by Stephen
Beals
Special
to Digital Media Designer
http://home.rochester.rr.com/chapelstreet/printips.html
[Editor's
note: Today we're presenting you with a contribution from Stephen
Beals, who's published a booklet designed to give clients of prepress
houses some insight into the production process and to help eliminate
printing problems before they happen. This is the first of our
new "Quick Tips" series, which we're using to present
information that's helpful to designers but that doesn't necessarily
require pages and pages of explanation. —Dave]
There are
several things designers need to be aware of when it comes to
creating spot color jobs. First, the name of the color is critical.
For some reason that only programmers know for sure, different
programs use different naming conventions for the same color.
Quark Express may call PMS 124 coated "PMS 124CV," while
Photoshop will call it "PMS 124CVC" and Illustrator
will call it "PMS124C."
The problem
is that the RIP device may see this as three different colors.
It
is a simple matter to make call the color names the same when
you create the original files, and your printer will be grateful
if you do. Also, all of these programs allow you to specify whether
you want each color to print as a spot color, or be converted
to CMYK equivalents (getting as close as possible to the desired
color using conventional printing inks).
If you want
to use a spot color, be sure to check the spot color box in the
program you create the file with. At the same time, it is important
that inks that you don't want to print as spot colors do not have
the spot color box checked. It’s a very common error, and
can create a big problem when it comes to producing your job.
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