Wholesale conversion of color palette

[Charles_A_Roberts@adobeforums.com]

I'm evaluating Adobe Illustrator and like most of what I have seen.

The methods of getting there, however, are a little different than my mindset. So I hope someone can tell me if I'm at least on the right track on this.
I have artwork that can come from almost anyone (in many formats, mostly AI and WMF) and I need to convert it to a format that our printer can take. Fortunately .AI is one of the preferred formats for the printer, so that is a no-brainer.

The problem comes in mapping the colors. The printer has a specific set of colors ( inks, in Pantone definitions) that can be printed. They have provided the set of colors and I can load it as a palette, no problem.

I need to do a wholesale conversion of colors on the incoming artwork to map to the closest color that the printer can support. It would seem a simple thing, but I'm lost in the documentation at Adobe.

It looks like color policy is the way to do this, but I am not certain. The documentation talks about being questioned about conversion apon placing the supplied artwork into a new policy controlled document. That is about the only reference I can find.

Anyone have experience doing this?

Thanks

C Roberts

[Philip_Peterson@adobeforums.com]

Do you want to do it on a case by case basis (i.e. replace all the 299 blue with reflux blue, etc)? If so I know you could certainly manually do it with by using "merge swatches"

[Charles_A_Roberts@adobeforums.com]

Thanks for the reply.

Well, I could do that if there were a catolog of all colors that are used in any particular drawing, so I could search out each one and change it.

But I really want to do is press a button and have the system find the best matches and apply them all at once (thus I used the term 'wholesale', which might not be appropriate, but it's close). (I am dreaming, right?)

I can go in and change each and every little object, but that is extremely tedious and error prone. Especially when the drawings get complex. And it is rather difficult to figure out the correct Pantone color (just from looking at the swatches) and then select the appropriate saturation level.

I'd settle for something less than glamorous. A table with a list of all the used colors (would have to show the CYMK value, too), and a place where I could enter the Pantone color to replace it with.

[Philip_Peterson@adobeforums.com]

So you would like to take a file, and have it automatically shift the colors in incoming files to the closest spot colors that your printer uses.

Maybe it could be done with some heavy-duty scripting. You might try the scripting forum and see if someone can help.