I need to print seperated art in PDF format, not process?

[MikeMoss]

Hi

I have a job that I'm doing for a silkscreen printer.
The job is 3 pantone colors. Black, Yellow and Red.

Without having to do it manually is there a way to print the colors out as 3 separated colors, all as black PDF files. I have looked at the help files and I can only seem to find how to do separations as four-color process. I can’t seem to find anyplace to tell it that it is a 3-color job with PMS colors. The logo is in Photoshop format as it has gradations in it, not just solid colors or I would use Illustrator to do it.

I have made art of the logo in Photoshop that has all the colors on different layers, so I know I can do it by importing the logo as three colors from my original art ie. place the black part of the logo on the base layer, then place the other 2 colors on layers 1 and 2. Next make the layers visible one at a time and then export the PDFs of each plate.

Is there an easier way?

Thanks for the help.

Mike

 

[jimoblak]

The easier way is to set up your Photoshop file to have spot colors (often done via channels). Then in InDesign, you should have three spot colors as swatches.

At print or export time, you produce those 3 spot colors as separations.

 

[MikeMoss]

Hi jimoblak

I'll check that out I do have the job as Pantone colors in Photoshop, with each color on a separated layer.

I'm not sure how I should import it into Indesign.
As of right now it appears as CYMK after it is imported.
Not as the three PMS colors.

I did finish the job by importing the logo (the only color on the job other then black) as separate objects with a clipping path (so I could align them) for each color and placing each on a layer of it's own.

I then just made the layers visible one at a time, and exported a PDF file with register marks.

Thanks for the help.

Mike

 

[jimoblak]

You will not have colors on separate layers in Photoshop. You use separate channels.

 

[apepp]

...to use spot colors in photoshop they need to be created using extra channels ideally, as opposed to layers, when using layers the image is only created in your documents color space (cmyk, rgb etc)...

...with extra channels you introduce extra plates into the artwork, spot colors can also be achieved using the duotone mode or multichannel mode...

...to save images with extra channels you can save to layered tif, layered psd, flattened tif, Photoshop PDF and Photoshop DCS 2.0 format and then import into indesign cs, cs2 etc...

...photoshop pdf has a tendency to preview incorrectly in indesign if the photoshop file has a background layer, turn overprint preview on in indesign to get around this...

...this is the same with CS3, however i have discovered a bug with layered PSD usage in a CS2 document and then opened into CS3. PSD images seem to have trouble with the alpha channels here, the solution is to re-link the PSD image manually to refresh the data to separate correctly...

...exporting to indesign will only produce a composite pdf not a separated pdf, to obtain a separated pdf you need to print to postscript as separations and then distill in acrobat distiller, if you have it, or process it through acrobat instead...

Andrew

 

[MikeMoss]

Thanks for the info.

I'm printing this out and I will go through the whole thing tomorrow.

Mike