Illustrator :: Convert Greyscale To A Spot Colorscale?
Oct 5, 2013
I own a textile screen printing business. Sometimes I vectorise photos or images into greyscale. This gives nice halftone images, once I output to my printer through my RIP, (I use Accurip). This allows us to reproduce some great images with 1 ink colour. The great thing is that we can output the greyscale image, then use any ink colour we choose on the printing press to actually print the image. If we output greyscale, we can use scarlet ink to give us all shades of scarlets and pinks if we print onto a white shirt, for example. No problem there.
However, greyscale is essentially based on a black ink, with variable transparency. When I want to do a mockup for the customer of what the image would look like with a different base/ink colour other than black, (and the variable opacities of black that form the swatch pallette), I'd like to show the image using the actual base pantone spot colour we will use. That way, the customer can see how the variences in ink transparency will look on any shirt base colour that we choose to put in a layer behind the image. Right now, we can only show what it looks like if we choose black ink.
So..... once I have a vector in greyscale, how can I recolourise all the various opacities (of black), to various opacities of...say, Red?
If I try any kind of overlay or hue / saturation changes in photoshop, the base black colour is still present, and doesn't accurately represent what would print on a white shirt.
I have a complex vector object, containing of forms of all kinds and what not. They have two colours: black and red. To use this logo in a background area, I need to make it all grey. Everything which is black or red shall then be light grey or so. But the appearance panel can't do a single thing. It just says "this is a group, I can't handle that". So I ungrouped the entire object, then there were other sub-groups. I could go on ungrouping everything forever, but that can't be the solution. When I just click on a colour in that colour panel instead, it sets the outline colour of every single element. It hasn't always done that, there were times when it would set the fill colour of all elements. But there's no switch to tell it what exactly to set. Should I way until an even or odd day so that it would set the fill colour again?
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?
Sometimes when I have an object selected and I go to select a fill color for it, the object turns a corresponding shade of grey, even though I'm selecting a color from the color picker.
Other objects on the artboard have color, so it doesn't seem to be a global setting....
Is it possible to set the grayslide color picking slider to go to full black? The reason I would like to do this is because:
1. The slider (or another workflow) should offer a fast way to select a grayscale color.
2. In CS6 there is no other fast way to select an arbitrary grayscale color. The other other way to select an arbitrary desaturated color is to create a color swatch by selecting it through the Photoshop-style color picking dialog accessible by double clicking the color display in the Tools window.
3. It is not possible to slide across a selection of gray scale values in the RGB color picker in the Color Window. Which would be preferable in general as this would unify and retain the workflow of selecting an arbitrary grayscale value within the RGB selection of the Color Window.
I'm trying to apply an along stroke gradient to a stroke made with an artistic watercolor brush that comes with the program. Whenever I try to do this the gradient comes out greyscale. In the gradient window it will show as the colors I've chosen (ex. white -> orange), but when I draw the stroke it comes out greyscale regardless. If I draw the stroke with a different brush, like a regular round brush, it works perfectly fine. It seems to be doing this with all "artistic" brushes.
Is there a link there between artistic brushes and greyscale? Am I just doing something very wrong?
I'm running the trail version, does it have something to do with that?
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.
I'm trying to print colour to my epsom inkjet but for some reason Illustrator keeps converting my colour image to greyscale.
Now I've been using Illustrator for years and this is a new problem I've not come across before. Is there something I can do to stop it doing it - maybe there's a setting that has accidentally switched on that converts all to greyscale.
If not then I suppose I'll have to revert to "turning it on and off again"!
Is there a way to export a document @ a different resolution than 72DPI? I know I can set the horizontal/vertical scale to save it at a larger dimension at 72DPI, but I need the file to be actual size and 300DPI.
This is part of a larger process, and I'd prefer to do the entire process from Illustrator, and not have to open the files in Photoshop to change the size/resolution.
Also, is it possible to change the color mode to CMYK or Greyscale for the exported Jpeg?
Any Illustrator equivalent to Photoshop’s Displacement Map?
I need to be able to horizontally displace an area of vertical stripes using a specific greyscale displacement map. It’s fairly simple in Photoshop but I would much prefer vector output.
O.k., I could do it in Photoshop and then vectorize the result with Live Trace, but is there a less roundabout method?
With both tools, I can make a few changes and then both will leave a black brush spot. It works, and then it is like the program is too challenged & it just leaves a black spot. Sometimes if I move my mouse to the history panel to back up to get rid of the black spot I get a swipe of the tool all across the image when I'm reaching with the mouse to go back in history.
I have placed a photoshop file in illustrator CS, the file contains a spot channel transparency that I want to print as a pantone plate. When I print separations my spot channel prints as a shade of grey. Several other vector items (generated in illustrator) using the same pantone print as a solid 100% black. I'm worried that my file will print with the transparency part of my pantone as a shade of its self when I send the files to the printer.
I've used Lightroom 3, 4 and now 5 so I know my way around the software pretty well. Never had an issue like this in previous LR versions. Basically, when I Spot Edit a spot (such as a speck of dust that was on the sensor or lens) there is alway s a "ghost" of the speck that remains, no matter what I do. The Opacity is set to 100, yet the tool behaves as if it is set to 90. It happens with Clone and Heal. I have also tried adjusting the Feather setting, to no avail.
I've got LR4 and a bunch of photos with 3 nasty dust marks.Spot Removal does not allow to mark one of these spots (the pointer does not turn into the marking circle).Probably LR cannot see it as needing repair.
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 an ad using one PMS color after orginially being told that it was a "Thanksgiving 4 column x 4.5” spot color ad”. I received the following message from the newspaper printer today:
"Please relay to your corporate art department that the newspaper does not print in PMS/Pantone colors, except on a full color page, which requires an additional color charge. For spot color, we print in primary colors such as red or green, or in cyan or magenta alone.
As I understood it, spot color meant pantone, and CMYK was process. Am I wrong here or are the printers using the term "spot color" incorrectly?
When I want to send file separation containing only spot colours, sometimes it comes with empty CMYK separations printed.
Lets say an artwork may be only one colour, so when printed the outcome should be just that colour, but instead I end up with 5 separations printed - the one I wanted to print plus cmyk bits all blank (empty pages with only registration pieces imprinted).
Neither on artwork nor separation preview there's no process colours whatsoever, so do any of You know what may cause this?
I'm using the same print template and it happens form time to time. (not a problem for me but my colleagues complain about it all the time).
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 two different macs, both intel with 4 gigs of ram. I open illustrator CC with a new clean document then just draw a square. When I try move the square to another spot the blue outline moves but the the square is still in the old spot. I have to click several times for the square to show up in the new spot even then it takes a few seconds for the square to move.
Also I can't close the window I am working on. When I click the red button in the upper left corner of the canvas the window won't close.
I can't quit illustrator CC either. I have to force quit it to close it.
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.
What I have is a shape which uses a pantone colour. However, the background is also the same pantone colour and I'd like it to stay 100% tint of that colour. What I'd like is for the top shape to be darker than the background even though it uses the same PMS colour.
I've tried to do some reading about it, but couldn't quite get the answer I was looking for. I have my .ai file set to Overprint View and have given Multiply a try, but it doesn't look any different.
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.
Is it possible to make spot color separations from blended shapes.
I blended a red spot colored irregular shape with a spot colored yellow shape and now want to output 2 film positives from my postscript printer. Unfortunately the blended pathes became process colors. I am using illustrator cs 6 on a Mac.
