Help can only see CMYK colours in print seperations in Iluustrator CS3
In_a_twist (9 pencils) | Tue, 2009-12-22 10:16Hey, I have been looking on google for 2 days, trying to find the solution to my problem.
I need to send a logo to one of my suppliers, and it is made up of 5 pantone colours, I have managed to assign the pantone colours through the colour live thing, so they are in the colour palette, but when I go to print and view the seprations there is only the CMYK colours, so how do I get the spot colours in here?
Your help would be so much appreciated
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Save your file as PDF from Illustrator and view separations in Acrobat Pro. If you have spots colors, then you're good to go. Suspect this is an interpretation of the print driver (since your network printer doesn't have spot colors either).
Without my sense of direction, I don't know where I'd be.
Thank you, How do I view the seperations in Acrobat pro?
In Acrobat Pro 9, click the 'Advanced' menu, scroll to 'Print Production' and select 'Output Preview'. In Acrobat Pro 7, it's simply 'Advanced' menu and select 'Output Preview...'
Without my sense of direction, I don't know where I'd be.
I would nevr use Illustrator to produce my separations. It's far more reliable (and super-easy) to import the Illustrator artwork into InDesign or Quark and save the separations as PDF files. This is especially true when I use spot colors in Illustrator.
There may be some Color Management or other settings in Illustrator that I'm not familiar with that would make quick work of a project like yours, but I really think you want a page layout program.
Mara
Mara, in my opinion, Illustrator is perfect for spot colour jobs, exporting files to other programs to produce separations isn't very good practice, and can cause headaches with trapping, overprint etc. Always where possible try to output the job in the native application first.
In_a_Twist: If you can't see the spot colours in 'output preview' in Acrobat with your final output PDF (advanced -> print production -> output preview) your colours are not set up properly in illustrator.
Double click on your swatch in Illustrator for the spot colour, and make sure they are set up as 'spot colour' not 'cmyk', you can easily tell if this is the case as there will be a little dot in the bottom right corner of the swatch indicating it is actually a spot, make sure you click 'global' as this will apply your changes document wide. Once this is done they should appear in output preview on your final PDF.
living on dreams and custard creams.
Teach me! How do you create color separations in Illustrator? Most of my work involves assembling a variety of graphics and text in page layouts, so I really don't have any experience with this. Do you wind up with a separated PDF document with all the printer's marks in several pages, the way you do with, say, InDesign orQuark?
ps: I do my trapping etc. in Illustrator and double-check that these export properly in the layout. They always do. Never had any headaches with that. But that doesn't mean I'm not open to learning a better way :-)
Mara
Hi Mara,
As long as you set up your colour properties correctly in Illustrator, they will appear in your composite PDF output and print as separate plates when the printshop outputs them to film / plate. If you need to supply single separations to your printer it is easy, when printing your PDF, go to output and change it from Composite to Separations, then select the plates you would like to output.
I personally never supply ready separated PDFs (Different plates on different pages) as this leaves all of the responsibility with yourself and not the printshop, it is their job to separate the colours, and if set up correctly they should have no problems at all.
'Output preview' in Acrobat is invaluable, not just for separations, but for also checking overprint, knockout, UV overlays etc, which just isn't possible if you output to separate plates. Of course if you need to send them completely separated files then do so, but make sure you have checked a high res composite first in output preview, to make sure everything is present and correct first.
Nearly all of the printers I use, insist on high res composite PDFs no matter what the colour setup of the job is.
With Illustrator and InDesign now so closely linked I can't see you coming up against any problems transferring files between them, but I'm old-school and have always been taught to keep everything native wherever possible where output is concerned.
Everybody works differently though.
M ^__^
living on dreams and custard creams.
I don't get a comps versus seps dialog choice when doing Save As PDF in Illustrator, only if I use the Print function. I guess that's why I never noticed it. What you're describing is exactly what I do, but in the page layout program, which works better for me because of the types of jobs I most often do; i.e., assembling a piece from a variety of sources, including, but not limited to, Illustrator. It's good to be reminded of this capability, though. Thanks!
Mara
Hi Monkey,
Tried what you suggested and the separtions are still not showing up, could it be that my colour management in print isnt setup correctly;
Print
>colour managment
Colour Handling: let illustrator determine colours
Printer profile: US Web coated (SWOP) v2
Rendering Intent: Relative colorimetric
What should I have?
Okay, in illustraor, click 'print'.
On the left hand side of the print dialogue click on 'output'.
Make sure you have unchecked the box that says 'convert all spot colours to CMYK'
Can you see your spot colours in the list below CMYK? They should look different to the CMYK swatches, they are a white square with a dot in the centre of the spot colour.
If not the colours are not set as spot colours in Illustrator.
Let me know.
Also, what printer / PPD have you got selected when making the PDF?
living on dreams and custard creams.
Hi Monkey,
Right in the print menu under output, the box that says 'convert al spot colours to CMYK' + the box under it are not highlighted, however they do not have ticks in them netherless. There are no spot colours that appear under the CMYK colours either.
So this must mean that the spot colours are not set in illustrator, eek so how do I do this? My goodness this software is so complicated at times!
Printer is custom as I am printing to PDF.
really appreciate your help on this
Open your illustrator doc. open your swatches panel. Double click on the swatch that you want to be a spot colour, this will open a dialogue, change setting to 'Spot colour', make sure 'global' is selected, click apply. Repeat as necessary.
You should now be able to see the spot colours when outputting.
Set your printer to Adobe Postscript file
Set your PPD to Adobe Acrobat (?)
Save your postscript and run it through distiller at 'Press Quality'
Job done.
Out of interest, 5 spot colours for a logo makes for a very expensive print run, why are you doing it this way, would CMYK not do? Can I have a look?
living on dreams and custard creams.