I have a very large number of 4-color TIFFs that I need converted to 2-color PSD or DCS files. Before I do a whole lot of banging my head against the wall — or heavens forbid trying to write my own script from scratch — I'd like to know if it's feasible.
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First, I'm not new to this. I don't need instructions on how to create 2-color DCS files from 3- or 4-color art. I do it quite often. Only I do it manually (using different methods, depending on the art).
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What I have are hand-drawn illustrations, mostly black line with blue tints. The problem is they're 4-color. The colors are consistent — I have the same 4 tints or shades of blue plus black (or 3 tints of blue and one blue/black mix + black). I have no issues using grayscale + levels to generate the spot color channels, or Select Color Range and different percentage fills in those channels.
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What I have is about a thousand of them — yes, literally 1,000 images — and I need them done as soon as possible. I don't relish the idea of going through all of them with the same operation, not when it can be automated.
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So that's my question — can it be automated? What I understand is this is primarily a process that requires human intervention — a human brain that can decide "this, not that." Can I create an Action that says (for example):
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set theColorRange to 67, 32, 23, 6
select theColorRange
fill channel Pantone Black 4 U 40%
fill channel Pantone Process Blue 100%
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set theColorRange to 45, 15, 15, 0
etc...
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(PS 5.1, Mac OS 10.5)
Having problems getting the advance key to highlight in this area. I have repeated these instructions and problem still is not resolved.
This is the area that I am having problems with. To customize a halftone screen.
1. Click File Print. 2. Click the Color tab. 3. Enable the Print separations option. 4.Click the Separations tab. 5. In the Options area, enable the Use advanced settings check box. 6. Click Advanced. 7. Change any of the following settings:
•Screening technology •Resolution •Basic screen •Halftone type
You can set the screen frequency, screen angle, and overprint opt. ions for spot colors as well as process colors. For example, if you have a fountain fill made up of two spot colors, you can set one to print at 45 degrees and the other at 90 degrees.
I'm trying to print color separations as a Postscript file from Illustrator CS5 and the halftone areas keep showing up as grayscale instead of the specified frequency and angle. I've tried usiing multiple PPDs and options but I'm having no luck.
I print spot color separations using CorelDraw a lot. Just ungraded from X3 to X5. One problem I am having is in the printing dialog. When a file has, say, 4 colors showing up in the separations section I may only want to print 2 or three of them. I deselect the ones I don't want - but all 4 seps come out. I am wasting a lot of expensive separations.
This discussion is on using RGB file creation techniques to output to ink jet devices. I posted the comments below the link because color management off always pops up in the conversation as it turns to non-postscript devices so I wanted to circumvent the side bar conversation.
[URL]....
First let's get this straight, I've written it and said it about a thousand times, you cannot turn off color management.
When you select simulate color management off in the default application color management dialog, CorelDRAW simply utilizes a different set of color management settings. The rules of color management never change!  The application requires guidelines on color and still must have rules that govern conversions, PERIOD.
These rules are not different, only the engines, rendering intents and profiles change. These setting in X5 and X6 can be, in some cases adjusted to simulate previous setting in versions prior to X5 that were labeled color management off, but this label in older versions (X4 and older)Â were deceptive in their nature, color management was never turned off, just set to a specific configuration.
Simulate color management off (in X5/X6) uses wide gamut cmyk simulation as the CMYK profile, it disengages the color engines (setting CorelDRAW to another internally controlled process)Â and sets the interface to RGB. It does not turn color management off.
These settings have many uses for industries such as laser engraving and screen printing separations and I support their continued use. Do not confuse this and use these settings for professional output using press work, ink jets or digital printers.
In my color separations in print preview the "use advanced settings" is disabled.
I have loaded cdr graphics suite 12 on my new laptop w/windows 7, and also on my old machine that I have loaded windows 7 on. Cannot register the program any more due to outdated version. problem exists on both computers.
There are other minor issues but this one I use regularly.
I have a complex (includes tints) clip art object that needs printing in a specific pantone color I just convert it to grayscale using edit>find and replace objects>color mode. then print it as a black plate and just use another color on press.
Today I had to send off artwork to another printer. Dang. How to install a macro. Import clip art to be modified to a new document, do not do this in your working document.
Use Edit>Find and Replace> Find Objects Replace a color model or palette. Next Leave as is except change Replace with color model to "Grayscale" Next>Replace all
Repeat 2-4 for 'outlines' if you have them.There you now have a gray scale clipart, but the fun continues!You'll need to know what pantone color you want to use. Let's say Reflex Blue. Make a square and color it Reflex blue from a pantone palette.Duplicate the square and create swatches at 90% 80% 70% etc down to white.Select these square swatches, then Windows>Color Palette>Create Palette from Selection. Save palette with a temporary name, it is only time use. Or you could call it 'Reflex Blue'Now go to this website and download the macro "limit colors" URL...
Drop it in your GMS folder in under your username to install the macro. (might have to save the drawing and restart Corel...)Once you reopen your now grayscale clipart document, Select the clipart. Run the macro (Tools>Macros>Run Macros) LimitColors.Posterize select the number of colors in your new palette if you created 10% swatches, go with 11, if you did steps of 20% then you'll do 6 (don't forget white).Run the macro LimitColors.LimitColors and select your new palette you made in step 9.
I am converting a photoshop doc to greyscale and saving it as an eps. when I place that eps into illustrator and try to print separation the eps is coming out in 4 color instead of just black. if I save that same file as a tiff and place it in illustrator it prints in just black. if someone else in my office opens the eps in photoshop and saves it again then it will print in only black. is there a setting somewhere in photoshop that i am missing that will fix this and allow me to save the greyscale eps correctly.
