CD9 and 2 spot color fountain fill

[cem]

I need to do color seps (probably 150 l.p.i.) of a fountain fill from one PMS color to another. I thought this was a no-no with Draw since it would render it as an RGB fill (I might be thinking of blends), but it lets me do it and the color seps dialogue box shows the correct colors but it's warning me that they are going to print at the same angle (45°). Should I set them manually and if so to what? Should one or the other be set to overprint? And above all.. will it even work when I go to an imagesetter?

Craig

[cem]

I need to do color seps (probably 150 l.p.i.) of a fountain fill from one PMS color to another. I thought this was a no-no with Draw since it would render it as an RGB fill (I might be thinking of blends), but it lets me do it and the color seps dialogue box shows the correct colors but it's warning me that they are going to print at the same angle (45°). Should I set them manually and if so to what? Should one or the other be set to overprint? And above all.. will it even work when I go to an imagesetter?

Craig

[Not Ziggy]

First, Draw does do fountain fills and it does them really well, including an interactive method of creating and revising them with drag-and-drop of colors from the palette on the edge of your screen. To get at the interactive stuff, select the Interactive Fill Tool.

Second, overprinting is the only way Draw will do the two colors, so you don't have to cause that to happen. To see this overprinting in action, go to the Print dialog box, turn on Separations and then click on Preview.

Third, overprinting will actually make the printing press operator very unhappy because it will cause the dots for the two colors to fall on top of each other. The solution is the same as the solution for duotones, which is to make one of the colors print at a screen angle 30 degrees away from the other. This causes the dots to miss each other most of the time.

To change the screen angle for one of the colors, go to the Print dialog box, and turn on "Print Separations" and "Use Advanced Settings." DON'T click on the Advanced button. Just click on one of the colors and the angle will be highlighted. Type in a number such as 15 to make that color 30 degrees away from the default of 45. (You can also change the line frequency in there, as well as at the PostScript tab.)

Finally, Draw interactively creates and properly separates Blends of two Pantone colors just like it does Fountain Fills. My best guess as to what RGB problem you're thinking of (that won't separate as spot colors) is Drop Shadows, which are bitmaps composed of pixels and therefore not separable that way.

And an imagesetter is just a laser printer that uses light-sensitive media. Don't let some anti-Corel bigot tell you otherwise.

[cem]

Thanks for your help Ziggy. That's what I needed to know.