Composite PDF woes

[jspenc2]

Thanks so much. Just tried your advice... when you say just send magenta/black, do you mean delete the other channels? That's how I started this mess... I deleted every channel except for my 2 pantones which ended up as a multichannel PSD that could only be saved as DCS or PSD.... which made the printer angry as he wanted a composite PDF. So the composite I sent him still has a lot of info for C/M/Y/K, but I guess he'll just disregard all that and use the 2 spot channels? Or should I isolate each color on its own layer, then make every channel white except for M/K where black indicates where that color goes? Is that the standard procedure for a composite PDF from Photoshop?

Sorry, I know I have a lot of questions. First time doing this. Thanks again!

[mattbeals]

Cut the dark color channel and paste it into the black channel. Then the next darkest color, your green, cut and paste into the magenta channel. Delete the two pantone channels. All you are left with is an empty cyan, empty yellow, populated magenta and black channels. Do not send a DCS2 file, do not delete the cyan or yellow channels. Just plain old composite CMYK.

[Joe]

Hey guys,
I've always been a Photoshop guy, but never had to professionally PRINT any of my work until now. It's a whole different world and I'm totally lost. I'm hoping someone can help me:

I've designed a 2-color invitation, in CMYK, in Photoshop that my printer wants as a composite PDF with spot colors. If I just save a PDF, it won't be spot colors, it will be a CMYK PDF, am I right? So how do I give him the spot colors in the PDF?

I know this is probably retarded. Thanks in advance for your help.


James

The best option would be to do it in Illustrator in the first place. High res vector artwork that you can save directly as a PDf with any spot colors you desire. Right tool for the right job.

[jspenc2]

Thanks for the input guys. I've learned a lot on this project. Mostly on how to not do things. Joe, I've been halfheartedly trying to learn Illustrator for a while now so this is probably a good excuse to start. Coming mainly from a photography/raster background it's frustrated me in the past because I'm so comfortable with the Photoshop toolset.

[Joe]

Thanks for the input guys. I've learned a lot on this project. Mostly on how to not do things. Joe, I've been halfheartedly trying to learn Illustrator for a while now so this is probably a good excuse to start. Coming mainly from a photography/raster background it's frustrated me in the past because I'm so comfortable with the Photoshop toolset.

Your printer would thank you.

[bprint_tampabay]

I agree wholeheartedly with Joe.
By creating a CMYK document in PS, you were already behind the 8-ball.
If you want a 2 color job, then create a 2 color job.
Sure, you can dodge your way around with channels and such by why make your life more difficult than it needs to be?
Learn Illustrator & InDesign. You will be glad you did.

[michaelejahn]

There are several ways to create artwork, and several approaches when it comes to two color jobs.

I will say that there is nothing weird about using Adobe Photoshop to accomplish this sort of thing, but I would agree that many people who design sport color packaging use Illustrator, so you will find there are a lot more searchable answers on that...

I think it is simply too bad that Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator are not more "like each other" when it comes to trying to deal with projects like this, but I can fully appreciate that few people do not even try to do projects like this anymore as everything is moving toward printing things digitally.

I created a step by step how to once to show how horrifyingly complex it is to make a PDF file that is black and white and can be printed - and proofed - on green paper. It sounds simple enough, but if you understand that you need to 'simulate' the green paper in Acrobat (when viewed) and on some inkject printer (that has no green paper) - well, you can see why it became complicated.

here is a link to that ;

PDF/X Output Intent procedure...

[Rheboi]

Hi, ya beat me to it... was going to say whenever we had jobs with spot colour with black or spot colours without process colour and they were being converted to CMYK it was always easier to change the spot colour to a Process. This also made trapping and overprinting issues disappear too....

[Lennyr]

The lesson here is that before you put anything on screen ask yourself "How is this job being reproduced"?
You can change the spot color to process, but how is your printer supposed to know what color to print. Certainly not from the information in the file.
If the job is black and a spot color, then set it up with the pantone color that you want to use, not a cmyk build.
All files going to your printer should be cmyk, but not all of the print cmyk.
Lenny R.

[Chicago Press]

As a printer, I can't resist chiming in here. Yes, using Photoshop for a two color job that is line art and text is definitely not the way to go. For printing, use Photoshop for images. In the spot color world, that would be duotones, tritones etc. Compose your page in InDesign (best) or Illustrator using the actual ink colors, and bring in whatever images are needed as linked or embedded grayscale or spot color images. The only exception is some of the effects that can only be done in Photoshop, but most of those don't work with spot colors!

I see a lot of people using Photoshop for everything, and it's just not the right tool for everything. Even though you can get vector art and type to print cleanly if you save the layered Photoshop file as a PDF, it's best used for something like an ad, or a one-page situation, not to produce a multiple page piece. Plus, you are creating huge files that are a pain to move around (30 megs in an email) that in the end will print with lower quality if your line art or or type is rasterized, and most trapping solutions will not be able to trap a 2-color raster file.

The work-around described is the best that can be done when the job has already been created, but yes, everyone preparing designs needs to consider how they will be produced and use the right tool. My favorite is getting an RGB Photoshop file that they want to print with 2 pantone inks! I've done a lot of reconstruction, as I'm sure you can tell.

Lastly, talk to the printer first. I love it when people call with production questions, rather than getting something that requires reconstruction and also must be printed in the morning!