How do I spot color photos

[PrintedGear]

I'm new in the shirt printing business and a friend of mine showed me very briefly a feature in AI CS2 (I'm running CS). He took a photo image and converted it into what looked like a spot color image (vectorized). Sorry, but I don't know the actual term.

This is not possible on CS, correct?

With this capability, can you specify the number of spot colors? For example, if I imported a photo and wanted to use a max of 8 screens would the program spit that out?

Thanks!!

 

[apepp]

...you need CS2 for the the Live Trace feature you refer to...

...within the live trace options you can 'output to swatches' the number of colors used to perform the trace function...

...these are added to the swatch list as global colours, so in theory you can then makes these into spot plates if required...

Andrew

 

[Limeydog]

The best way I believe to trun a phot into spot colours is by creating a DCSII image. This essential converts your RGB or CMYK channels to your chosen spot colours. You can read up about this on other forums or on the Illustrator help

Good luck,
Limeydog