EASY QUESTION: QUARK VS ILLUSTRATO

[elm_street@adobeforums.com]

A piece of art that has a spot color defined as a CMYK global color is placed in a Quark document. If the Quark file does not also have items on the page that are colored cyan, magenta, or yellow, Quark will not separate the art. No separations are generated for those colors. If colored text is added to that page, the separations show the art.

If I change the spot color in the art to be "non-global" Quark will output the separations for the art even if there are no other items on the page using those colors.

Can anyone explain why? Shouldn't the CMYK color always be checked for non-global so this doesn't occur?

[jonf@adobeforums.com]

Just to clarify, when you say "Quark will output the separations" are you saying that it will separate it into cmyk values, or print out a separate plate for that color? In your Quark Print dialog, when you tell it print separations under the Document tab, does your Output tab show just cmyk values, or is there an extra plate being created? I'm not seeing the problem that I think you're describing. I only get cmyk values when the color is defined as Global, which is as it should be.

[elm street]

If the color is defined as global, Quark will only separate the art into the cmyk values when there are other elements on the page that are also cmy. If there are no non-Illustrator elements that use those colors, the black separation does not show any art--there are just empty spaces for the art and the cmy plates are not printed. [The Quark print dialog box shows to print all the cmyk plates; there are no other plates since the colors in the art are set to be process colors.]

If the color is defined as non-global, Quark will separate the art whether or not there are other (not Illustrator) cmy colors on the page.

I should explain that the art was created in Illustrator 8 and I am using Quark 4.11 on OS 9.

[elm_street@adobeforums.com]

Received this message from a printer who I sent the Illustrator 8 file with the non-global process color:

"I tested the EPS file you sent on a Quark 4 page. You are right. Quark is
not separating it properly. Its as if Quark can't detect what colors it
needs to print. I resaved the EPS file in Illustrator 10 (that's my oldest
version). The Illustrator 10 EPS file separated properly in Quark. [NOTE: I resaved in 9 and it separated properly also.]

Just for kicks I placed your EPS in Adobe InDesign. It separated colors
properly without having to resave it in a different version of Illustrator.
That tells me that it is Quark that doesn't recognize the colors. They are
correct in the EPS file. I also tested Quark 6. It has the same problem as
Quark 4."

The moral of this story is process colors in Illustrator 8 must be saved as non-process to separate correctly in Quark.