Merge All Colors To Seperate Layers?

[JoeSamuels]

Hello!

I am admittedly an Illustrator newb (used to Photoshop,) working withing with Illustrator CS.
I did a vectored design for some people to be used as a t-shirt, and they have asked me to separate the colors to different layers to ease printing.

If it were a matter of just dragging/dropping/moving all the paths to separate layers, it would be no trouble...but in my lack of foresight, I have some colors/shapes that go behind others and moving (for instance) all the browns to the top, messes up the image.

Is there a way or a filter I can separate all the colors to different layers, like tracing them? For instance, in Photoshop I'd just use the color selection tool, copy, paste to new layer, and ta-da, all the browns to one layer, all the oranges to another, etc. Does Illustrator have anything like this or some other kind of trick?
Am I doomed to have to redo the entire design?


Thank you very much!

 

[apepp]

...is the T Shirt being printed in CMYK or spot inks?

...have you used transparency effects?

...be good if you post a link to a screenshot of the artwork to help assist your query...

andrew

 

[JoeSamuels]

I believe it is being printed in CMYK, using four colors, and I haven't used any transparency. Everything is just shapes either before or behind other shapes.

I attached a link to the image, but just in case it's up here:

http://blackteagan.com/CampfireBears-web.jpg

 

[apepp]

...well if it is CMYK and your colors are CMYK mixes then it makes no sense to be manually separating elements in illustrator, as screen printing CMYK means halftone meshes at varying angles, much like litho printing...

...are you sure they aren't planning to be using 4 inks as solid inks, as opposed to CMYK halftones?

...judging by your artwork, it can be printed in 4 spot colors, orange, dark brown, light brown and a light cream of some kind, so i think they are really asking you to make the colors as 4 spot colors...

andrew

 

[apepp]

...there are a couple of ways of selecting same color elements in illustrator, you can use the magic wand tool in the tools palette, or you select a color on your artboard with the select tools and choose:

Select > Same > (list of options)

...if you have used globals colors through your artwork you can change those to spot colors by double clicking them in the swatches palette and changing the color type of that global color and giving it a pantone reference name by typing one in...

...a global color has a white triangle bottom right of swatch, a spot color has the same but with a dot added...

andrew

 

[apepp]

...if they do plan on printing as four SOLID inks, then all you would have to do is get your colors to spot colors, four of them...

...then you can export to a composite PDF that has spot seps they can run out as they need to...

andrew

 

[JoeSamuels]

Hhm, perhaps. They asked for "color separation," which through-out all my Googling and searching effort, I couldn't turn up anything that seemed to work in CS or made much sense.
I think they are planning on screen printing, and wanted the colors separated so they could make the 4 separate screens.

Is there a way to do this?

Thank you for the help! I apologize for my absolute lack of tech savvy.

 

[apepp]

...i believe they need you to get the artwork into four SPOT colors, solid inks essentially...

...once you have done that you can print out of illustrator to postscript separations and make a PDF...

...or make a composite PDF and have them produce the films required to make the screens, in their RIP they should have some sort of trapping functionality...

...the longer route is to manually get all elements knocking out of each other as spot colors and applying manual traps in illustrator...

...i will be happy to help out with that if you want to send me a download link of the illustrator file, you can use

http://www.sendspace.com

...them post the download link back here in a tek-tips message, won't take long really...

andrew

 

[JoeSamuels]

Thank you very much! Your help is greatly appreciated.

Here is the 4 color version of the file:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/0spe59

 

[apepp]

...yep, got it, will get back when done...

andrew

 

[apepp]

...which version of illustrator are you using?



...for now here is a composite PDF:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/y5hgon

...and here is a seperated PDF:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/c8taxz

 

[apepp]

...you can send them the PDF files above for now and see what feedback they come back with, if any...

andrew

 

[JoeSamuels]

Thank you so very much! You saved my day!

 

[apepp]

...thats fine, just let me know any feedback, if any, and also what illustrator version you are using so i can send back the spot color version...

andrew