Question about Photoshop spot channels in Quark

evil monkey wrote:

I don’t have that much experience with packaging except for the basics of 4 color work. Lately I’ve been asked to created spot channels in Photoshop for various printing effects including embossing and spot varnishes.

These PSD files get saved as DSC files and placed in Quark.
Then, also in Quark, I place several customer logos which come from Illustrator.

My problem is when I print as separations to verify my work the Illustrator/vector logos get knocked out of the spot channels. If a logo happens to be over a varnish or an emboss, I want it to be varnished and embossed too, and not get knocked out of the background.
How do I do that? I’m sure I’m overlooking something easy.

Hi Monkey,

I think this is a Quark question, and has to do with trap, and the order in which you lay the inks down. Try posting your question to comp.publish.prepress.
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

in article , evil monkey at
wrote on 10/25/04 5:49 PM:

I don’t have that much experience with packaging except for the basics of 4 color work. Lately I’ve been asked to created spot channels in Photoshop for various printing effects including embossing and spot varnishes.

These PSD files get saved as DSC files and placed in Quark.
Then, also in Quark, I place several customer logos which come from Illustrator.

My problem is when I print as separations to verify my work the Illustrator/vector logos get knocked out of the spot channels. If a logo happens to be over a varnish or an emboss, I want it to be varnished and embossed too, and not get knocked out of the background.

—
Unless you are printing your logos with Black ink only
the application is acting properly.
Just tell the individual color blocks to overprint, in Quark. –
Your varnish or emboss is actually over the logos –
not the logos over the varnish.

Varnish – etc … is better done in the RIP these days.

MSD

My problem is when I print as separations to verify my work the Illustrator/vector logos get knocked out of the spot channels.

Yes, of course they do–that is exactly what they should do, unless you explicitly tell the colors in the Illustrator logo to overprint.

Of course, if you do that, the Illustrator logos will overprint any other elements on the page too, including any color backgrounds, pictures, or whatever.

Generally, when you do things like spot or flood varnishes, you make a page that just contains the varnish elements without any of the elements which should not knock out. So if you’re doing, say, a brochure, and the cover is varnished, you create 2 pages: one for all the elements that will be printed on the cover (logos, images, and so on) and one for the varnish.

Another option is this: Assemble all the elements, including the DCS image for the varnish, on one page. Suppress printout of the varnish image, and then print the CMYK plates; then, suppress printing of the CMYK elements, and print the varnish.

You can suppress printing of an element in Quark in the Picture Usage dialog or in the Edit Frame dialog.

Hope that helps…

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

On 10/25/04 7:49 PM, "evil monkey" wrote:

I don’t have that much experience with packaging except for the basics of 4 color work. Lately I’ve been asked to created spot channels in Photoshop for various printing effects including embossing and spot varnishes.

These PSD files get saved as DSC files and placed in Quark.

If this is the route you choose, please warn your printer that you’re using a technique that should be obsolete. DCS can be a very problematic format in the modern age of composite printing. Warn your printer, and they’ll remember to use practices that are no longer necessary for most files.

If you’d rather avoid such a risky endeavor, create the files correctly. Use paths to select what you’d like to varnish/emboss in Photoshop, export those paths to Illustrator, open them in Illustrator, fill them with spot colors named "varnish"/"emboss" respectively. Set their fill to overprint in the Attributes window, and save them as Illustrator EPS files. Place them into QuarkXPress in the correct X Y position, and you’ll be much better off than if using Photoshop DCS files.

Better yet, use your Photoshop files as PDFs in InDesign with Overprint Preview turned on. Much easier.

Then, also in Quark, I place several customer logos which come from Illustrator.

My problem is when I print as separations to verify my work the Illustrator/vector logos get knocked out of the spot channels. If a logo happens to be over a varnish or an emboss, I want it to be varnished and embossed too, and not get knocked out of the background.

If you use the method described above, you can place the varnish/emboss files above the Illustrator logos. Since they’re set to overprint they won’t knockout the logos.

Hope that helps.
Tim

On 10/26/04 9:13 AM, "Tacit" wrote:

<snip>

Generally, when you do things like spot or flood varnishes, you make a page that just contains the varnish elements without any of the elements which should not knock out. So if you’re doing, say, a brochure, and the cover is varnished, you create 2 pages: one for all the elements that will be printed on the cover (logos, images, and so on) and one for the varnish.

