DCS file – flattening? spot color? help!

M
Posted By
MisterOwl
Aug 29, 2005
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632
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Hallo.

I’m working with an Illustrator file that has a linked photoshop DCS file. This makes it difficult for me to save the AI file as an EPS file or PDF (workin with IL 10, it says "you can’t do this, there’s a DCS file there, too bad so sad").

I’ve tried to flatten the DCS file to make it into a normal EPS or TIF file for placement/linking/embedding, but every time I do, the spot-color layer disappears and the color of the file (it’s a logo) changes, and that’s against the rules.

How do I flatten a DCS file without losing the spot-color layer?

TIA!
J

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M
MisterOwl
Aug 29, 2005
I’m working with Photoshop 7.0 and Illustrator 10, btw, if that matters..
O
Odysseus
Aug 29, 2005
In article ,
wrote:

I’m working with an Illustrator file that has a linked photoshop DCS file. This makes it difficult for me to save the AI file as an EPS file or PDF (workin with IL 10, it says "you can’t do this, there’s a DCS file there, too bad so sad").

I’ve tried to flatten the DCS file to make it into a normal EPS or TIF file for placement/linking/embedding, but every time I do, the spot-color layer disappears and the color of the file (it’s a logo) changes, and that’s against the rules.

How do I flatten a DCS file without losing the spot-color layer?

The spot colour is in a channel, not a layer. The short answer to your question is that you can’t merge the channel with the others while preserving its spot-colour information.

Can Illustrator place a native Photoshop version? If not, InDesign can. IME Illustrator is lousy at dealing with spot-colour rasters to start with.


Odysseus
T
Tacit
Aug 30, 2005
In article ,
wrote:

I’m working with an Illustrator file that has a linked photoshop DCS file. This makes it difficult for me to save the AI file as an EPS file or PDF (workin with IL 10, it says "you can’t do this, there’s a DCS file there, too bad so sad").

You can save an Illustrator EPS with a placed DCS. It works just fine; I did it just now as a test. You should, however, make sure that your DCS file is a single-file DCS, not a multifile DCS.

You will get a warning that a placed DCS file will not interact with transparency effects correctly. If you aren’t trying to place transparent elements over the DCS, don’t worry about it.

However, I’m more concerned with the fact that you are placing a logo done in Photoshop. Photoshop is the wrong tool for logos. Why wasn’t the logo created in Illustrator?


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M
MisterOwl
Aug 30, 2005
Haha believe me, if I had an Illustrator version of this logo I’d be pretty darn happy. As it is, we gotta work with what they send us. I’ve tried for days now to get an Illustrator version of the same logo but they apparently would rather go with this messed-up Photoshop one. You know how clients can be.

I’ll keep fighting it, I seem to recall getting some sort of error message that says "Can’t do that, sorry" and only having the option to click "Okay" which stopped the save process. However, since then, I have taken the time to "flatten out" the channels and make it into a normal EPS (The previous poster was right, it’s not a "layer" thing, it was a "channel" thing.. my bad on getting the terminology switched around, it’s been a long couple days).

Anyway, thanks for all the help! Good tip on the placement of transparent elements over the DCS, I’ll remember that for future use.

J

How to Improve Photoshop Performance

Learn how to optimize Photoshop for maximum speed, troubleshoot common issues, and keep your projects organized so that you can work faster than ever before!

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