Spot BLEND + Transparency...Workable combination?

[Richard_Zendarski@adobeforums.com]

Can you Blend from a Pantone Spot Color with 100% transparency to the same Pantone Color with 0% transparency (the background is CMYK on which the blend appears, which is why I can't do the blend from Pantone to CMYK - but I want the effect of a fade from an Pantone fill to the CMYK background).

Will this be a problem once we reach the printer?

Thanks!

[John_Kallios@adobeforums.com]

Yes this will work.

If you have 1 element at 100% spot and a 2nd element at 0% opacity of the same spot swatch, the blend will still separate to the spot channel.

If you are trying to achieve a transparent gradient, know that you may have serious banding issues. Postscript 2 device 256 gray levels, Postscript 3 is 4096 gray levels. Banding often occurs in Postscript 2 devices because the gray levels are so low.

Your blends "gray levels" will be reduced to the number of steps in the blend.

If you are truly trying to achieve a 1 spot color transparent gradient.

Make your gradient comprised of the black swatch, copy it, fill it with desired spot swatch, paste in front your copied gradient, select both and apply inverted, clipped opacity mask (through the transparency palette flyout menu)

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

We're talking about 0% OPACITY of the PMS, not 0% TINT? So this means that opacity will be flattened at some point in the print process. JK, you're saying that such a blend will output onto ONE plate only?

[John_Kallios@adobeforums.com]

Yes, it will output correctly. (as long as the person outputting knows what they are doing and no other effects are applied that do not support transparency)

All you need to do is output separations. (or save as a .ai or pdf file and view in Acrobat 6 pro's separation preview)

B)

[Doug_Katz@adobeforums.com]

Thank you.