I normally agree with you on pretty-much everything you post, but I have to disagree with this. Personally, I find it much easier to reliably proof varnish plates if they’re included in the layout. How would you proof a varnish if it’s setup in a file of its own? I’d throw it on the light table, but I’d much rather have the option of previewing the results on-screen after ripping the file. An inkjet proof with the varnish plate overprinting the CMYK images is my favorite way to make damn sure my varnish will actually print where I want it to.

Another option is this: Assemble all the elements, including the DCS image for the varnish, on one page. Suppress printout of the varnish image, and then print the CMYK plates; then, suppress printing of the CMYK elements, and print the varnish.

Again, how would you proof this?

Tim

I normally agree with you on pretty-much everything you post, but I have to disagree with this. Personally, I find it much easier to reliably proof varnish plates if they’re included in the layout. How would you proof a varnish if it’s setup in a file of its own?

Soft proof or contract proof? It’s easy enough to proof if you simply create a Colorkey overlay for the varnish and lay it over a Matchprint or some other contract proof. If the register marks are te same, the page is set up at the same size, and the position of the varnish plate is correct, it’s easy.

Creating the varnish plate in Illustrator and setting it to overprint is a good idea, and in the case of simple varnish plates is often the best way to go, but I often find myself doing complex varnish plates where it’s non-trivial to produce a vector plate. For example, I once did a job for the cover of a cruise ship catalog in which a photograph of a skyline was varnished with two different varnishes–a gloss varnish on the sky and a matte varnish on the ground. Because the skyline was edged with trees, creating a path to separate sky from ground was not proactical; I produced the spot and gloss varnish as Photoshop grayscale files, colorized appropriately in Quark and set up on a Quark page separately from the four-color image.

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

On 10/27/04 9:20 AM, "Tacit" wrote:

Soft proof or contract proof? It’s easy enough to proof if you simply create a Colorkey overlay for the varnish and lay it over a Matchprint or some other contract proof. If the register marks are te same, the page is set up at the same size, and the position of the varnish plate is correct, it’s easy.

I’m just a 21st Century Digital Boy. I’ve seen proofs like this, but now that we’ve been direct to plate for a few years, we don’t even buy the material to do this. Another problem with this method for me, is that you must rely on the steadiness of the human hand when trying to register the Colorkey over the proof (I’ve never been a stripper, so my hands aren’t as steady as someone who has 🙂 ).

I much prefer our current method, which is printing an inkjet proof from the ripped, screened data with the varnish plate/s included. If the varnish is extremely critical, we may urge the customer to buy a Fuji FinalProof. I just find this easier and more reliable. YMMV

Creating the varnish plate in Illustrator and setting it to overprint is a good idea, and in the case of simple varnish plates is often the best way to go, but I often find myself doing complex varnish plates where it’s non-trivial to produce a vector plate.

Well, I can’t argue with that! Sometimes Photoshop is the right place to create a varnish, but I also think we’ll agree that it usually isn’t.

For example, I once did a job for the cover of a cruise ship catalog in which a photograph of a skyline was varnished with two different varnishes–a gloss varnish on the sky and a matte varnish on the ground. Because the skyline was edged with trees, creating a path to separate sky from ground was not proactical; I produced the spot and gloss varnish as Photoshop grayscale files, colorized appropriately in Quark and set up on a Quark page separately from the four-color image.

With you at the helms, I’m sure the results were as fantastic as the examples of your craft in the gallery of your website. The OP, on the other hand, admits to little experience with "various printing effects including embossing and spot Varnishes." My only intention in replying at all was to point out the best way to go about creating a varnish. There will always be exceptions to any rule, but I think a safer option should be introduced, if for nothing else, as something to investigate. It’s likely the OP doesn’t need to complicate things by introducing DCS files into the mix. It’s possible that I’m overreacting, but DCS files leave a bitter taste in my mouth these days. 🙂

