2 color separation

[jeffietoo]

Several of my logo clients want their logos separated into 2 colors for commercial printing.

I have no problem with cmyk but they don't want cmyk they want two colors.

How the heck do you do that with xara x??
Anybody know? Thanks.

[gwpriester]

Hello Jeff and welcome to the Xara X Conference.

The two colors you use should be Pantone spot colors. Spot colors are colored inks mixed to a formula that can be reproduced the same by any printer.

Pantone sells swatchbooks of colors which you can find out about and purchase from Pantone.com

Xara has three Pantone palettes which you will find at the bottom of the Color Gallery (the color wheel icon to the right of the red magnet at the top of the Xara screen.

Select your two colors from the Pantone swatchbook, and then make the colors in your logo the same color found in the Pantone palette.

Export your logo as EPS and the two colors should be all that is in the file.

A few cautions. Do not select the Pantone colors from the palette as they may not print the way they look on the screen. If you specify colors that you have selected from the swatchbook, they should print exactly as specified.

If you use Xara's drop shadow or bevel effects, these are automatically converted to CMYK or RGB colors. Even if you specify only Pantone spot colors. Also if you create a gradient fill using two spot colors, I believe these to are converted to CMYK or RGB.


Another way of doing this is this: If you are using two solid colors, make one cyan and the other magenta but add the desired Pantone color in either color at the bottom of the design. Let's say for example one of your colors is Pantone Reflex Blue. Make everything you want Reflex Blue in cyan. At the bottom of the page place the text Pantone Reflex blue and color it 100% cyan.

When you output your film, output the cyan and magenta film. Onlyy the Reflex blue film (cyan) will say Reflex blue and as film is color blind, when the printer prints the film using Reflex blue, everything will be OK.

Does this help?

The XaraXone WebXealot 26 covers issues concerned with commercial printing and imagesetting.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>


XaraXone

[jeffietoo]

Is there no way to do it with bevels?

[gwpriester]

I think Sean Sedwards or someone a bit more knowledgable about this will have to answer the question.

About the only thing I can think of which might work is to convert the bevel to bitmap (Arrange > Create Bitmap Copy) and then apply a spot color outline color. But if you do then the fill will also have to be the same color and modified to white.

Anyone else have any ideas here? Ivan, Jens, Klaus, Sean, Ross, Egg, ???

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>


XaraXone

[Sean Sedwards]

A single-coloured shape with a bevel will require two printing ink colours: the original colour and black to create the shadow. The highlights are created by letting the white paper background show through. Hence, if your logo contains bevelled shapes in one colour plus other shapes in an unrelated colour, the minimum number of printing inks required is three.

There's probably no simple single general solution to this problem, so it would help if you could post a specific example of what you want represented in two colours.

Regards - Sean

[Turan]

So two colour means white (the page) plus two?

and if you what a black line around an object or a shadow then black is a third?

Just checking?

Turan

[Sean Sedwards]

A 2 colour bitmap uses just two colours, but a two colour print job means 2 inks plus the paper colour.

Regards - Sean