RIP Question

[fingerPrint.Design]

Say I have a 65 page book that is going to be printed offset. I didnt lay it out, I have the PDF, the colors are black and two other PMS colors. When I rip to film, is there anyway to get the PMS colors not to have a screened look to it? Like when the black comes out it is nice and clear, but when the PMS colors come out there are a bunch of dots in it.

Help Please?

[rickself]

Sounds like it's not separating into spot colors. Do you get the color names on the film? Do you have Pitstop? How big is the pdf? If it's emailable, shoot it off to me.

[fingerPrint.Design]

Its been a while since I have tried to run spot colors off it, but I think the names are coming up on the negs. I do have pitstop, but I am not send ing from that computer. I would shoot it off to you, but it is at work and im not, also I dont think the boss would like me to do that, so either way I can.

The original file is an indesign file but I can not open it as I dont have indesign. Is there something I can do In pitstop to make the spot colors seperate?

[rickself]

I would use Pitstop just to make sure that the spot colors are indeed solid, not screened.

[fingerPrint.Design]

I printed them on the digtal printer, and they looked fine, not screened at all. I will check those colors in pitstop to be sure. Are there any settings that I can check, or does it sound like the rip is about to take a crap?

[jimking]

Open the file in Pitstop. Choose the "Advance" drop down menu and choose "Output Preview". Here you will see the color breakdown, cmyk and pms colors. You can click off a box next to the color to see how it seperates. Now, find the "eyedropper" tool and use it to click in the pms color image on the PDF itself. A dialog box will appear which will tell you the % of the pms and the cmyk breakdown if converted to process.
My mistake. It's Acrobat that shows the preview not Pitstop. The eyedropper is part of Pitstop. These two (Acrobat Pro and Pitstop) are bundled together, I often get them confused.

[pmkcreations]

You didn't specify the type of rip that you have.

[htmldude]

you could also look at the pdf in acrobat and go under "advanced" to "output preview" (or it might be output seperations) and it'll show you the color seps and percentages.

[fingerPrint.Design]

The rip is an old AGFA, not sure the model but I know it is old. I did check the spot colors in the PDF they are 100%. What I ended up having to do is, use pitstop and make a golbal change, since all the text was black, I changed the spot colors to Magenta and Cyan, as the rip will rip CMYK colors correct.

But what you are saying is, a Rip should sperate the spot and CMYK colors the same way, there isnt anything you need to do to get the spot colors to seperate? They are seperated right as far as each color being on their own neg, but the just have a bunch of dots in the color?

Thanks for everyones help.

[urstwile]

Spot colors wouldn't have dots, unless they're not 100% of the spot color. They should look solid just like the CMYK plates do.

[fingerPrint.Design]

So is that some type of rip problem, or a setting in the computer. There are 3 computers that can output to that rip, they all outout the exact same way. So sounds like a rip issue?