I can also say that I cringe every time I receive a file from a customer that has the varnish plates in a separate document. Almost every single time that happens, the varnish is off. The customer changed an image, or moved a text box, or any number of things that can happen, and they forgot to make the same changes to the varnish file. Or an operator accidentally moved an image, or text box, or any number of things that can happen with native files. If someone doesn’t notice it in the proofing stage, it ends up on press and it’s wrong. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It’s wrong. I’m not saying that their files are much better when the varnish is built into the file, but It’s easier to catch problems if you can generate an inkjet proof that shows the varnish right on top of the 4color, in much less time than creating a Colorkey and taking the time to register it to the proof by hand. In fact, it can take even less time if you catch problems like this after ripping the file, but prior to output (it takes only seconds to rip each page of a book with a good rip on a fast server with a gigabit connection). Including the varnish plate/s in the document that will rip is the only way I know to preview the results prior to any output. If you know another way, please enlighten me, and I’ll be forever in your debt.

This is a nice discussion. I’m very interested in your replies, if you have the time.

Tim

I much prefer our current method, which is printing an inkjet proof from the ripped, screened data with the varnish plate/s included.

Do you use an inkjet proof for your color proof as well?

If you’re using a Harlequin RIP, you should be able to take a varnish plate from a different page (or document) and overlay it on the 4/C inside the RIP, so it should still be possible to generate a composite digital proof that includes the varnish.

It’s likely the OP doesn’t
need to complicate things by introducing DCS files into the mix. It’s possible that I’m overreacting, but DCS files leave a bitter taste in my mouth these days. 🙂

One of my biggest gripes about Photoshop is that if you create a spot-color document for output from another app, you’re forced to save it as DCS; Photoshop can’t create a DeviceN EPS with the spot color channels included. There’s a third-party app, DCS Merger, that’ll take a Photoshop DCS and produce a DeviceN EPS, but the fact that Photoshop can’t do this itself is kind of silly.

The OP would likely be best off using Illustrator to do the varnish or, if the varnish is too complex, creating it in Photoshop, then saving it as a grayscale TIFF and colorizing it in Quark. (This is most often what I’ll do if for some reason I can’t use Illustrator; in Quark, the TIFF can be forced to overprint and placed on the same Quark page with the 4/C, if necessary.)

I can also say that I cringe every time I receive a file from a customer that has the varnish plates in a separate document. >Almost every single time that happens, the varnish is off.

That’s why I never allow my clients to make their own varnish plates. 😉

Including the varnish plate/s in the document that will rip is the only way I know to preview the results prior to any output. If you know another way, please enlighten me, and I’ll be forever in your debt.

The PolkaDots workflow does this easily (PolkaDots is a ROOM-based workflow management system that wraps around a Harlequin RIP core), but I think you can do it directly in a Harlequin RIP if that’s what your using to drive your proofer.

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

In article ,
(Tacit) wrote:

I much prefer our current method, which is printing an inkjet proof from the ripped, screened data with the varnish plate/s included.

Do you use an inkjet proof for your color proof as well?
If you’re using a Harlequin RIP, you should be able to take a varnish plate from a different page (or document) and overlay it on the 4/C inside the RIP, so it should still be possible to generate a composite digital proof that includes the varnish.

[snip]

Including the varnish plate/s in the document that will rip is the only way I know to preview the results prior to any output. If you know another way, please enlighten me, and I’ll be forever in your debt.

The PolkaDots workflow does this easily (PolkaDots is a ROOM-based workflow management system that wraps around a Harlequin RIP core), but I think you can
do it directly in a Harlequin RIP if that’s what your using to drive your proofer.

Our ECRM/Harlequin "Eclipse" doesn’t work that way; we’re using a plug-in to drive our six-colour Epson 7600 inkjet, and there are two obstacles to getting a composite proof from separate plates. Firstly, it needs to RIP files specially for the Epson; although it can use the same PostScript source as for film it handles it quite differently, building a composite for output as a stage of the interpretation process rather than as a separate action that can be performed on already-processed plates. Secondly, AFAICT it only recognizes Pantone spots, getting their CcMmYK values from an internal library, so it can’t simulate varnishes, dielines or other arbitrarily named colours. These have to be included in composite PostScript right from the front end in order to appear in a proof.

