Implementing the spot color changes

[sallybode]

There are some professional printing issues with the new DRAW but this can be gotten around by printing from .pdf. The changes to spot color allow you to import duo and tritones made in Photoshop and then imported as .pdf. I found that in experimenting with Channels in PhotoPaint that it was a hard import to get the effect into DRAW. I ended up making a .psd and then a .pdf in Photoshop and importing to DRAW that way and that worked.

Once the spot color rendering of the parrot was brought into DRAW, I could mix, some with transparency, others with shadow painting and set some even to overprint to change the way they would mix with the other colors enabling me to get some green in the wings and some blacks from the overprints of the three colors.

There are lots of possiblities of new things to try when using spot color that will keep designs with limited colors more creative than ever.

In order to export a .jpeg that was able too see the changes in color with transparency and everything, I made a RGB bitmap backup copy and used that to export to .jpeg.

Hope you like it.

[Grafixman]

Not being a pro and doing graphics just as a hobby, I don't have any first hand experience with printing. But knowing how things work always appeals to me. Are spot colors special color plates created for printing? So in addition to the CMYK plates, spot color plates are created then printed on the paper. And when opened in programs like Photoshop and Photopaint, spot color files have additional channels on them. Color channels are basically grayscale images that masks the amount of color they control. So you could edit them, change the brightness, contrast, draw on them and the effect would influence the colors of the composited image. Is that right? (educate me, please, just so I know if the mental picture I have on the process is correct, Sally. ) So one way to verify if you have the colors exported right is to open up the channels and view them one by one.

[sallybode]

There are only certain programs that do spot color. These are CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and limitedly PhotoPaint. Spot color inks are selected from an array of ink swatches, usually from Pantone. There are an amazing number to choose from. Often newsletters, business cards, letterheads and some brochures are done with spot color; fewer plates mean less cost in ink, fewere plates and more expensive presses, and you don't have to order such immense quantities to make it cost effective.

Yes, spot ink if you turn off the other inks, you will view a grayscale image. And this image can be edited in various ways. First as in the example above, the image is reduced to grayscale, and if you are only after a duotone, you can manipulate curves to adjust the percentage of the two inks. Three inks are called a tritone. And if you paint on the channel, it is much like using a mask, black makes 100% ink print, and white, 0% and then there are shades of gray. And you can paint with transparent pixels if you so choose to get interesting, more painterly effects. A tablet is really handy for that. But because it is a bitmap approach, you can lose lots of detail.

Since layouts are getting more sophisticated, users who do it themselves will do a layout in Publisher (yuck) but they do. Publisher is RGB for desktop publishing in other words to use your local deskjet printer. This dosn't mean it will work for professional printing. Customers tell me that they have only two colors of ink and did it in Publisher. It will separate to four printing plates in CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). These are called process color inks.

You can get approximately the same effect but it is more complicated for the graphic artist to change this to spot color. Sometimes it requires major revisons and a lot of rethinking as to how to achieve this in the real world. I like working with it because it is more difficult and it is a mental challenge. And so far, techknowledgy hasn't dumbed this down enough for your average secretary. You should see the business cards now designed in MS Word!

Normally colors knock out the one behind, but they can be set to overprint and can produce a number of shades in between in the new X3. So it isn't just painting the image in grayscale, it is understanding how to get more shades out of a more limited palatte. Corel has done an interesting thing, they have enabled transparency with spot color and this is best described as if you has three lenses of the colors you are working with and can image see through one in order to see the color where two or more lenses meet. Depending upon your print mode, say if it is multiply, you can get more nuances, but there are any number of modes you can use and get highlights and glossy effects.

The merging of vectors in typography and in graphics to produce cleaner results has had a problem with post script which has had no apparent transparency at all. And if transparency was brought in, it separated to process colors (CMYK). So even though you could imagine it, you couldn't actually produce what you could see in your mind's eye in a practical manner because if you could see it, then it couldn't print, making extra layers which tinted black layers to simulate the effects -- which spot color could really not be asked to do. Wow, talk about run on sentences. And layers up the kazoo. Turn on layers one and three and print on color, then turn off those and turn on one, two and four and let's pray you remember the logic of it all the next time you have to print the order. Not everyone who works at a printer can understand this in their head. Consequently you have files and files that are each individual pages all in black so that the typesetter can type and make corrections to copy because they don't understand how to do this.

