Pantone Colour Question...

[YooDooRight]

Hi,

I need to use a fluorescent orange Pantone in one of my designs, after looking through the Pantone swatch book 'Pantone 804 C' looks to be the colour i need. When i colour my text in Quark with 804 C it appears a very washed out orange on screen and even stranger, a light pink in Illustrator! Whats going on and will these print fluorescent orange despite the fact they look wrong on screen?

Thanks,

YDR

[jimking]

Nothing to worry about. When printed, the printer will use pms 804. So 804 will be applied to the paper not what you see on your monitor. Make sure that you spec 804 as a spot color (not process) in Quark and Illustrator using the exact name so that it will seperate correctly for offset printing.

[YooDooRight]

Thanks and by 'spec' do you mean tick the spot colour box or is there something else i need to do? In Quark my colour spec looks like this:

Name: Pantone 804 C
Model: Pantone Solid Coated
Spot Colour is ticked
Halftone: Process Black

Is this correct?

Thanks again

YDR

[jimking]

In both Quark and Illustrator's color pallets, make sure you have spot checked not process for 804. You can double check your settings by printing to your desktop printer by printing seperations not a composite. If your pms, for example page1, prints out 2 lasers (should be 1) with your pms, something is wrong. Most likely you've named your pms differently in your programs. If you get 4 lasers then you've got the pms set to process not spot.

[YooDooRight]

Gotcha, all spot colour boxes checked! One more thing... if i save my Illustrator file as an EPS will this preserve all the Pantone and Vector graphics info for output or will the EPS convert my colour to process CMYK?

[jimking]

It should be ok as a eps or a AI file. Outputting seperations will answer all doubts.

[rickself]

make sure also that the color name matches EXACTLY in both...
Pantone 804 C and Pantone 804 CVC will print two different separations.

[jimking]

Not sure what version of Quark you have. It may not take AI files, so you may have to go with a eps. It should be ok.

[YooDooRight]

I have QuarkXPress Passport (Mac OS 10.4). Also, i dont actually have a printer hence all the difficulties working out if im doing things right.

[jimking]

If you have Acrobat Professional you could create a PDF, open color seperations menu and click on and off the color menu to check seps.

[steve2112]

All in all as long as it separates as a spot color and you make a good note of it the printer can use whatever color for that separate plate you tell him. But like the other people said make sure it is not set to process. Also quarks pantone charts might not be as accurate as illustrator cs2. they just edited the pantoine colorsabout 8 months or so ago.

steve

[echoflynew]

Send your Panton No. to printers for help.
www.book-printing.cn (http://www.book-printing.cn)

[YooDooRight]

Thanks all.. one more thing, when i make a PDF in Quark for some reason it doesn't include type, any idea why this is?

Thanks

YDR

[rainbow2bryte]

Thanks all.. one more thing, when i make a PDF in Quark for some reason it doesn't include type, any idea why this is?

Thanks

YDR

are you making a postscript file first or just exporting right from quark?

not sure if this is the answer to your problem, but if you make a postscript file first you can specify settings like embedding the fonts etc. for when the postscript is distilled.

[steve2112]

are you making a postscript file first or just exporting right from quark?

not sure if this is the answer to your problem, but if you make a postscript file first you can specify settings like embedding the fonts etc. for when the postscript is distilled.

You should either print to a pdf or better yet make a .ps file and then distill it. The Export to PDF feature is not good. I believe if you print to a pdf you will get all the options like embedding fonts sampling rates and blah blah blah.

Or invest in indesign cs2 and all those problems go bye bye.

:)

steve