Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 9/23/2009

Question
Hello,
I work for a University and have designed a brochure which I sent to Printing & Publications to be printed in 2 colors.  I designed the brochure in 2 colors (using photos that were desaturated) I thought - and submitted a high res PDF for printing but now the printers are saying "The artwork for this brochure is 4-color, we can not print as two color.  Please advise." The initial doc was made in lab color mode with 1 pantone color and black. How can I convert this document to 2-color?  I have read about channels - does the doc. have to be set up this way or can i convert it?  Would it be easier to start over, set up channels and re-do the whole thing?  I tried to bring the file into InDesign but am not as familiar with InDesign or Illustrator - and the photoshop file looks very low res when i try to do that.
Thanks, Michelle

Answer
HI MIchelle,

LAB, CMYK, or RGB will not separate out in to two colors. Unfortunately, you may need to start over. You will need to convert this to Duotone (Image>Mode>Duotone) for your photos then to Multichannel. Multichannel will allow you to separate out into Black + Pantone or two Pantone colors.

You will then need to assign colors to each element while in Multichannel. If you place in InDesign, go to View>Display Performance>Hight Quality. This will resolve the lo-res previews.

Thanks (and sorry)

Kevin