Limit to how many spot colours in an AICS eps file?

[Tricia_Tahara@adobeforums.com]

Hi there.
For the 2nd time I've had to use AI9 to make an eps or ps file from an AI file with lots of spot colours. The first time I was trying to print a complete Pantone chart. I could only save a pdf file as I got repeated errors when trying to save an eps or write a ps file. I encountered the same thing today with a colleague's file with many pms spot colours and was not able to save as eps until I exported an AI file, opened it in AI9, and then I was able to save an eps file. On this occasion the ability to save as pdf was of no help because the RIP for this job won't use a pdf.

Is there a limit to how many spot colours one can have in a file? Why was this not a problem in earlier versions of AI?

Thanks,
Tricia

[Lance_K@adobeforums.com]

Hi Tricia,

Illustrator CS has a limit of 28 spot colors. I'm not sure off the top of my head what the limit was, or if there was a limit in previous versions of Illustrator.

Lance

[Scott_Falkner@adobeforums.com]

Unless you're printing an aual PATONE solid colour guide, you don't need all hose colours o be spot colours. Select all, then change the colors to CMYK, or delee he swatches. The colours will print (in process or on a colour printer) identically, since he definitions for the PANTONE colours are CMYK anyways.