Illustrator :: Do Custom Spot Colors Print Properly For Press
May 24, 2013
While creating the company logo and branding in Illustrator, I've taken the CMYK values of our color palette and created custom CMYK spot swatches for each of our brand colors. This was for consistency, because a spot's color numbers do not shift as you move between Adobe apps or from CMYK to RGB docs.
My question is — is it OK to hand off a document that contains these CMYK spots to a printer for 4-color offset or digital printing? Will it mess with the colors or will they simply igore the "spot" status of the color and use the CMYK values behind it?
I am trying to create a script that adds custom spot colours to the swatch pallet. I've manage to put together something that works (I've adapted an existing script), but the colours added are not spots, just CMYK colour swatches.Also, I need the script not to error if the swatch already exists.
//Add Custom Swatches var docRef = app.activeDocument; function cmykColor(c, m, y, k) { var newCMYK = new CMYKColor(); newCMYK.cyan = c; newCMYK.magenta = m; newCMYK.yellow = y; newCMYK.black = k; return newCMYK; [code]....
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'm still working on changing a document I didn't create. It needs to be CMYK, but I keep getting error messages when I save it that there is a spot color. I saw one spot color in the Swatches (at least I seem to remember that's what the little dot in the corner means) and I double clicked it and changed it to CMYK. And I selected the one item that seems to have that color and I changed it to the CMYK version. But the swatch still has the corner dot and I still get the error message when I save.
I created two PDF's from identical files in Illustrator CS6 using spot colors but the colors came out different when printed although I couldn't find any apparent differences in the settings of the two documents.
I also noticed that when importing an eps file that contains spot colors in Indesign CS6, and export as PDF the colors in the PDF are sensibly different to the eps. It never happened with CS4.
I have a doc that contains alot of logos from auto manufactureres. I am having it printed professionally and when I save the doc as a pdf my summarry has the warning telling me I have spot colors and that it does not match color profile. How can I QUICLY find the spot colors and do I need to trap these colors? Working in printing and proofing workspace.
I'm printing some spot colors on colored paper, and wondering if there is a way in illustrator (CS6) to approximate the ink/paper interactions. Im worried about the ink color (greens) shifting to brown on a yellow/peach paper. I've approximated the paper color in Illustrator, and designated the pantone colors. I tried Multply- and the ink color definitely shifts to what I think it would- but not sure if that is the best way.
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 work at a printing company. Everything I know about Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign, I learned on the job with no classes or prior knowledge. I handle all the graphics that come through our shop, and every now and then I get artwork that when I try to save it in Illustrator, I get an error message that says Illustrator can only support a maximum of 27 spot colors. I don't even know what that means.
I was desiging images for my children and I was having difficulty with the colors- I would select a color from the color picker and a different shade/color would be applied to the text. Hoping it was a RAM issue, I just restarted my computer and it resolved itself. Easy enough. I completed the designs and went about my day.
Today, I'm working on a project for someone else and it's doing it again. I've restarted the computer and I've reset settings on Illustrator to the default but neither of these things resolved the problem.
In an attempt to make sure I wasn't going crazy, I took a screen shot of the text I'm attempting to color and the color picker box showing the color I was trying to choose. The selected color was R 6 G 6 B 249. I opened the image in paint and with the eyedropper tool selected the color that was actually applied and that color is R 61 G 93 B 171- so clearly not the same color at all. I then opened it in Photoshop to determine if it was an Adobe problem or just an Illustrator problem. With the eyedropper tool, I got the same results that I did in paint. Illustrator is definitely not applying the colors correctly.
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've been looking around for a script that will take the used spot colors in a document and place them in a predetermined spot. I've came across several posts about this, such as the COLOR CHIPPER although I think it's focus was on swatches. What is confusing is the part of making New CMYKColor or RGB or if I even need to do that. I've looked at other posts and the Adobe docs, but none seem to work. Adding the text isn't difficult, it's getting these spot colors to reflect what's in the document that is. From what I'm seeing now:
I may have to use some other type of script such as Applescript to get rid of unused swatches first throught the actions panel, but I'm not sure.I could possibly use the getByName method to call out the specific rectangle and the and relative callout with the appropriate color instead of having to position everytime.