I have a b&w photo that I have added a spot of red to. I have done this in PS CS3. When I save the photo (as a psd) and import to Illustrator, and I try to print separations, the entire photo separates as cmyk.
Ok, I am modifying a graphic using photoshop CS, and I am creating a spot color/alpha channel on a greyscale image which I am then placing in Quark 4.0.
The problem is that I can't get the image to separate out just my cyan plate when I distill the Quark document.
Is there a way that I can save my channels so I just get cyan and black, or do I need to switch to a CMYK image mode?
I have 1000 or so CR2 raw files that I need to convert into 2000 px .jpg files. I tried the batch and action combo but I can’t get past when the file is opened in camera raw and the action stops.
I need to produce images of the garments, lets say a shirt, that is placed on a manequin/dummy, then the image is altered in Photoshop to remove the background and the manequin/dummy.
I understand I can use the Magic Wand task to do this.
What is the most efficient way of automating this process as I will have an initial upload of 300 images/products and I really dont want to have to do them all manually.
Via Actions, the Sphere filter, and a great original earth pic , I've generated a 352 layer file of the earth spinning. Each layer shows the earth from a slightly different angle. WIth lighting effects and all, it's pretty cool.
Now I want to export it to 352 (alpha-channel-enabled) .png files for inclusion ito a Director program. (A simple GIF animation using ImageReady leaves fringing.)I cannot figure out how to create the separate files except via by hand. Any ideas?
When printing separations, you're having issues printing more than three plates. I've got the OPPOSITE issue: When I'm trying to print only one or two colors of a graphic, it prints all of them.Example:I have black, PMS-A, and PMS-B in my graphic, but I only want to print PMS-A and PMS-B.I deselect black in the separations window, and that should be it, right?Hit print, and all of them print...black included.
I've tested it on multiple printers, and get the same results.This only started happening after my X6 upgrade.
P.S. I should add that when I take the same steps, and then print to file, it still saves all of the plates, not just those selected.
I just installed Update 4 for Corel X6 and now I can't print separations from the HP5000 printer. I can composites. When I go to print, the error message says "Nothing is selected to be printed. Check your page range and/or separations settings". It shows current document to print and separations to be printed. It will not advance to the print preview page. It printed perfectly before Update 4.
I need to print separations. I can export out and PDF and print from Illustrator, but what a pain. Should I just do a system restore and forget Update 4 for now?
I have tried unsuccessfully to export colour separations from Illustrator (CS5.1 MacOSX). I need the separations in an editable file format, but it seems like I am only able to print separations. Â I have tried to print to a file with Output set to host-based separations but even that seems to be impossible. I get an error message "The save as PDF options in the Printer dialog are not supported". Â The software is clever enough to do the separations, but somehow it can only print, not export them. Is there any additional software that would pose as a printer but instead of printing would create a file?
I've used this function forever in CS4. I switch to the newer and allegedly better CS6 Cloud. @@#$ @!#$ Why does print to PDF not work for color separations work anymore? I installed on 2 different mac computers with mountain lion. I need to get these color seps out for screen print. There's thousands of screen print designers out there doing seps in illustrator, how do I fix?
I want to create an automated image processing. I have LR4.1 and CS6 installed. I also subscribe to the Creative Cloud.  1. Capture an NEF. 2. Apply an X-Rite color profile. 3. Save as a JPG to a specified folder. 4. Save the NEF to another specified folder.  How can I do this
using automated actions on my photos for a while, (rotate, re-size etc etc), but whenever I do this, every single time it asks me to complete the "Jpeg Options" box (compression levels).
Can I override this, and just set it so it automatically saves at a particular setting? when i've got hundreds of photos to have to click "ok" on each one!
I remember using it once for my commercial job in older version. I think it was ver. 11 or 12. Today when I tried HC separations, black appeared in all plates and a change I noticed is that all the colors are changed to Pantone HC process. I remember it well, it used to be CMYK + Pantone orange + Pantone Green.
I don't remember about the black color if it was separated on each plate or not.
The prepping process should be really simple right? Separate colour layers, using Illustrator, then print each layer onto transparency sheets. Well I'm about to loose my mind.  The image is CMYK, its a single spot colour (I think) which is red and the outlines are black. Printer is a Canon ix6500.  I can't seem to separate the colours in Illustrator CS3?! Why?! When selecting Print > Output > Mode > it won't allow me to select Colour Separations.  I've tried to overcome this by selecting Printer > Adobe Postscript and PPD > Canon ix6500 series. This allows me to select Colour Separations, but then it won't print, it only saves it as a PDF, and prints it as is.
 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.
I am interested in building an automated retouching system for a specific form of photography. The system needs to be able to handle a large workflow of images and create a look that is desirable and state of the art. I can see that there are a lot of systems out there that deal with portraiture etc and feel that if we could develop a similar system with actions for the specific work that I shoot it would be great.
I've been trying to set up an automated process for capturing JPG's and merging them -without user input- to an HDR and then save it to an OpenEXR file.
The capture process is functioning correctly, but I need someone to explain me this: How do I tell photoshop (with Javascript or VBScript) to merge the contents of, let's say, 'C:HDRJPEG' to a HDR, without attemping to align, and then save it to 'C:HDRHDR.exr' ?
I am using Photoshop CS2 on Windows XP. I don't understand the scripting langages completely
How can saving files in different Sizes and/or different Resolutions be automated? I think of an action, but I definitely don't know how or if this is possible.
