Expert: InDesign Pro - 9/25/2007

Question
QUESTION: I have a pdf that I placed in Indesign CS2 - it is black and white.  I need to change it to a PMS color.  Can I do That?


ANSWER: Hi Jenny,

This isn't an easy task. There's no way to colour a PDF in InDesign. There are, however, a couple ways you might be able to achieve this with workarounds. I wish I knew more about the file, but if the reason you need to make everything one PMS is so that it'll separate on one plate, here's something you can try.

So let's say your PDF is just one part of your file and everything else is in PMS 357 green. To get the black to separate on the 357 plate with everything else, open the Ink Manager under the fly-out menu in the Swatches palette. Now click on your PMS to highlight it, in my case, it's 357. Now under the Ink Alias drop-down menu, choose the Black plate. Now when you print out the separations for the black plate, your Pantone colour will be on the same plate. I hope this helps.

Of course, if you do everything in Black for a one-colour job and send it to your printer like that, you can just tell them to print in the PMS colour you choose and that would work too.

Hope this helps, let me know if there's more I can do. Thanks.

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

QUESTION: That does help with one of my issues.  On the particular job in question now, we are printing the piece, digital, direct from computer to color copier.  I needed everything to be in color.  I guess I would have to go back to their designer to alter the pdf from their end.  Would that be your suggestion as well.

Answer
Well, I'm glad it helped a bit Jenny.

I think getting their designer to update the PDF would be your safest bet, for sure. But you could always try opening it in Adobe Illustrator and doing it yourself if you feel comfortable with that.

One other option, which isn't great but might work, is to open the PDF in Photoshop and rasterize it. Now, this will turn any fonts in the PDF into an image and you'd lose quality, but depending on the content of the PDF, it might be a quick workaround. When you open it in Photoshop there will be a dialog box that will ask you for your raster options. I'd guess you wouldn't need more than 200ppi for your colour copier. Then make sure to save it as a Grayscale TIFF and import it into InDesign. Once you import it, use your Direct Select tool (the white arrow) and choose the colour and it will colour it.

A couple options, hope things work out. Good luck!