Outputting 2-color seps from IDCS

[Nancy_Foster@adobeforums.com]

Help! Only a couple of weeks into using IDCS (long time PM user) and had to output first IDCS job for printer. We do mostly 2-color jobs and, under PM, this was a piece of cake. The printer prefers I give them a PS file and they distill it for printing.

When I did the same thing using IDCS, the PS went fine, but I always distill it myself to double check things. Yikes! Almost all the text was missing, and what was there was garbage. (Using Distiller 3.0 from my PM days.) This didn't make sense so I opened the PS file in Photoshop -- only got one of the two pages but all the text for that plate was there. Very concerned the printer will have the same problem and the file will be useless.

Could not for the life of me figure out how to export a PDF of the 2-color seps to use instead. Couldn't see where it would give me that option; just in the print diaglog box.

I pulled out nearly all my hair today trying to resolve this (ended up manually printing seps on my laser printer as a back up for the print shop). What am I missing? TIA!

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

Distiller 3? That's ancient software. Get yourself a copy of Acrobat 6
professional if you intend to work like this.

Bob

[Nancy_Foster@adobeforums.com]

$450 is a bit steep just to generate PDFs to proof PS files. And the only Distiller download available on the site is 3.02. Certainly there must be a way for InDesign to produce the appropriate spot color separations in digital format for a service bureau/print shop. Someone please tell me what I'm missing. How can a state-of-the-art layout package not be able to do this!

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

You can't export separations. Any decent printer should be able to work
from a composite PDF.

You're now using a 21st century page layout application. I suggest you
find youself a 21st century printer. If you current one won't take PDFs
or ID files he won't be around much longer anyway.

Bob

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

If the only reason that you need a separated PDF file is to 'double check things', why not make use of the new whiz-bang features of IDCS? Check out the Separation Preview option.

Window menu>Output Preview>Separations

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

The problem with that is that it won't tell whether the postscript file
was created properly. It's why I recommend getting Acrobat 6 professional.

Bob

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

I recommend Acrobat 6 Pro as well but it is not critical for previewing 2-color separations with IDCS's new function. Nancy can monitor basic PostScript errors with her composite PDF viewed in the free Adobe Reader 6.

Whatever Nancy would preview in Acrobat 6 will still not ensure that the printer will not have PostScript errors. Most PostScript errors reported in this forum are popping up at the RIP, not in PDF creation.

When printing separations to a virtual PostScript printer, you can choose EPS instead of PS. The separated EPS can be opened in Illustrator or placed back in a new InDesign document for checking visually. This method bypasses the need for Distiller.

[Nancy_Foster@adobeforums.com]

You can't export separations. Any decent printer should be able to work
from a composite PDF.




I was afraid of that.

You're now using a 21st century page layout application. I suggest you
find youself a 21st century printer. If you current one won't take PDFs
or ID files he won't be around much longer anyway.




No, I doubt he's going anywhere. Before trying this forum, I called around to numerous print shops and service bureaus and only a couple had ID. Quark and PM are still the big players, at least down here.

[Nancy_Foster@adobeforums.com]

If the only reason that you need a separated PDF file is to 'double check
things', why not make use of the new whiz-bang features of IDCS? Check
out the Separation Preview option.




No, I did try that. But as Bob pointed out, it doesn't test the PS file.

Thankfully this is now a moot point. I downloaded the 3.02 update and installed it today. Everything now distills fine. One headache down; a few more to go...

Thanks for all the advice everyone!

[Nancy_Foster@adobeforums.com]

When printing separations to a virtual PostScript printer, you can choose
EPS instead of PS. The separated EPS can be opened in Illustrator or placed
back in a new InDesign document for checking visually. This method bypasses
the need for Distiller.




If I recall, this produces a separate EPS file for each page/plate. Is that right? While I've debugged the PS/Distiller issue at this point, it's good to know for future reference.

[Bryce_Steiner@adobeforums.com]

I see that you are used to using PM. If you have PM7 you had distller 5 on the CD. You can install that. It will do a much better job than 3. I don't think spot colors were even supported under 3.

Bryce

[Nancy_Foster@adobeforums.com]

No, I have PM6.52 -- upgrading to 7 never seemed worth the expense since I wasn't going to use the templates they bundled in. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, the 3.02 download from Adobe's site fixed the problem. BTW, 3 handled spot colors just fine when I was on the 98 box. I've been doing 2-color newsletters for years with PM in just that way. The problem only cropped up when I switched to XP (so I could switch to IDCS).

Making the switch to IDCS, ultimately, is the right decision, but it hasn't been without headaches! Things that were easy under PM, don't function in IDCS. Little things like printing out an 11x17 file onto just two 8.5x11 sheets (so I can fax proofs to clients) doesn't appear to work in IDCS. It includes the file name and crop marks so it wants to print out onto more than two sheets. I've posted it as its own question but no one has replied. <sigh>