Creating a 'white' basecoat separation

[jason@digital-solutionsDOTcoDOTuk]

I know a similar thread to this existed, and is now in the archive (varnish layers), but I'm having difficulty with this scenario:

Artwork for a CD on body, which has various graphic and text elements.
The graphics are not 'filled to frame' and therefore consist of irregular shapes with transparent backgrounds.

Because of the silver reflective surface, I need to create a spot plate of pure solid white, on which the other inks will be overprinted.

However, while in Photoshop, it's just a case of shift-selecting all layers, copying merged layers, and pasting into a new channel.......

.... Dare I ask how to do this in Indesign?

PS: I've googled, searched through the manual, forums, etc etc.... but couldn't find a suitable solution. Someone must know how to do this.

Cheers,

J.

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

If I understand what you're looking to do, you'll have to draw it using
the pen tool. Place it under your graphic and then set the graphic to
overprint.

Bob

[jason@digital-solutionsDOTcoDOTuk]

I was REALLY hoping you wouldn't say that Bob... :(
I think you do understand what I'm trying to do... but I was hoping there would be a much simpler way to "merge all visible" and then just specify a flat colour...

Oh well.. When the customer asks me if there's a chance of any white being seen, I'll have to say "with my hands, more than likely".

Cheers Bob.

J.

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

Why not just do it in Photoshop then?

Bob

[jason@digital-solutionsDOTcoDOTuk]

I did once, but found that even when supplying the printer with artwork at 300 dpi, the text was heavily rasterised, and very badly screened (85 lines per inch).

When I redid the artwork in Illustrator / Indesign, everything was much smoother.... so it put me off using Photoshop for anything except offset litho printing.

J

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

I thought you were using a raster graphic. If not, why not use
Illustrator for this?

Or if you want, stick to Photoshop and save as PDF?

Bob

[jason@digital-solutionsDOTcoDOTuk]

There IS a raster graphic - a halftone pattern gradient.
Their corporate logo was created in Illustrator (which I could quite easily create a spot layer for that I guess), but the other graphics are.... (and I've just answered my own question here)... created in Indesign, so yes, I could duplicate those to a new layer and apply spot colour....

* sigh*

Thanks for jigging my brain back into shape Bob.

Still - it would be nice if it could be done entirely in Indesign... ;-)

[Jay_Chevako@adobeforums.com]

Try this, export to eps, or pdf and open that in photoshop, convert to
grayscale, and use a very sharp curve to get solid black save as tiff,
place in indesign and colorize to your spot white, position it exactly
in the right spot (the hard part).
Jay

[jason@digital-solutionsDOTcoDOTuk]

That's another possible solution Jay, thanks..

J.