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.
Surprisingly i can't find any mention of this anywhere on the intertubes - very often I have a placed (photoshop/tiff) graphic with transparent background overlaying (on top of) a spot color area, the spot color prints out completely different from how it should be (and how it is on non-overlapped areas).
I've tried everything i can think of, including making an opacity mask to 'hide' the supposedly transpararent areas of the placed grahic. I know a clipping path might work, but some art is too complex for that.
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?
For some days when I press the open button or print button on the toolbar, Autocad LT 2008 does not respond until after two or three minutes and opens the window.
I noticed that this only happens when I have enabled LAN. The "plotter" that I use is shared by a print server and when I hit the open button, the default folder that shows me a folder on the server.
This is a serious workflow disruption: In CSx I could open any file, choose a print preset, click on 'custom' for Media Size and it would automatically adjust the print width and height to whatever the artwork boundaries were (Ignore Artboards ✓'d). Now in CC it just uses whatever I had set for the print preset when I created it rather than adjusting like bfore. Is there something I'm overlooking? Can/will this be fixed? This might sound like small pease compared to the overall view, but this makes a design that would normally take a few seconds to print to our screens to almost half a minute.
Using CS2, I've created one of those swooshy Macintosh Panther wallpaper images, with various layers of sweeping lines and tinted gradient arcs.
Now I want to create the image using just tints of pantone 519 but I'm unsure of how to work with pantone colours in photoshop. I've pulled up the solid coated pantone library and located the swatch, but how do I specify various tints of this colour?
I've searched the forum and come across spot channels, and have read the photoshop help entry on this, but still can't understand how to do it. From what I've read, I make a selection, then create a spot channel of the colour and set the solidity to 100%. If I want an 80% tint, I just adjust the solidity to 80%. Is this correct, or is the solidity more like transparency than tint?
In addition, how do I create a gradient between these two colours?
Final question - I have an element I want to import from Illustrator that uses the same spot colour. Do I have to deal with this any differently to the normal copy and paste as a smart object? Steven
I have a RGB file with two layers; the first containing black lines and the second containing color. I would like to convert this file into a duotone file where each of these layers is one of the two spot colors.
So far I have been able to get it in duotone (by first converting to grey). However, since the black line layer contains different shades of grey pixels as well (from anti-aliasing), it turns these grey tones into the spot color too.
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...
InDesign is so slow working with spot colors. It feels slower than Quark Xpress 4.11 on a Mac OS 9 G4 machine.
[-> InDesign CC, MacBook Pro 7i 2011, SSD, 16 G RAM, 1 G GPU]
Just wanted to print a new photo and realized that the colors in print preview do not match the colors in soft proofing. In both cases I selected the same icc profile and rendering method. The print colors matched the colors in print preview. I never had a problem so far. All new prints will be checked with soft proofing and adjusted when necessary. I never paid attention to the color rendition in print preview and all prints perfectly matched the colors from the soft proofing. I was surprised when my print came out of the printer and the colors weren't matching the soft proofing colors, but that of the print preview.
I don't understand why Photoshop renders the colors differently in the first place. See attached screenshot for the difference in the blue/cyan colors. I don't care if the print view colors will match the print, but I do care when soft proofing is not working.
Whenever I use a spot color with a black hairline outline and export it as an eps, the colors do not register right. If you select an object after importing the eps, the fill is blank, the outline shows up black, but the color is there.
If you import it into x3, it shows up as shades of grey for all of the objects that had outlines. However, I can import the eps file, remove the outlines, export it as eps again and all the pantone spot colors come through just fine. I -CANT- be the only one with this problem. Yes, I have done some research on it, and yes, I have ghostscript installed.
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.
I have a problem with spot colors from X3 to X5. I have defined some spot colors in my X3 to tell my Roland Printer what he has to do. When i open a file, made in X3 using one of these spot colors, with my new X5, the spot color will be replaced with turquoise. I have no problems opening x3 files in x5 when i used a color from the CMYK palette.
