Separate image into pantones and 4-color. Help!

[brooke_lhernould@adobeforums.com]

Topic
How to separate image into 4-color and pantones. Help!

I have created a brochure cover (using Illustrator CS) which uses a 4-color photo in the background behind a large object filled with a gradient. The gradient and parts of a logo must be printed in 2 different Pantone colors, while the rest of the cover will be 4-color. I had prepared everything in eps and imported it into Xpress (6) which seemed to work, but my printer called to say that the Pantone gradients transform into 4-color when exported to flash. He says I must put the image into Photoshop and separate it using multichannels (in this case, 6) and then re-import it into Xpress. I haven't been able to figure out how to do this. Can you please help?

Thanks a million.

[LenHewitt@adobeforums.com]

Brooke,

Humour me - What has Flash got to do with either printing or separations?

To answer the question as asked, In Photoshop you will need to create two
spot colour channels and to paste the spot-colour content into each of those
channels and save as DCS2 EPS, multiple file with colour composite, 8-bit
TIFF preview and ASCII encoding.

Note however that spot-colour channels overprint by default - if you need
any knock-outs you will have to create them manually by deleting content in
the relevant areas all other channels.

[Jacob_Bugge@adobeforums.com]

Brooke, maybe you should try the PS forum too.

[brooke_lhernould@adobeforums.com]

Well, Flash has nothing to do with printing, of course. I just used the wrong word -- I live in France and the French expression for the process of creating films is "flashage" -- but I don't know the correct word in English since I only deal with French printers. (Internet translation programs give me very funny results for that term! You could surely help me with the vocabulary -- what word am I looking for?!)

Your answer does help me. The only problem is, after opening the Illustrator eps file in Photoshop, how can I separate the various elements in order to paste them into the correct channels?

The last part of your response worries me a little because, for another part of the brochure, I placed a DCS spot color photo as a background to text which I typed in XPress. Will the photo cover the text? When I print the separations myself for this job, everything looks good, but the printer says that as soon as it is exported out of Xpress for "flashage", things change (Pantones into 4-color (in gradient or percentage-filled objects created in Xpress), for example). Is he right, or can I trust what my Epson postscript printer prints as separations?

Thanks.

[LenHewitt@adobeforums.com]

Hi Brooke,

>>what word am I looking for?<<

No real equivalent - we just talk about "outputting to film" or
"sending/outputting to an imagesetter"

>>how can I separate the various elements in order to paste them into the

correct channels?<<

Without seeing the job that's impossible to say, I'm afraid, but for a
spot-spot gradient you would need two copies of the object to paste into the
respective colour channels and then fill one with a gradient of black to
white and the other with a gradient of white to black.

>>Will the photo cover the text? <<

Not provided it is placed behind the text.

>>can I trust what my Epson postscript printer prints as separations?<<

You should be able to, provided it is the same PostScript Level as the
imagesetter.

If you have the full Acrobat, you could also print separations to a
PostScript file and distil that for a visual check.

[brooke_lhernould@adobeforums.com]

Thanks again, Len, for your excellent advice and the willingness to share your expertise. You've been a great help to me.

Brooke

[LenHewitt@adobeforums.com]

You're very welcome, Brooke

[John_Slate@adobeforums.com]

On the otherhand, there is no reason he really needs to go to Photoshop for this. For one thing, I can see the printer he is using also having problems with the DCS2 file format.

A spot color gradient may convert to CMYK in some workflows because the "white" end is set up as CMYK white or grayscale white. The solution there is to set white as 0% of the same PMS color that is at the color end of the gradient.

If the gradient is spot-to-spot (ie from PMS-X to PMS-Y) I believe MOST workflows will convert that to CMYK. The solution for that is to have two different fills, one being a gradient all in PMS-X and the second one being a gradient all in PMS-Y, and set the top one to overprint.

This will not print out properly on many composite laserprinters, but will output properly in a separated workflow or to a composite postscript device which is configured to honor postscript overprinting.

If going to a printer, the fact that you have used overprinting (other than black overprinting) should be noted on a printout, since many composite rips have postscript overprinting turned off by default.

In case you haven't figure it out, I work in pre-press and alter this kind of thing all the time. Making files work is part of the service of being a supplier.

IMHO, ANY printer that needs to have his customers alter files to make them work in HIS workflow, is not worth keepng as a supplier.

It always bothers me to here about suppliers telling designers absolutely how files need to be prepared, as if their way was the only way. The truth is, what works at one place may not work at another. Every front end has it's own quirks and requires it's own workarounds.

And some suppliers simply don't know what they are doing. Those are the ones that insist EVERYTHING be submitted in a Photoshop format.

[LenHewitt@adobeforums.com]

John,

I agree whole-heartedly with everything you say!

[brooke_lhernould@adobeforums.com]

Thanks so much for this discussion -- it's very reassuring to me. I know there are many ways to prepare a file and I try to bend over backwards to get it just right, but sometimes I wonder whether there couldn't be a little more reciprocity from the print professionals.

[Hopkins_Chris@adobeforums.com]

Does your printer have convert spot to process checked in Quark in the putput box. Or convert the gradient to CMYK an avoid the cost of 2 extra colors. Add a varinis instead.