Artpro. It’s like Illustrator, but with a really slick and advanced trapping interface, and all kinds of support for spots and alpha channels.
I use Illustrator every day, but due to it being vector based it is useless in terms of the functionality I need.
I’ve heard of Artpro – but isn’t it a vector based program too?
For example, I might have to use layer styles to add a bevel to a shape on a layer. The shape might be a grad bewteen two spot colours, The highlight of the bevel needs to knock out of the two spot colour channels, but the shadow of the bevel needs to overprint the spot colours and appear in the black channel only. In the middle of the shape is some type which is a mix of magenta, yellow and cyan. This type needs to knock out of the spot channels, and only print in the magenta, yellow and cyan channels.
Sounds simple enough, and it is possible. But even this uncomplicated example is maddeningly difficult to achieve.
What I’d like is to be able to have spot colour functionality on a layer level. To be able to have some pixels on a layer and to be able to set them to a spot colour, and to be able to tell them where to overprint and where to knockout, and to able to preview the effects of those decisions quickly and easily. To have the same functionality for spot colours as exists for CMYK.
Does anyone know any software that can do that?
Donald:
MO’s proposed it before and helped me with the solid color layers, which make things a lot easier. The basic idea is this: create a group called "ink". "Ink" is set to multiply. At the bottom of "ink" is a solid color layer set to the ink color for that group "ink". Nested in "ink", but on top of the solid color layer is another group called "channel", set to screen. Inside "channel" is a solid color layer set to white, and on top of it rest grayscale "layers" which are your inking. You can stack layers on top, create knockouts, etc. Building objects is still a PITA, but once they’re built, if you link all related objects together, you can move them about independent of one another and your OP/KO still is maintained.
You also get a (albeit shite) realtime preview of everything. When you’re done, move "channel" to a new doc and set the group to passthrough/normal for your final channel.
It’s probably better to work in RGB and agree on the dummy before diving in to save time, but it’s been my experience that the above doesn’t add a whole lot of time (I worked your example in a couple of minutes) and does give you some flexibility. Moving from a well-built RGB file to one of these messes to channels is no worse than RGB to channels, and you’ve got an intermediate doc to confuse you. 🙂
Of course, in Indesign you could build this example in 20 clicks or less!
If Adobe would finish one feature in its existence for once, they would FIX the proof set-up to function in Grayscale mode so users can see color spaces other then Gray in Grayscale. Then, implement spot layers as color fills.
This would give you what you want.
J Maloney, I think I tried this method before, and it just wasn’t giving me what I needed. I will try again with this job. Fingers crossed.
I can’t work in RGB, it has to be CMYK. I’m working with major brands logos here, supplied in CMYK, and I can’t be converting back and forth. The job cannot be done in Indesign, since I can’t recall being able to selectively paint in layer masks or do hundreds of other things I need to do that can only be done in Photoshop.
My example may have been too simple – the actual job I’m doing is WAY more complex. For instance, one bit of packaging uses a psd file that is over 2GB, it has over 200 layers in 50 groups, 100 layer masks, 50 vector masks, 6 spot colours + CMYK.
