print Black as spot instead of cmyk 1

[guillermogp]

I'm being asked to print some document using only two spot colors. I have problems with images of every kind (jpg, tiff, eps, ai, etc.). All images have been transformed into black and white (as far as I know, with the exception of jpg's), and they are printed in the Black swatch included in every document.

How can I print black and white images to a black spot color, instead of the Black cmyk swatch? Or how can I send all this swatch to another spot color.

I've been searching for similar questions, but so far I haven't found any. I'd appreciate any help.

Guillermo
[Indesign CS (3.0) - Windows XT]

 

[eugenetyson]

If you want to do this it might be best to set the images up as DCS files in photoshop.

This basically means that you apply the spot colour in photoshop.

http://photoshop911.typepad.com/help/2004/04/spot_color_sepa.html

Another way is to fake it. Duplicating the image on top itself and deleting the top image (so it's exactly over the image). Apply your spot colour and set the blending mode to Multiply.


The other way to do this is quite tedious if you have a lot of images.

You need to, using the direct select tool, double click each image, then apply a swatch colour from the swatch panel. And that should do it.

 

[eugenetyson]

Sorry, I meant to say that Black is a colour you can't map or change to anything else in InDesign. The original files would have to be changed.

The black that is in InDesign is essentially a spot colour, so when you place a black and white photograph, InDesign looks at your photograph and says, in photoshop this ink colour is black. So you won't be able to replace this without replacing it in the original file. When you do, you will see the spot colour come up in the swatches panel.

 

[eugenetyson]

http://indesignsecrets.com/colorizing-grayscale-images-with-transparency.php

Out of interest, how are you printing these? On a desktop printer or with a some sort of machine/device that can seperate inks and print seperate colours? Like a lithographic or screen printing device?

 

[guillermogp]

I have done it in photoshop, just by adding the new spot, copy-pasting the whole image, and saving it as DCS. I placed it in Indesign, at it works! thank you very much for the fast answer.

I really don't know how these things will be printed. The company that prints this stuff to a client of us has changed his machines and asked us to do this: just two spots, no process color.

Guillermo

 

[eugenetyson]

Grand. Sure best to stick with the ould DCS for placing the image, it will seperate properly for the printers and all that.

Good luck with the job.

 

[guillermogp]

Eugenetyson:

Thanks again. Three more issues:

1) is there any reasonably good free program that could do this procedure such as photoshop and save in DCS? I have tried with GIMP without success.

2)You have asked: "Out of interest, how are you printing these? On a desktop printer or with a some sort of machine/device that can seperate inks and print seperate colours? Like a lithographic or screen printing device?". I suppose you ask this because mine is an odd question. To be honest, I suppose the operators of the press don't know how to do it, and there is a way to print a process color as a spot color without converting all the images to DCS. Do you think I'm right? Wikipedia says that DCS is not very common these days...

3) I don't remember which was the third thing i wanted to ask.

Guillermo

 

[eugenetyson]

Ok

DCS for starters stands for Deskstop Colour Separation.

It may not be "very common these days" but by jingo it works a treat.

Basically it's an EPS format, which again is not very common these days.

What is common these days is PSD, TIFF and that's it, according to Adobe.

If you export everything to PDF, then the picture format (i.e., psd, dcs, tiff etc.) becomes lost. Nobody would know the difference. The only thing that remains in tack is the data within the PDF, and the data contained in a PDF is the image size and position and also what colours it uses.

If you've truly converted the colour black to another colour then you're on the right track.

If your printers can't help you, then find a new printers.

If you're printing a 2 colour job then black and white pictures should be fine.

If I was doing a 2 colour job and didn't want black as one of my colours, I would ask the printers to print all my colours that I wanted on 1 plate

Basically, it doesn't matter if it's on a black plate or not. If you want the colour 296 to be the printed colour then your printers should be able to do this.

Even if I gave the printers a print job that had well over 5 colours and I said I wanted all the colours, bar the blue, to be printed in Pink, then the printers should be able to do that for you, at a cost obviously, what's free these days?