PSD-Can't get Spot Color on its own Layer

[rickself]

Hey all
I'm "fixing" a clients file that needs a 5th color from a 4 color file. I've been successful in creating the color, knocking it out where photos are. What I can't do is move that spot color to a layer. Right now, there is no layer showing up for the spot color, y the spot color is in the channel palette. But when it prints, I'm getting some cyan and yellow coming from, probably the original image. I just need to be able to turn it on and off to find the remnant colors.

Anyone with a slick way that will bail me out?

Thanks!

[rickself]

P-llleeeze, anyone? No Photoshop gurus?

[Mynock]

Spot color in Photoshop, count me out, but I do have some good news.

[balou]

Can't you see the individual colors in the channels by clicking the eye?

edit:
Maybe I'm not understanding your question. Another thought is you can go create a new layer, CMD+OPT+5 (for the 5th channel) and it should bring up a marching ants selection of what is in the 5th channel.

[rickself]

Spot color in Photoshop, count me out, but I do have some good news....waiting for the "GOOD" news................

[Mynock]

I saved a bunch of money on my car insurance with Gieco.

[rickself]

I saved a much of money on my car insurance with Gieco.is that like much-o-money?

[rickself]

Maybe I'm not understanding your question. Another thought is you can go create a new layer, CMD+OPT+5 (for the 5th channel) and it should bring up a marching ants selection of what is in the 5th channel.
I'm giving that a shot right now, balou...

[balou]

I'm giving that a shot right now, balou...

Well, hurry up there! I'm excited to see if lil' 'ol me was actually able to help the prepress grampa!

[Mynock]

s'teL lla ekam nuf fo ym aixelsid. (:

[rickself]

s'teL lla ekam nuf fo ym aixelsid. (:OK:
hi every1 im a beginer into multimedia. n i would like 2 know dat frm whr i can get video tutorials of all da s/w like photoshop, after effects, director mx , n 3d max. after lot of research on da net i got a video tutorials of flash mx 2004 n was hopin 2 get da same 4 othr s/w dat is mentioned. coz da sites i checked i could'nt find dem der. so if n e 1 has n e idea bout plz reply.:)

[Mynock]

Where's JimKing when you need him? Don't any of your boring prepress forums offer any help?

[rickself]

Well, hurry up there! I'm excited to see if lil' 'ol me was actually able to help the prepress grampa!i think it MIGHT DO IT

[balou]

So Mynock, what do we have to do to get you to change that avatar & signature? You're bringin' down our reputation!

[rickself]

Where's JimKing when you need him? Don't any of your boring prepress forums offer any help?for your dyslexia? I doubt prepressforums can help, but maybe WebMD!

[balou]

for your dyslexia? I doubt prepressforums can help, but maybe WebMD!

or a mirror. :D

[Mynock]

Ok, since my reputation is at jeopardy, what shall I chang my avatar back to balou?

[balou]

Ok, since my reputation is at jeopardy, what shall I chang my avatar back to balou?

Absolutely anything will be better than that. Wait, did I say that? Now you're scaring me because I don't know your avatar history. Oh well, anything but that ghostly happy trees guy.

[Mynock]

What No Bob Ross?

[Mynock]

Better?

[rickself]

Hey, you 2 doing ok withh all the flooding in the upper states?

And geez with the tornados, reuber doing ok? jimintn?

I'm gald I'm way up here!

[balou]

I guess if you really want to. Really, at this point, a pile of dog poop would be better but I don't think that will fly.

edit: oops rickself. Above was in reply to Mynock.

Closes flooding around here is up around Fargo ND, NW edge of MN - across the state. They were starting to recede though as of yesterday. Unless they get a bunch of rain again. It is soooo flat up there, it will flood a mile away from the river.

[Mynock]

Luckily I live in the one part of Minnesota without lakes. :(

[rickself]

Better?
Publisher...much better! If you want BAAD, use the new Quack logo!

[balou]

I thought that was PageMonster. Ahhh. Thanks Mynock. My blood pressure is going back down to normal. That guy just makes me angry for some reason.

edit: funny! changing again! I like the little caveguy!

[Mynock]

I have disgraced myself. I shall go into hiding.

[Mynock]

It's Stewie from the Family Guy as Saddam.

[balou]

bwahaha! I should've recognized the spider hole! funny!

[jimintn]

Hey, you 2 doing ok withh all the flooding in the upper states?

And geez with the tornados, reuber doing ok? jimintn?

I'm gald I'm way up here!

Thanks, rick!

We made it through the first wave Sunday night / Monday morning, but supposed to have more tomorrow afternoon through Saturday morning. conditions are so good for storms and tornadoes it was the main story in todays paper.