The way X3 is now, this is no longer necessary and you can have it all if you choose, on one layer and it will all separate correctly. It makes spot color much more flexible and somewhat easier. As of right now, this is not something that Adobe Illusrator or InDesign has really implemented though they can tint a drop shadow, but they are limited to only dialogue boxes so there are many types of glows and shadows that are rather impractical in Adobe products unless you construct your own, convert it to a bitmap, apply gaussian blur, then transparency and flatten to a bitmap then apply a spot color. Not to mention that only Photoshop has conical blends and square blends, you won't find that in Illustrator or InDesign. So if there are things you have to draw that require those... sounds like more work, well, yes it is. Or you can use CorelDRAW's interactive shadow or blends and do it in one step.

PhotoPaint now has channels and that is interesting because they don't exactly work like they do in Photoshop though I did get them to work somewhat. It was exporting the results that was disappointing and one time I got it to work but when I went to repeat it, I couldn't reproduce the triumph. Too many experiments without notes I guess and the cranium got tired. Programs like Photoshop and PhotoPaint may generate some types of graphics but in the print industry, they are tools of a page layout program that can import their more specific functions. There are .eps and .dcs and .pdf export functions all of which don't work in PhotoPaint. And when it doesn't print separations out of PhotoPaint, this is not a good sign. However, it does successfully open in Phototshop when saved as a .psd but it loses its transparency and you have to play with levels to achieve the desired effect, then export to .pdf for complete the layout.

So on the one hand you are gaining in speed by not haveing to use Illustrator, and on the other hand you really can't use PhotoPaint the way it is intended so where you would have really saved time by staying with Corel native formats, you have just lost that because it didn't work. When trying to complete the Beta application, the darn thing shut down on me four times, I just had no more time to mess with it.

[Grafixman]

I will copy and paste this to read later when I have more free time. Wow, Sally, your mind must be working at near burnout level most of the time. . Sometimes, I can't even post a medium length reply without losing myself...

[sallybode]

I'm sorry. There is no simple way to explain some stuff.

[Grafixman]

True, they write entire books just to describe the process. But I think your detailed explanation pretty much sums that up. Still pretty complicated, but I think I'm getting it. Thanks Sally.

[TwidderBird]

don't think I've been down this way (the forum's lower selections) . Its about 3:20 in the morning and somehow need to get to bed for few hours (a hmm, how do I do that smilie). I found your drawing of the Macaw and am very delighted with it--in fact enjoy it more than the photo. I want to come back another time to take in your explanation of spot colors...

xaraX, I've noticed, on the color editor has the option of spot color (??)
nighty night.......nance

[sallybode]

There was a lot of work done on the bird in Photoshop with the tablet editing the individual spot channels. This is still easier to use than in PhotoPaint as if you want to get the separations into DRAW you can't do it from PhotoPaint, and the means from Photoshop that works best is .pdf with retaining spot color information.

However, you can save out of PhotoPaint as a .psd and from Photoshop, export as a .pdf if you so desire because the channels work basically the same.

Work of this type is done not in RGB or in CMYK but in Grayscale and then you must have the channels palette open in PS and right click the little arrow top right and add a new spot channel. Since this method of coloring a photo is based on a gray scale mask, if you have the other channels turned off from view, you see a grayscale image. If the other channels are turned on, you see color. This is the method of making a truly custom duotone/tritone/quadtone vs. choosing "Duotone" as your colorspace.

You can also work with type in this method, however, in order to use type on a non-black layer, you must rasterize it.

However, if you want to have the best of both worlds, you can import the .pdf into DRAW and have vector type of any spot color you wish.

Makes for a better quality brochure, etc. if you are printing in spot color.