Colour Seperation

[qibla]

I am trying to make some important decision about commercial printing and using xara's better capabilities to separate colours.
Just wondering, and since I am new to xara (and loving it) are there only four colors xara can separate or what?
Anyone done color separation here? Please let me know which machines you are using for full color printing.
Thanks so much for all the help.

[Albacore]

Just have a read at the help files on CMYK, colour separations and yes even google your questions. This is a really big topic with a lot of info, too much to write here. After you done this please don't hesitate to come back and ask specific questions on the subject as I have been doing commercial printing in both digital and plate printing for over 14 years.

[gwpriester]

You can output separations to PDF. But unless you are a professional printer, why? A commercial printer is set up to do separations and can adjust the profiles to work best with their presses. Considering the cost of good 4 color printing, you are much better off giving your printer a Designer Pro X, PDF/X file and letting your printing company do the separations.

That said, you can set up your Print Options (File menu) and specify Separations. In the attached screen capture, I have included a Pantone Reflex Blue spot color and you can see it in the Color Separations window.

You can also see an approximation of each separated color in the Window > Show Printer Colors drop down, including any Pantone spot colors.

I have output a PDF/X file with the registration targets and other information as you can see in the attached PDF.

I also produced a PDF file Separations.pdf that shows what a separated file looks like.

For more information, look in the Help menu for Color Separations and Printer Setup.

[qibla]

Thanks Gary for the great effort and help.
I am trying to get extra drums the RISOGRAPH machine we have just bought and I would like to bring in color in my printing.
I should have brought this up in the begining and mentioned the digital printing capabilities of RISO
On more complex illustrations than your sample Gary, the tricky part is the copy setting on the machine itself.
I have tried some samples but with little joy.
I was hoping we would be able to go further than CYMK so even if it means investing in a further one or two extra drums would be worth it
and they are expensive...lol!!

[gwpriester]

The last time I really got involved with commercial printing was when we had our design company in San Francisco in the 90s and at that time there was not way you could do the stuff you can do now on a computer. I have not really kept up with that aspect as I no longer have the need.

We did do a very exceptional project with a small printer who had a two color Heildelberg press. We did jobs that used 6-12 colors which meant running the same sheet through the press numerous times. The printer had an expert pressman who was able to hold the registration. But those people are long gone or retired.

[Albacore]

I wasn't trying to be rude in my first reply but your question was too open to answer. Now I haven't seen or used the Risco printer for about nine years and if I can remember correctly it was used for spot colour printing in the place I worked in. It is a sort of thermal printer and uses 2 ink drums and the thermal head burns a hole in the skin to allow the ink to flow through, hope I am correct here. We only used it for spot colours and it was very cheap to run when compared to digital printing or colour photocopying and we churned out up to 5000 copies before sending the file to a commercial printer. I will try and answer any questions on the printer but please remember it was 9 years ago and there were not too many jobs for spot colour printing but I will try.

[coza]

Thanks Gary for the great effort and help.
I am trying to get extra drums the RISOGRAPH machine we have just bought and I would like to bring in color in my printing.
I should have brought this up in the begining and mentioned the digital printing capabilities of RISO
On more complex illustrations than your sample Gary, the tricky part is the copy setting on the machine itself.
I have tried some samples but with little joy.
I was hoping we would be able to go further than CYMK so even if it means investing in a further one or two extra drums would be worth it
and they are expensive...lol!!

From what I remember Albacore is right,
you mainly work with Spot Colour Cartridges, unless you have an updated CMYK Riso machine.

I made up Ads for a guy who ran a 2 Col A3 - Riso sometime ago - he was using Coreldraw as his graphics program.

If I remember correctly, all we did was work in 2 colours on the page for proofing purposes, then - when it was time to print we would simply create another 2 separate pages, cut and paste the separated colours on each of those pages, turned everything to 100K, then sent them through to the Riso using it's Printer Driver, with the pages matching the colour drum on the machine for each of the colours. Thinking about it now, you could possibly do it in 2 separate layers on the page.

The paper plates were made for each colour, and off things went on the run in hope for no jam along the way.

What have you tried so far? How many colour heads do you have on your Riso? How tight will the registration be in the colours, I used to spread/choke things manually a bit to close a few gaps that could occur.

I have not seen or have any experience with a CMYK Riso machine, but I believe they do exist, would love to know the LPI they can produce on the plates they use.

[qibla]

Thanks guys for the response.
Now I am also learning quite a few things here.
Yes I do have black, green and red drums for burning the skins - masters - but for a full color photograph for example I need to understand how best to seperate the different colors for best quality.
For other graphic designs spot colors is fine.
There is a RISO HC5500 which does the whole job but quite pricey.

[qibla]

Ok got it! Good for me!!...lol!
http://paperpusher.ca/guide_to_printing/