Should be fun (I love me a good storm!)

[rickself]

I got the problem worked out last night around 7. I just stripped the spot color out of Photoshop and placed the file into INdy, then filled the background with the spot color. DUH! Had to spend two nights frickin with this thing to figure out the easy way.
Never too old!

[Vikia]

Rick, you can make spot color channels in from the fly-out menu on the channels palette. Select New Spot Channel and a new channel will be created. A pop-up to define the color will come up.

Save your image as a DCS.eps and import to your layout program. It will separate as a spot color.

[rickself]

I've got that part ok. What i was wanting to do is to move that spot color to a layer of it's own.

What I'm guessing happened was: I used the magic wand to select the areas I wanted to make spot. Then I selected the fly-out menu to create spot color. I wanted to some how move that spot color to a layer. I guess I can't because I was actually selecting nothing with the magic wand and filling it with the spot. So there was nothing "physical" to put on a new layer.

Yep, Now I'm confusing myself!

[The_Black_Knight]

Rick, you can make spot color channels in from the fly-out menu on the channels palette. Select New Spot Channel and a new channel will be created. A pop-up to define the color will come up.

Save your image as a DCS.eps and import to your layout program. It will separate as a spot color.Or, if you're using InDesign as your page layout program, save the file as a PSD with the "Spot Colors" option checked in the Save As dialog. This will give you a much nicer preview image than if you save the file as a DCS while preserving your spot colors.

Spot channels kind of work independently of layers. Wherever there is information on a spot channel, it will overprint anything that is in the layers of the file. Areas where you don't want the spot color to print have to be masked out of the spot channel, and areas that you don't want the spot color to overprint need to be masked out of any layers.

Dealing with spot channels in Photoshop is a major pain, and I try to avoid using them when I can. For this particular project it seems that rickself's solution was a good one. In some other projects using spot channels is the best way to do it.

[rickself]

Or, if you're using InDesign as your page layout program, save the file as a PSD with the "Spot Colors" option checked in the Save As dialog. This will give you a much nicer preview image than if you save the file as a DCS while preserving your spot colors.

Spot channels kind of work independently of layers. Wherever there is information on a spot channel, it will overprint anything that is in the layers of the file. Areas where you don't want the spot color to print have to be masked out of the spot channel, and areas that you don't want the spot color to overprint need to be masked out of any layers.

Dealing with spot channels in Photoshop is a major pain, and I try to avoid using them when I can. For this particular project it seems that rickself's solution was a good one. In some other projects using spot channels is the best way to do it.That's good info. This was the first time I've had to deal with Layers and Spot Colors. And it seems that removing the 5th color altogether from the PSD file and applying the 5th in Indy worked well.

This whole thing began when the designer switched from a serif black type to serif white type, some as small as 5pt. There was no way, even on the best press we have (6 color Heidelberg), to insure that the serifs would register. So we made the background a 5th color

What gave me the most grief was that 2 images on this page had drop shadows. One shadow was a part of the element that the client simply airbrushed back. The other element was a clipped image with the drop shadow applied in PSD. I had to make the 5th color go UNDER the drop shadows...no prob for the clipped image but there was a lot of guesstimating on bringing the 5th color under the airbrushed drop shadow...which btw was a 4 color drop shadow. And no problem if the 5th plate was to be in line with the other 4. But the 4 color had already been printed and my job was to make the 5th plate to run alone. Why Adobe doesn't make the attributes for drop shadows the same in PSD and Indy the same is beyond me. You can't simply copy the attributes from one to the other. PSD uses "light source" for the angle of the shadow, Indy uses offset.

Anyway, the job is boxed and ready to ship.

Geez, I earned my pay on this one! And some still think prepress is pushing buttons!

[The_Black_Knight]

For anyone who's interested, here's a quick little file showing how layers, masks, and a spot channel can interact. Just look at the channels and layers in Photoshop to see how they work. Note where the spot color overprints, and where it knocks out of the layers.

Spot Channel Example (http://studentpages.scad.edu/%7Ecweath20/Spot_Channels.zip)

[Mynock]

Your clickky doesn't work, there Knight.

[The_Black_Knight]

The clicky should worky now.

[new stella]

I need advice on a similar issue


- a fairly complicated image - a rainbow type packaging image I am converting to 4 spot colours. I have 4 layers of each colour in an RGB file and each needs to be a Pantone colour.

I have created new spot channels for each pantone colour and pasted into each channel layer. I have Masked out the colours where they overlap so no overprinting - it's almost there but isn't quite a successful conversion. As you can see areas of checked photoshop empty alpha background.

