 layers each with vector artwork coloured with its own Pantone swatch?
I'd like to convert a file from RGB to CMYK. Normally, I can go into Assign Profile, and just select CMYK. However, in this case (actually hundreds of files), none of them have CMYK as an option. So, all the files remain in Untagged RGB, when I need them to be CMYK US Web Coated SWOP.
I've had this problem before, and it randomly popped up again today.
This time restarting Ai fixed the issue the first time. I just don't know if this was human-error/setting on my end, or a minor bug to report.
So I create a CMYK Ai doc. Create some black text and/or shapes. Then decide to change color to rich black by manually entering CMYK values (in this case, 60, 40, 40, 90), select ok. However, the colors revert back to original percentages (75, 68, 67, 90).
In past versions, it's happened once or twice, and restarting Ai didn't solve the first time.
I have been trying to convert both Pantone Colors to CMYK and CMYK to Pantones on a few of my projects. I walk throught the steps but nothing happens. My counterpart which has CS5.5 also is able to do it both ways just fine. Is there a pre-set someplace that I need to be aware of?
Using CS6 on a MacBookPro Is there a way to find the closest matching Pantone spot colors to the cmyk colors I've created in Illustrator? I know it's easy in Photoshop using the color picker, but there must be a way to do this in Illustrator.
I have a file from a client that has a table with the color values recorded as CMYK. (e.g. 50, 0, 10, 0)
I'd like to display the colors but I can only figure out how to do it if it's in the 256 color format. Is there a way for me to convert CMYK color values to a 256 color value. I realize the hues/colors won't be perfect, and I'll be happy with colors close to what the original data was using. Maybe there's a way to go from CMYK to RGB, and then to 246?
when I pdf a coreldraw document, no matter which pdf-preset I use, the "Convert spot colours to: CMYK" is greyed out so I can't tick it. I need to pdf a document to send to newspaper print. I have never had a problem like this before using CorelDraw X3.
We would like to experiment mixing a spot colour in a normal CMYK image in order to expand the colour palette. Our problem is the fact that we cannot get Photoshop to show us the actual image once we have added the spot colour.
The spot channel shows as if it is being printed on top of the CMYK colours instead of being mixed with them. This makes it very difficult to judge what adjustments have to be made to the image. Of course, saving the file as a DCS2 and placing it in InDesign shows us what we want, but this is too much jumping back and forth between programmes to be efficient. We are runnnig CS3 on Windows XP Professional.
I have a client who asked for a SPECIFIC shade of blue which happens to be 100,70,0,0. Now I know my screen will never show the exact color, always shows lighter. This part is ok. But I go and change the values on the color picker, and then 10 minutes later when I come back to it, the values changed to 95,65,1,0. Why would this happen, it KEEPS happening and not just one one color, on ALL OF THEM, it just changes the numbers slightly fromw hat I put in.
I have a photo of an object on a black background, and during the editing process the cmyk values of the black background are c=75 m=68 y=67 k=90. As this image is to be placed on a business card, if it is possible to change the values to 100% K or 40% C 100 %.
I have line drawings in a layout that I scanned in. I'd like them to be the same or close to the black cmyk value of the text in the document. I'm not sure how to accomplish this. I tried channel adjustment and replace color,
putting in the specific value I wanted (I read that c50 m40 y40 k100 was a good black for print), but nothing seems to work correctly. I would like to keep some kind of greyscale value (not make everything black), but I want the darkest shade to be that specific cmyk value. How do I do this?
I'm working in Photoshop CS 5.5 on a Mac, and I want to apply a specific CMYK color to a selection in an image. I create the color with the values C=0, M=100, Y=100, K=10 and add it to my color swatches. Then I select the section of the image where I want to apply the new color and fill it with the paint bucket. The color fills the section just fine and life is good. But then when I roll over the section with the eyedropper to double-check the CMYK values in the Info window, it shows that they've inexplicably shifted to C=9, M=100, Y=100, K=1.
I have a palette provided by Roland for their digital printers to match their standard colors. In order for the colors to be recognized and converted by the RIP, they need to be set as spot colors in CorelDraw X5.
It would be nice if I could change the Treat As Process/Spot attribute for multiple colors at once in the palette editor.
I peeked at the CPL file--unfortunately it's not something easy to edit like XML, CSV or the like. Too bad that, too.
I just downloaded a St. Patrick's day background from i Stock Photo. Nice vibrant green. We all know when converting to CMYK from RGB, there is a color shift but this is pretty dang dramatic. Any basic tips on getting some of that vibrant color back after converting?
I am trying to create a header for my e newsletter in Photoshop. I want to put the logo on top of a background of the same color as my logo. I have the CMYK ref for the logo, and this looks fine when I print it out. However, when viewed online or just on the computer - the background red is slightly brighter than in print.
I have tried using an RGB converter to change CMYK to RGB but this hasn't done anything.