Expert: InDesign Pro - 10/20/2007

Question
I put a client's document together in InDesign (CS2,XPsp2) and upon exporting to PDF, couldn't deselect process colors in the Export options window.

Things I've done to try to figure it out:
1) Used the seps palette to check if any items are visible when spot colors are selected/deselected
2) Ensured no elements were colored as Registration
3) Pasted everything into a fresh document
4) Removed as many colors as possible from Swatches

I know that I'm not crazy, because a test document with three simple elements using my spot colors didn't display process colors in the Export options dialog.

What's happening?

Answer
Hi Logan, thanks for the question.

I'm not sure I fully understand what you're trying to do. Maybe it's because I'm not as familiar with the PC version of InDesign, but I don't recall being able to select or deselect the process colours on PDF export (File > Export). Maybe you're printing to PDF instead?

But, if you're printing a three-colour job and only using spot colours, it shouldn't matter that the process colours are listed in the output. They'll be there, but they won't print because there's nothing in the file using them.

The only thing I can think of, is if you're trying to print-to-PDF with crop marks, colour bars or registration marks. Then InDesign would include the process colours in that case.

If you are printing-to-PDF, and you want to print only the spot colours, you have to select Separations as your output and then you'll be able to choose which colours to print or not. But each page in the PDF will be a black representation of that spot colour.

Hope this helps, feel free to follow-up if you'd like to elaborate on your problem. Thanks!