Expert: Amy - 10/7/2007

Question
QUESTION: It's my first time doing a big project entirely in illustrator and the product is a custom map with a border of ad's,  soem of which are photos and others imported as pdf's. The whole thing is going to a print shop so it is set up in CMYK. (I didn't do CMYK color separations though and they seem to be ok with this so far).
I've just been asked to convert the whole document to two colors to be used in a separate run. I think I might be able to figure out how to do this with the central map portion since I created it. But I don't know how to do this with the entire document since the ads are not mine and many of them are photos. Is there an easy way to convert an entire file from CMYK to 2 colors?

ANSWER: Hi Kelly - do you have CS3?
-Amy

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: no , sorry i should have included that. I am working in CS. Is it something I could only do in CS3?

Answer
No that's okay.

In CS3, there's a Edit > Recolor artwork function. I think it was introduced in CS3 and isn't in other versions.

Of course you can do it manually with any version - the good old fashioned way, which is probably best.

First, pick your color and add it to your swatch palette.
You can select a color from the Pantone Solid Coated library. You will see it appear in the swatch palette with a dot in the lower right corner - that means it's spot. 186 is a nice red to use. It doesn't matter anyway because the printer can use any ink they want no matter what you pick, as long as it's a spot color.

Now select everything and convert to grayscale. You'll have to forgive me - CS was funny - menu items were moved around, so I don't know if it's under "edit" or under "Filters."

Then choose selected bits of the ads here and there - a word here, a piece of a logo there, a solid shape, and turn it into that spot color. You could also use percentages of the spot color by using the slider bar in the Color Window after you've assigned the spot color to the object. This is where you'll need to be creative to assign appropriate color to each ad.

You might want to add borders in the spot color around some or all of the ads.

If the ads are tiffs, it gets more difficult to recolor them and you should probably only attempt it if you are a good photoshopper. You need to pull them into PhotoShop and make them into duotones - it's a mess.

The photos will all remain black and white. I think photos in a spot color would probably look a little cheesy, anyway.

I would love to help you if you need help; I can check the file when you are done with it. I don't know whether the file is a manageable size (sounds big) but you could mail it to me at AmyLynPace@yahoo.com if you need to. You could use Stuffit on it first.

Let me know if you have any other questions about it!
Amy