I have a photoshop file someone sent me with 5 pics that are vignettes saved as a gray scale format with a black background. I would like to know what kind of file I need to save it as so I can convert the background to a pantone color I can separate from Quark.
In order to use Pantone spot colors in a Photoshop spot color image, you must save the image as a DCS2 file. (You can save a duotone as an EPS, but a duotone won’t do what you want.)
It would be easiest to start with the layered Photoshop file. Place the vignette on a layer, so that it fades to transparent. In the Channels flyout menu, choose New Spot Channel. Enter the information about the spot color you will be using. Fill the channel witht hat spot color. Select the transparency in the layer, then delete that area (fill it with white) in the spot channel–otherwise you will have a solid tint of the spot color beneath the image, which isn’t what you want. Save the result as a DCS2 file.
Two things to be aware of:
1. You cannot work in layers in a spot color.
2. A DCS2 file will separae correctly from Quark when you print seps, but *will not* print correctly as a composite. This is a kind of boneheaded shortcoming in Photoshop–it can’t save a DeviceN EPS with spot color information. There’s a little program called DCS Merger that can convert that DCS2 file to a spot-color deviceN EPS if you need to print a composite.
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