spot color export problem

[dgriffin]

This is a major puzzler. Perhaps I'm missing something like an obvious setting, but any help, even a thump on the head to jar it into functioning, would be appreciated...

My service bureau uses the RamPage system to rip images in front of their imagesetter. It will accept nothing but a .EPS file for input, hence the imagesetting options in Xara are denied to me (I mean, I suppose they are...don't they only control outputting to a printer or .PRN file?). For CMYK work the EPS works great, if slowly (requires around 8 hours to rip a full-color CMYK image but looks great).

Problem is spot color. Nothing I do seems to produce an EPS in anything other than CMYK. I've rebuilt files multiple times trying to get every speck of process color out of there but nothing seems to work.

Am I missing a setting? CAN Xara produce a spot color EPS file? WILL Pauline be rescued from the onrushing train? Return to the theatre next week for the spine tingling outcome!

David Griffin

[dgriffin]

This is a major puzzler. Perhaps I'm missing something like an obvious setting, but any help, even a thump on the head to jar it into functioning, would be appreciated...

My service bureau uses the RamPage system to rip images in front of their imagesetter. It will accept nothing but a .EPS file for input, hence the imagesetting options in Xara are denied to me (I mean, I suppose they are...don't they only control outputting to a printer or .PRN file?). For CMYK work the EPS works great, if slowly (requires around 8 hours to rip a full-color CMYK image but looks great).

Problem is spot color. Nothing I do seems to produce an EPS in anything other than CMYK. I've rebuilt files multiple times trying to get every speck of process color out of there but nothing seems to work.

Am I missing a setting? CAN Xara produce a spot color EPS file? WILL Pauline be rescued from the onrushing train? Return to the theatre next week for the spine tingling outcome!

David Griffin

[Sean Sedwards]

David

The spot colour information is embedded in the CorelXARA EPS file, so it's RamPage that isn't interpreting it correctly.

The PRN file for a PS printer is an EPS file; you can rename it with no problem, however the file is essentially no different to exporting. OTOH, if you install the imagesetter's driver, you could print to file and have full control over the separations by checking the Print colour separations box. Note, however, that Xara then does the ripping and the files become very large and RamPage is superfluous.

Perhaps you could seek out a RamPage FAQ or e-mail them with the problem.

Regards - Sean

[dgriffin]

Sean;
Oh my...those tiny bits of critical information are the ones that pay off the best. Had no idea that a PostScript PRN and an EPS were the same beast
(my fault, for never being into Macs, I suppose). So what I was doing by thinking I had to produce an EPS through the export dialog, was just creating the exported file before the imagesetting machinery in Xara had a chance at it.

So, if I get the renamed PRN file to the service bureau, they can either run it directly to the printer, or, if they insist on putting it through RamPage (they are heavily sold on it, and insist that it just does EVERYTHING), there should not be much that RamPage does..it's already a RIPped, separated file, so it should just be passed along little changed.

Thanks for that crucial nugget. Now, if I may be so bold, I'm still confused about one thing...what EXACTLY tells Xara that a file created in spot colors IS spot color, and not CMYK? I am under the opinion that to create a spot-color-only file, one simply excludes CMYK colors in the palette used to create the file. (Or rather, the file INcludes only spot colors). Or am I missing some setting that specifically says, "This is a spot color file, not CMYK"?

Thanks and regards,

David

[Sean Sedwards]

Xara assumes all colours are process (i.e. cmyk) unless you specifically create a named spot colour or use a colour from a spot palette, such as Pantone. AFAIK, spot colours are only relevant when you print to an imagesetter directly (or to a file using its driver) with Print colour separations checked. Under all other circumstances the colours are treated as process.

CorelXARA EPS actually includes lines such as

<font color="#000080" face="Courier New, Courier">%%+sc (Pantone Blue 072 CV) 1.000 0.790 0.000 0.000</font>

where the "+sc" indicates a spot colour. Unfortunately, this is by no means standard nomenclature and no program I've come across (not even Xara) uses the information.

Regards - Sean

[dgriffin]

Sean:

Your comments are most informative and helpful. I'm thinking that this discussion may be relevant to others, as well, since there seems to be a core issue of functionality at the heart of it; so I will venture to ask for just a bit more clarification.

I am simply trying to create a two-color print job that I can translate into reality. The stumbling block is the interface with my service bureau, who say that two-color seps cannot be obtained from the file I am providing them, only full CMYK separated output. I am understanding you to be saying that, unless I produce my own seps with Xara's internal imagesetting machinery, I can't get anything but a 4-color, process job.

Perhaps I should have asked the simple question first, viz., how does one best produce a simple two-color job in Xara?

The toughest part for me is that I am using tints or percentages of the two colors in the artwork. If I define these tints as explicit spot colors (e.g., 10% tint of Pantone 543), each tint creates it's own plate in the separation. But I need all the black tints to go to the black plate, and the blue tints to output to the blue plate.

Also, I've avoided transparency, since I see that transparency always exports to CMYK. So I've created fills instead. I assume a fill of say, 100% of Pantone xxx that graduates to white should output as a proper graduated tone on the seps. But then, since I've added white into the mix, I get a white plate! I don't want a white plate, I want nothing where the white goes!

I suspect I am overthinking this, it seems like it should be such a simple thing. Any light you can cast into this dark little corner of the art world would be greatly appreciated.

Regards
David

[dgriffin]

After major brain-frying efforts, I got a working solution to this spot color thing. I'd be pleased to know if it's similar to the "right" way to do it, if there exists such a thing.

I set up a spot color plate by using one of the process plates (happened to be magenta)to be the home for my one spot color. I created a spot color that was 100% magenta, letting this represent full intensity of my spot color ink. I then developed a series of tints based on this spot color, and "painted" any spot color areas with them. I used only fills, transparency worked sometimes but not consistently, producing some weird looking errors (astigmatic, squeezed objects in the file)Black was used normally, 100% as well as fills, on the black plate, of course.

Keeping everything stacked up correctly, I printed to file only the two plates, black and magenta. I had to print each to it's own file by turning on one and then the other separation: attempts to make a PRN file with two or more pages produced an error message(printing to a PostScript printer). The idea is to use the magenta plate as the spot color separation.

I renamed the resulting prn file to eps, since no imagesetter on earth recognizes a PRN file(thanks, Sean). At this point, I then converted the eps files to pdf, since the printer said he couldn't get them to output correctly (STILL!) as eps files. So far it seems to be working.

Only question is: did the black trap the (blue) spot color correctly ?(I turned off the layer with the black on it and checked "visible layers only" when outputting the magenta plate, so there would be no areas "knocked out" behind the black, just in case)

What this gives me is the ability to produce jobs where I use limited colors, and have control over exactly where and in what tint the spot color appears...not just a solid object "stuck on" the page, but almost like painting with a limited palette.

Is this the easiest way to do this? Or did I just spend a day and a half inventing a real elaborate version of the wheel?

David