Find spot colors within complex illustration - Please Help!

[Heather_Carr@adobeforums.com]

HI,

I would like to know if there is an easy way to locate objects that have spot color without having to go and click on each individual object. I have a very complex illustration that was mistakenly done in spot colors, I have changed the majority, but there are a few still remaining and I'm having a devil of a time finding them. The convert to cmyk doesn't work on gradients, which is apparently where they are. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank You-
Heather

[Scott_Weichert@adobeforums.com]

Draw a simple shape.. fill it with the color/gradient fromt eh swatches palette. Go to Select > Select similar from the menu.

[Heather_Carr@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for replying, but that doesn't work as I don't know what the gradients are, it just tells me what the spot colors are (which are within the gradients). Thank you

[John_Kallios@adobeforums.com]

Print out separations.

Then you know which elements are in spot color.

Or make pdf and view separations in Acrobat 6 pro. (provided you have 6 pro)

follow this link for an action to convert spot gradients to process gradients. <http://share.studio.adobe.com/axAssetDetailSubmit.asp?aID=8316&back=http%3A%2F%2 Fshare%2Estudio%2Eadobe%2Ecom%2FaxBrowseSubmit%2Ea sp%3Fc%3D105>

Note, you must be in cmyk mode and it will convert strokes to outlines. To maintain stroke, you must set it to none, run action and manually reaply the stroke.

[Dee Holmes]

I used to think it was as easy as deleting the spot swatches, then those colors just coverted to cmyk automatically.

But I have just recently encoutered that when I did that on one particular job I worked on the gradients switched angles on me. So that is not the answer. But I still use that method if there's no gradients.

Don't exactly know if that's correct proceedure or not.

[John_Kallios@adobeforums.com]

Instead of deleting the swatches, double click on them and convert each swatch's color type to process. (also, leave them as global)

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

John's got the correct way of doing this and a really simple process that way even if you don't see the color it will convert to process.