Reducing Photoshop File to Two Colors

[Milady]

Hello All!

I have a photoshop file which I did principally in orange, black and white. I wanted to send it for print as a two colour job (using Orange and Black).
I usually send my CMYK files to a print shop and they sort out the reducing for me, but this time the printer wants it as a two colour file.

The design is already done, so just adding a spot colour and using it to paint wouldn't quite work (that I can see)since I would have to redo all the parts that are in orange for example.

Someone suggested duotones, but I wasn't sure that would keep the strong clear oranges, and keep the text orange as well.

I am not used to doing print work, since I usually do web design, so any help would be great!

Thanks!

Ayesha

 

[gabz]

Hello, Milady. Gabz here. Maybe this will help.
Play around with Color Modes, maybe Indexed Color.
Split to Multichannel. You get a two-color separation.
No editing needed. Bye!

 

[askIllustrator]

Sorry to break this to you, but print work is not something you can just pick up on, though its not rocket science either. A duotone will to the job but it takes some tweaking with the curves therin to keep your solid colors, well, solid since you have to convert to grey-scale first. Channel separations are the other way out. If you can select all of one color in you image, select New Spot Channel in your channels drop-down menu, name the channel the intended ink color and select a color as close as possible. Do this for each additional color and save the doc as a DCS 2.0 EPS. Send this to your printer and they should be able to take it from there.

 

[artdirectoreric]

Do you have the option or the time to convert your image into Magenta and Cyan (or any two of the four process colors?) Then you can specify that the Magenta plate should be a specific PMS color and the Cyan plate should be the other PMS color.

 

[Milady]

Excellent. I will take all those suggestions and have a go! Thanks a lot!

Ayesha

 

[zefir]

Milady: if your document is printed by two spot colors or one
spot color plus black (which is a process color), then you have two
plates and both colors are made by (mixed) ink.
The colored spot color is defined e.g. by a Pantone spot color.
For Duotone: convert Grayscale, convert Duotone(2), define spot colors,
adjust mixture by curves, convert Multichannel (!), save as DCS2 EPS with all
options. This guarantees the perfect handling in PageMaker (color names
are transferred as well).
Select Show Import Filter in PM. Select 72dpi/Mill.Colors. PM makes a reasonable
preview. The Service Provider can use this PM file.
This message is just another view to Jaquan´s suggestions.
If you STILL want to use CMYK then it´s quite different !
---Gernot