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  • Single spot colour bitmap EPS advice needed!

    #1
    Thanks for stopping by. Bit of a read, sorry about that, but I'd really appreciate some tips here...

    I have designed a star motif for a client who wanted something a bit 'fancy' (they were using clipart before) to go with their new logo.

    I designed the star in Illustrator CS and it makes heavy use of masks, transparency etc. etc.

    Only after it had been designed did they say that they wanted it to print in one pantone spot ink only. Fine, ok. In Illustrator I changed the colours over to the named Pantone swatch. I did this with the logo, saved as EPS and it worked great - Indesign reports only 1 ink used.


    Then came the star. Tried the same thing but completely failed to produce a satisfactory EPS - the masked objects and transparency kept appearing in the file.

    So what I did then was to rasterise the star, output a very high res TIFF file, take that into Photoshop and try again.

    I converted this TIFF 16 bit, then to monotone to remove the colour information. Then I used auto-levels to get the full gamut from black to white as I want the pantone spot to print at 100% in areas. Convert back to 8 bit. Run the Duotone filter but select only the one Pantone spot ink, and adjusted the duotone curves so that it looked as faithful as I could get it.

    It seems to have done an ok job. The star doesn't have right colour onscreen, but then I assume I can only trust the pantone colour swatch here.

    My question is: am I missing something here? Is there a better way of converting an RGB Tiff file (which had a very fair approximation of the spot colouring) into a monotone spot version of the file? Is complex vector artwork really that EPS unfriendly - would the press keel over and die if it tried to RIP it?

    Thanks in advance!
    Tags: None
  • #2
    I would have created a bitmap file..... or b/w tif and colourize in layout package. That way the logo can be printed in ANY colour.

    Comment

    • #3
      If that star is a part of the logo itself you missed a big part.
      The part about scaling a raster object.

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      • #4
        PersonasBinar - Thanks. A nice idea but the client wants it in a particular pantone spot colour monotone. It wouldn't be right to give them a black and white TIFF and say "colour it yourself"!

        PrintDriver - Yes, it would be stupid to mix scaleable vector and fixed resolution bitmap elements in a logo wouldn't it? No, the star isn't part of the logo, it's a motif to be used on a certificate, so the need for flexible sizing isn't that great. I've produced the photoshop EPS at a sufficient resolution for their needs, I was just wondering if anyone could spot a flaw in my process or knew a better way of converting a design into a single pantone spot monotone. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

        Comment

        • #5
          I would still do it the "colourized" way as the client will most likely be printing on differnt paper types. Coated and uncoated...these would require different Pantones for the same colour. This way the logo can be made to order within the layout. This would also help if the Pantone is somewhat doable in CMYK. One logo, a million applications.

          We've had vector elements bring the rip not quite to it's knees, but definately brings things to a walking pace as opposed to well.....ripping through the files.
          Last edited by PersonasBinar; 11-03-2005, 12:52 PM.

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          • #6
            I'm with PB. Create two versions of the logo. One being a color version for inhouse printing, and the other a b&w eps for use with a press (or inhouse as necessary).

            Just remind them that they need to use the b&w logo on anything they send to a press or they'll use the color version and cause the printer headaches.

            Comment

            • #7
              >>So what I did then was to rasterise the star, output a very high res TIFF file, take that into Photoshop and try again. I converted this TIFF 16 bit, then to monotone to remove the colour information. Then I used auto-levels to get the full gamut from black to white as I want the pantone spot to print at 100% in areas. Convert back to 8 bit. Run the Duotone filter but select only the one Pantone spot ink, and adjusted the duotone curves so that it looked as faithful as I could get it.<<

              The AutoLevel was a good move (it might be safer to do it with just a Levels adjustment layer), but a simpler followup move would be to add a Gradient Map layer using a white>spot colour gradient to map that range into the final range. And I almost always open the AI directly into Pshop rather than trust AI's raster export.

              But I agree with the others-- better to spot colour in layout for minimizing prepress solutions and accommodating future changes.

              By the way, you could have also converted the entire thing to a monotone in AI using the Opacity Mask feature. That way you can even preserve transparency features. Just create a rectangle of the spot colour you're after and place it under the grouped 'star' object and use the star as your opacity mask. This will come into AI nicely-- and 'usually' output without a problem-- but you did mention a lot of monkey business with the star itself, so you'd have be really sure it would work before shipping.

              Comment

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