If you are going to print using a fifth (Pantone) ink on the Press, then you do need to use a separate Spot Color Channel.
The spot color needs to be in it’s own Channel and not part of any Process Colors Layers.
OK, thanks, Ann.
A Spot Layer would be a cool feature!
Grayscale, Duotone or CMYK mode?
Dan this feature has been requested back in 2003.
Dan,
I’d tend to sidestep the entire issue. If I’m doing a multipage catalog, I wouldn’t be mucking around with it in Photoshop. I’d set up the document in a page layout app (InDesign, XPress), define my spot color there, and import, place, size, and crop my Photoshop images there.
Fast. Easy. Easy to edit. Easy to print from. Multipage PDFs can be sent off if you wish.
Neil
Hi Mike – its CMYK with that 5th color. I will try your suggestion. Thanks!
Hi Neil – yes, we did a test the way you describe, sent it to the printer and it was totally fine. Its just that our InDesign person has just been placing my composited PSD files for years and she wasn’t ready to make the change 🙂 (Hopefully next year!)
Dan,
Wait until you see how much time and effort is saved doing it all via InDesign. The type edits alone have to be a disaster for a catalog created in Photoshop.
Neil
Neal has is correct Dan. Don’t make extra work for yourself if you dont have to.
Its just that our InDesign person has just been placing my composited PSD files for years and she wasn’t ready to make the change
time to hire someone to do it correctly.
All the type and copy is done in InDesign. Really I’m just compositing backgrounds, product, shadows, etc. But, yes, now that InDesign can isolate individual layers of a PSD file and we can set a shadow layer to multiply or whatever I see no reason to continue putting the pages together in PS.
Sorry but the multiply blending mode of drop shadows will overprint along with the rest of the image when placed over objects within In Design.
You need to create your drop shadows within In Design with the In Design drop shadow feature for them to overprint. The other solution is to create a secondary drop shadow file and place that within the In Design document as well and set that to multiply.
There is no complete clean solution as of now.
CORRECTION
Sorry but the multiply blending mode of drop shadows will overprint along with the rest of the image when placed over objects within In Design.
That should read knock out and not overprint. And this is the inherent passive nature of non native objects from other sources.
Mike:
Does Transparency (Drop Shadows) now work over an underlying Spot Color in InDesign because I have always understood that it did not and that it only worked in conjunction with Process colors?
Transparency does work correctly now with spot colors within In Design. CS3. CS2. The screw you factor comes into play when you generate Postscript or a PDF. HOW you create your PDF or PS will determine if it will flatten and print correctly. Drop shadows created in Photoshop, by default will knockout CMYK Grayscale and Spots once placed into a In Design document that has other objects that interact with the placed image file. Drop shadows generated from the Drop Shadow feature in In Design work well and do Overprint. Drop shadows created in In Design that interact with Spot colors – either that resided in a Photoshop document or created from In Design and Illustrator will work only if you generate the correct flavor of PDF.
Thanks for continuing the discussion, folks.
Most often I do not use an application generated drop shadow, instead I prefer to use the objects natural cast shadow. I clip the object, command-J it, link it with the layer now underneath, and then put that bottom "shadow layer" on multiply.
Given the above scenario, can I place this file in InDesign twice? The top placed version turn off the "shadow layer" and the bottom placed version turn off the top product layer and then set that placed image to multiply? (Did I explain that well enough?)
Usually we release the InDesign file with all placed images to the printer. But I’d definitely like to know what to be aware of should we ever release a PDF…
Mike:
Thank you for your detailed response.
Drop shadows created in In Design that interact with Spot colors – either that resided in a Photoshop document or created from In Design and Illustrator will work only if you generate the correct flavor of PDF.
That seems to mean that you should NOT choose any of the "PDF Standards" and that box needs to be set to "None"; and it should also be saved as a PDF 1.6 or 1.7?
(Did I explain that well enough?)
yes and it will work. It’s just extra work but I understand the need to retain the original shape and flavor of the shadow.
IF you ever question what you are doing just write out a PDF and view the separations. You can see if the file is overprinting or knocking out.
Ann –
Correct.
1.6 or 1.7 will support transparency and spots with non standard Adobe settings. You do have to be careful still with complex PDF’s because the RIP that gets fed these files has to support Adobe Postscript level 3. WHY? Because these flavors of PDF are layered and if the RIP can’t understand a layered PDF, you will be getting a phone call from your service provider.
Great info. Mike. Thank you so much for posting.
PSD TIFF AND PDF out of Photoshop behave differently when dealing with layered PDF output files so be careful how you build files.
Welcome…
Mike,
Thanks for posting that info — it’s very helpful!
Neil
Does anybody know a quick way to transform a grayscale into an image that consists purely of opacity information? To make the question clearer: in pseudo code I would walk the pixmap, set the alpha to the r,g or b value (doesn’t matter which since the image is grayscale) and set the rgb values to to an arbitrary value (black, white, red, whatever).
Michael,
Out of curiosity, how do you want to use the information?
Neil
Wouldn’t a Monotone do what you need?
Change to Grayscale then:
Image/ Mode/Duotone/Monotone option and choose an ink color.
no –
what I think he wants is the ability to make a tritone in essence and assign a color value for each channel = ie RGB.
To answer Neil’s question first:
As a developer of applications for the iPhone, I often need to create images for toolbar buttons and it is peculiarity of the system that only the alpha values in the source image are used to create the button image the opaque values are ignored. Unfortunately, without even checking whether Ann’s solution provides a solution, it has to be discarded because a monotone can only be saved as Photoshop, Photoshop EPS, PDF and the image has to be a PNG.
Although it is possible to create an image simply by changing the opacity of the colour, it is an unbelievably tedious and protracted operation. It would be much simpler if there was a method for transferring the gray values of a pixel to its alpha. The r, g and b values of the pixels are completely irrelevant they could vary randomly form pixel to pixel, the toolbar button is only interested in the alpha values of the image.
To answer Neil’s question first:
As a developer of applications for the iPhone, I often need to create images for toolbar buttons and it is peculiarity of the system that only the alpha values in the source image are used to create the button image the opaque values are ignored. Unfortunately, without even checking whether Ann’s suggestion provides a solution, it has to be discarded because a monotone can only be saved as Photoshop, Photoshop EPS, PDF and the image has to be a PNG.
Although it is possible to create an image simply by changing the opacity of the colour, it is an unbelievably tedious and protracted operation. It would be much simpler if there was a method for transferring the gray values of a pixel to its alpha. The r, g and b values of the pixels are completely irrelevant they could vary randomly form pixel to pixel, the toolbar button is only interested in the alpha values of the image.
It would be much simpler if there was a method for transferring the gray values of a pixel to its alpha.
Command-click on the layer and save selection as a channel. Or am I missing something here? I don’t really understand all the other talk about RGB values being irrelevant. Are these buttons not displayed in RGB? Whether it’s an alpha channel or one of the channels in RGB, they are all just pixels defined with values between 0 and 255. From what you are describing, it sounds like the iPhone is simply throwing out all known conventions for describing RGB images and using some kind of proprietary format that works in a completely ridiculous fashion. I have a hard time believing that that is the case and that there isn’t some kind of misunderstanding on your part.
