Expert: Ken Black - 3/16/2009

Question
Periodically, we have had an issue with InDesign (CS3 & OS X v10.4.11) not exporting the spot colors when exporting as a pdf. Some will show up, and some will not. I am a prepress person, with over 20 years of experience, but can't seem to figure this out. What USUALLY fixes it is that we will copy and paste the page into a new document. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. This is not a preferred method, due to textwrap, layering, tracking, kerning and linked textblock issues. We have a setting saved in the export pdf options that we use ALL the time, so I know it's not an export setting that we get wrong sometimes. This happens on multiple machines, .indd files, acrobat versions and operating systems.

PLEASE, KNOW that I am not an amateur at this. Please don't give me a short answer like "make sure it is a spot color, by clicking on the color, blah, blah, blah". Include that in your answer if you'd like, but please give me as many options as possible to check. I've checked that time and time again, and they are assigned spot colors, with a specific CMYK value. I've tried restarting, fsck -fy, repairing permissions, using a different computer with different version of OS X (Leopard). I have a document today that has NO process colors in InDesign, and it is coming into Acrobat as process. I've tried PDF 1.3, 1.4, 1.7. I've tried Color Conversion: Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers) and also No conversion. I did eventually go to my old standby of copying and pasting into a NEW document, but that doesn't fix the original problem in the original document, although it does fix the immediate problem of getting the job to our platemaker. NOTE: this fix usually, but not always, works. Any ideas? It almost sounds to me like a corrupt (confused) InDesign file or something along that line.

Answer
Hi Sherry,

While this is similar to "make sure it is a spot color", it is a little different.

Check the Ink Manager in the original document. Which is "conveniently" hidden at the bottom of the Swatch palette's options menu.

If the person who created this document has checked the All Spots To Process box, any spot color will output as process. To make it worse, the spot colors will retain their spot color indication and make-up in the swatch palette, making everyone believe they are going to output as expected. Un-check the box and everything should work.

Since this attribute is document specific any time you have to cut and paste to a new document, the All Spots to Process is off and your spot colors output correctly.

As far as "Some will show up, and some will not", I would first have to look at any graphics that may not be created properly for spot color output, as in eps files that have spot colors set to process.

The Color Conversion: Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbers) will give you a process file. Only the No Conversion setting will preserve the spot color.

I am not aware, nor have I been able to find anything in relation to a glitch or corruption that would cause this and I really suspect that is not the case, especially since you have replicated the problem on more than one system.

If you get nowhere with the Ink Manager, I would like to see a file that you are having this issue with as well as your export setting file and the resulting pdf if at all possible. It would be of great help in getting to the bottom of the problem.

Send me an email at kblackgraphics@gmail.com and I can give you an ftp for file transfer.

Thanks,

Ken Black

www.bestprintingonline.com