Expert: Amy - 11/17/2004

Question
I am the new art guy at a firm that sells embroidered uniforms,
emblems and patches, printed T-shirts and specialty
promotional items with client logos imprinted. We have an
outside screen printer make our shirts, and I have managed to
get her P.O.-ed at me on a daily basis for sending art files she
insists are incorrectly set up for screen printing. I have worked
in a sign/T-shirt shop before, but that was back in the mid
-1980s and all by hand. I've used Adobe Illustrator on both Macs
and Wintel boxen since at least 1993, but I haven't had to set up
files for screen printing before now.

Our printer says the files she gets are in CMYK rather than spot
color mode, but I haven't a clue how to get such a mode out of
Illustrator CS. The only modes in its Color Mode menu are CMYK
and RGB. I put Pantone numbered colors in every art element,
redraw all black lines to be shapes instead of stroked lines so
their equipment can see them, and delete all but the Pantone
colors from the swatch palette. I use Cool Gray 3 to indicate
white portions so their equipment can see it. I save down to
version 8 EPS files before sending. But I'm still getting it wrong!
Can you or anyone you know help without having to go through
a whole course in Screen Printing 101 (Remedial)? We use AI CS
under Windows XP on a Pentium 4 Dell machine. Ideally, I'd like
to find some third-party software that would automatically
convert my files for screen printing (know of any?), but at the
very least I need to know how to handle the color mode
problem.

Answer
Gee whiz Matt

It sounds like you are doing everything right. I don't think there's anything you can buy to check the files automatically... or convert them, unfortunately.

There's no Spot mode, you're correct.  You set the file up in CMYK and make sure all CMYK plates are gone and that only the spots remain.

You can see if she's right by looking at your separation setup in the file menu. In CS, this may be under Page Setup. The separation setup is only available if a)you are printing to a postscript device or PDF writer and b)you have selected a PPD file.  If you can set this up, you can see the list of plates and if there are any little markers/icons next to the CMY or K plates, your printer lady is correct.

Another way to examine the document to find if there is artwork that's still CMYK, without using separation setup:

Choose FILE > DOCUMENT INFO, then use the little flyout menu to UNcheck 'selection only' and select OBJECTS.
Note: Again, they may have moved this in version CS.

You will now see in the Document info window if there are any RGB, CMYK or Grayscale objects.  If there are, you turn back on 'selection only' and start selecting portions of your artwork until you narrow down where the offending objects are.  It's a pain in the butt.  I only use 9...maybe there's a better way to do it in 10 or CS but I really doubt it.

Is that what she wants?  EPS v 8? Tell you what, send an offending file to me and I'd be happy to look at it for you.  My e-mail address is AmyLynPace@yahoo.com  I just moved to a new house and my DSL doesn't get installed until Monday, so make it something I can download over a 28.8 connection!!!

Talk to you soon - hope some of this helped.
Amy Pace