Bus. Card Color Separation Issues

[spsprinting]

I have a business card setup in Adobe Illustrator CS. The card has outlined fonts, and a raster logo. It will be sent to the printers as a two color card. They have advised me they just need it to be two of the CMYK colors, so I am useing Magenta and Black. I want to make may raster image a 100% black image. My text will be the Magenta part. I make the raster image a grayscale and then change it to monotone 100% black. I save it as an eps and place it on my illustrator file. It still prints every CMYK color when I try to print color separations. I only want it to print Black an Magenta. PLEASE HELP ME.... I have a job that has been waiting a month for me to figure this issue out.

Thanks for your help. Cory

[budafist]

Is there actually anything on the CY seps? If not, then you are good to go.

Or alternatively, if the B and M are solids like they should be, the the printer can just choose not to output the CY plates.

[spsprinting]

The CY doen't show up, nor print in the photshop eps file. When the file is placed into the illustrator file, then it becomes a full CMYK version of the raster image again. I don't know if I am chooseing the wrong file type to save it from photoshop or if there is a different way that I don't know about to change the color setup in photoshop.

[jimking]

Check your "file--document color mode" to make sure you are in cmyk not rgb.

[spsprinting]

I am in CMYK Mode in both photoshop and Illustrator

[SpugNothuson]

Are you saving the Illustrator document as an .ai, .eps or PDF?

You say in our original that you're using a PhotoShop eps and importing that into Illustrator. Check the settings on this file as well. As a guide my usual settings are as follows,
Preview - Tiff 1bit (this is irrelivent, only applies to how the preview will be made)
Encoding - ASCII (This is the important bit.)
All check boxes are unchecked. (Some of these may need to be on depending on what your file you're exporting is but you'll have to figure that out for yourself, standard for me is all off).

Hope that helps a little.

[spsprinting]

I am saveing the illustrator document as an .ai file. TX ~Cory

[SpugNothuson]

That should be fine then.

Just double check the PhotoShop eps settings then. The problem must be in there. *hides crossed fingers behind his back*

[spsprinting]

Still not working. I know I have done this before and it worked.....I have no clue why it won't work now. I checked all my documents and I am in CMYK mode. I did check to eps settings and I tryed them several different ways to no availe. I even tried printing the color seperations on my platemaker and I am still getting a full CMYK composite on any raster image that is imported into illustrator. Any ideas?

[Two-Toe Tom]

if you want the raster to be one colour only, save it as a grayscale image in photoshop.

[spsprinting]

I do save it as a grayscale image in photoshop. When I place it into illustrator it becomes a CMYK composite again.

[Two-Toe Tom]

sry, i should've read your post more carefully. do you have indesign? importing grayscale images to indesign works for me.

[spsprinting]

I do have indesign. What file type do you save as from photoshop (eps, pdf, psd, tiff???). I tryed that with my raster logo, but it just put whatever color I chose in the background, behind my CMYK raster image. Thanx ~Cory

[Two-Toe Tom]

just a psd file

[spsprinting]

Thanks for everyone's help!!!!!!! It worked!!!!! I just saved the images as a greyscale .psd file and imported it into illustrator. My mistake was the whole duotone bit. Thanks again ~Cory

[urstwile]

The CY doen't show up, nor print in the photshop eps file. When the file is placed into the illustrator file, then it becomes a full CMYK version of the raster image again. I don't know if I am chooseing the wrong file type to save it from photoshop or if there is a different way that I don't know about to change the color setup in photoshop.
Are you linking or embedding the file into illustrator?