Question Hi Amy,
I have a question.
We work with eps files, which are photo's with clipping masks. They were made by a techical-drawing-agency in duotone (only red and black out of the CMYK-spectrum) and grayscale. If I open them in illustrator (10), how can I see in illustrator if the color seperation is still intact because if I save in illustrator, sometimes the color-seperation is mixed up if I open the file in photoshop (6). Then the red and black or the grayscale colors has been seperated over all cmyk layers and that we cant use with our printing agency...
So how can I see how the colors are seperated, in the eps file over the cmyk spectrum, in illustrator.
I hope you understand my problem and that you can help me!
Thanks and with kind regards,
Kasper Kendall
Answer Hi Kasper,
There are essentially 2 kinds of duotones. Duotones made with spot colors and duotones that only use two of the CMYK plates. I'm guessing, since you said 'red' that yours are a PMS spot + black.
Since I only work with v 9, I can tell you how to do separations in that version. There is a special sep preview function in CS...but I believe they hadn't implemented that yet in 10.
So in 9 (and 10, I think), you have to print the seps to view them. You must have a postscript printer set up to print seps. So first, make sure that you've chosen a PS printer in File>Print Setup.
Once you've done that, go to File>Separation Setup, click Open PPD and choose the appropriate PPD file for your printer. The AI install CD has many PPD files on it.
Then File>Print your file. Under Output, choose "Separate."
Click the "Separation Setup" button and check or uncheck the plates you want to print. If there are spot colors in the imported duotone, they'll be listed here, underneath the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black plates. You may have to scroll down. Note: Only the colors used in the document will be pre-checked, so if you see Cyan is checked and you know there's no Cyan in your document, it's time to play detective.
Full color imported artwork will sep onto all plates.
Grayscale artwork (if it truly uses only black) will print on the black plate. If it doesn't, you best open it in PhotoShop and switch its mode to grayscale, save and re-place into AI.
Click OK and OK again and print them. Your plates will print and you can check them against your intended results.
Things that may interfere:
-Your document is in RGB mode. Check File>Document Color Mode to make sure it's CMYK
-Your document contains RGB colors. Use the Filter>Colors>Convert them to CMYK
-You spot color is listed twice. Spot colors brought into a document via imported artwork and also used in the vector artwork must have identical names or they will each print as a separate spot. You can click on the spot color in the Swatches Window and rename it so that it matches the imported.