The problem i believe is that the RGB file mixes the layers where the colours fade into each other. So the masking to remove the overlap areas isn't accurate enough - i think

Can this file be successfully converted to spot?
Is there no way of specifying a colour for each layer?
-please view a sample- 750k zip original small RGB file and my conversion (http://www.monarchgas.co.uk/spot/spot.zip)

thanks

[erichmond]

uhm! if I've got this right you need to create a four colour image (CMYK) with one spot colour?

Surely you just need to create a New Spot Channel, pick the colour you need from the Ink Characteristics, put what you need in that channel Bingo!

Then if you need to copy the spot channel - with the Spot Channel selected, load the channel as a selection, copy and paste to a new layer

[The_Black_Knight]

The short answer to the question "Can I have a specific spot color assigned to a layer?" is "No." Spot channels work independently of layers, which only have information in the RGB/CMYK channels. If you use spot channels, even if you turn all of your layers off, that spot color information will still separate and print.

new stella: One of the problems you have is that the converted file has multiple channels for each spot color; if this file were to separate, each copy of the spot color would separate into its own plate.

The other problem is that if you are trying to create blends from one spot color to another. This can get really tricky, and probably won't print very well, because the areas where one color fades to another can cause the spot colors to mix, which can create undesirable (muddy) colors. I think that this file would actually work better using CMYK than trying to do it with spot colors.

[new stella]

Many Thanks for your replies
- So a blend from say the yellow 116 to the orange 151 works differently to a equivalent blend in CMYK?

So my best bet is to convert to CMYK and have the orange 151, which is very dull in CMYK as my 5th colour?

[The_Black_Knight]

Many Thanks for your replies
- So a blend from say the yellow 116 to the orange 151 works differently to a equivalent blend in CMYK?

So my best bet is to convert to CMYK and have the orange 151, which is very dull in CMYK as my 5th colour?A blend from one spot color to another will work very differently than a blend in CMYK.

Picture a rectangle with a gradient inside it that goes from a spot yellow to a spot red. What you really have is two gradients going in opposite directions, each one going from 100% of the color to 0% of the color. Where the two colors overlap, it will create another color. If the two colors are complementary colors (such as the yellow and the purple in your file), then the colors will mix into a neutral gray. If the colors are blue and yellow, then you will get some sort of greenish color in between them.

I wouldn't even recommend keeping the orange as a spot color for this file, because the CMYK will need to blend into that color, creating many of the same problems that you get when you blend between two spots. If you don't like the color equivalent that Photoshop gives you for PMS 151, then select a PANTONE process color that you feel works better.

[new stella]

mmm very confused now - surely you can blend Pantone colours how does every product on the supermarket shelf manage to cope?

cmyk oranges all seem dull

[Silence04]

if your trying to fade 2 spot colors you need to overprint one color on top of the other color (i.e. only one spot should be fading)

[Crimson]

instead of using cmyk or rgb files you could use mulitchannel mode. However it can be tricky and you need to know what you want ahead of time. you lose a lot of options and filters don't work. I use this when I am make a duotone and still want to have white showing and/or a solid useage of a pantone in stead of the mix duotone gives you

[The_Black_Knight]

mmm very confused now - surely you can blend Pantone colours how does every product on the supermarket shelf manage to cope?

cmyk oranges all seem dullThey "cope" by doing one of the following:

1. Blends are created in CMYK with spots used for solid areas only
2. Blends are created using a gradient of one PMS color printing on top of another PMS color (as Silence04 pointed out)

Look carefully at some product packaging, and you will see one of these two methods being used. For example, a yellow to green blend can work, because you can overprint a green on yellow without creating any strange colors (since green already contains yellow, you would just be making a yellower green). You can also overprint a dark spot blue gradient on a lighter spot blue background, since they're both blue. However, if you're trying to go from yellow to purple (as in your file), the spots will mix into a neutral muddy color wherever one overprints the other.

Remember, just because you can blend between spots in Photoshop, doesn't mean it will look that way when you print it. The way it will look on an RGB monitor or on a printout (which will be simulated CMYK), will be completely different from how spot inks interact on paper.

Crimson, I'm not sure if you looked at new stella's file, but there isn't anything there that would be helped by using multichannel mode in Photoshop. Also, using spot channels is probably a bit more flexible than using multichannel mode (since you can continue to work with your filters and other options that you lose in multichannel mode).

[new stella]

Excllent thanks for your help, yeah i'm looking at some packaging here a spot red fading into a yellow. Which I presume is overprinted

Really would like to have the orange 151 - if i did have it as a 5th colour, that would that be the last plate to print?
- is there any way this could work with this artwork? (http://www.monarchgas.co.uk/spot/packaging.jpg)