Expert: Tom Rouze - 8/30/2005

Question
Hi Tom,
I made a full color tri-fold brochure for a client using CS2 and WinXP.  

They loved it, but had neglected to tell me from the beginning that I could only use 2 colors in addition to black and white.  

So we converted all the graphics to black and white, then put an 80% Pantone 281 tint over them.  Parts of the graphic (part of the graphic is a photograph and another part was not) were also made transparent.  We used the same 80% Pantone 281 as the background color so the graphics would melt into the background.  When I got the proof back from the printer, the colors did not match, but they do coordinate ok.  The major problem is that the transparent areas of the graphics printed white, instead of the background blue.

Is there a trick I'm missing, or a workable solution to my problem?

Answer
Hi Julie,
Without looking at the file it's hard to determine what's happening.
My first guess was that the image, when converted, did not have a transparent background.  It appears that this isn't the case though.  Another thought, Is the printer working with the same version Adobe? There may be a conversion problem if they are working with an older version.  That's just a couple thoughts.  If you still need a solution, I could I could take a look at the file but I'm not up to CS2 yet!  You would have to save it down to CS and email it to printspecialist2003@yahoo.com.

Thank you,

Tom