—
Odysseus

On 10/29/04 8:20 AM, "Tacit" wrote:

Do you use an inkjet proof for your color proof as well?

Yes, an Epson 9600, but our Fuji FinalProofs are much much better. 🙂

If you’re using a Harlequin RIP, you should be able to take a varnish plate from a different page (or document) and overlay it on the 4/C inside the RIP, so it should still be possible to generate a composite digital proof that includes the varnish.

Well, my RIP is the Agfa Apogee PDFRip, but this is possible in my workflow, too. That’s a great idea. I wish I’d thought of it. 😉

One of my biggest gripes about Photoshop is that if you create a spot-color document for output from another app, you’re forced to save it as DCS; Photoshop can’t create a DeviceN EPS with the spot color channels included. There’s a third-party app, DCS Merger, that’ll take a Photoshop DCS and produce
a DeviceN EPS, but the fact that Photoshop can’t do this itself is kind of silly.

I wholeheartedly agree. It is very silly. Sometimes I wonder if it was an intentional "limitation" by Adobe, given the fact that InDesign isn’t hindered by this problem. "Want spot colors in Photoshop?", says Adobe, "Use InDesign for output–no problem!" Fine and dandy, but I’m in prepress–I don’t get to make that decision.

The OP would likely be best off using Illustrator to do the varnish or, if the varnish is too complex, creating it in Photoshop, then saving it as a grayscale
TIFF and colorizing it in Quark. (This is most often what I’ll do if for some reason I can’t use Illustrator; in Quark, the TIFF can be forced to overprint and placed on the same Quark page with the 4/C, if necessary.)

Be careful if you’re in Quark6 on Mac OSX. I know the marketing material claims that Quark can now (finally) handle colorized TIFFs, but I’m on the receiving end of all sorts of files. I can tell you that Quark 6 cannot handle colorized TIFFs yet, and the Quark 5 xtensions that I used to use to get around this ridiculous limitation no longer work in Q6. Yes, you might get lucky and your colorized TIFF will work (printing DeviceN), but if you look closely at the rest of the document (after PDFing and/or RIPping) you may notice type changing colors and other strange results. Printing separations might work, but I’d rather not do that, if it can be avoided.

If I’m missing some xtensions you know of that fix Quark’s nasty little bug (that they’ll probably never fix) please LET ME KNOW!! 🙂

I can also say that I cringe every time I receive a file from a customer that has the varnish plates in a separate document. >Almost every single time that happens, the varnish is off.

That’s why I never allow my clients to make their own varnish plates. 😉

Oh, I wish had that authority. I’d setup all my own dieline files, too! Sometimes it’s much easier to start from scratch than fix what I receive.

But then, do you eat the cost, or piss off the customer and charge him/her? Some customers can be…volatile, to put it nicely. How do you deal with that?

Including the varnish plate/s in the document that will rip is the only way I know to preview the results prior to any output. If you know another way, please enlighten me, and I’ll be forever in your debt.

The PolkaDots workflow does this easily (PolkaDots is a ROOM-based workflow management system that wraps around a Harlequin RIP core), but I think you can do it directly in a Harlequin RIP if that’s what your using to drive your proofer.

I’m not familiar with PolkaDots. I’ll probably research this workflow in the near future, but I’m quite happy with Apogee. Not so much Agfa, as their customer support is horrible with a capital "H", but the workflow is very nice. Once you get it set up the way you want it (Agfa doesn’t really help you do this–in fact, they seem to try to make it more difficult), it can be extremely fast and efficient.

Thanks for the reply! Happy Friday!

Tim

Our ECRM/Harlequin "Eclipse" doesn’t work that way; we’re using a plug-in to drive our six-colour Epson 7600 inkjet, and there are two obstacles to getting a composite proof from separate plates. Firstly, it needs to RIP files specially for the Epson; although it can use the same PostScript source as for film it handles it quite differently, building a composite for output as a stage of the interpretation process rather than as a separate action that can be performed on already-processed plates.

Yep, that sounds like it pretty much rules out running the job as separations, then reassigning the varnish page as a spot color and merging it with the rest of the pages.

Secondly, AFAICT it only recognizes Pantone spots, getting their CcMmYK values from an internal library, so it can’t simulate varnishes, dielines or other arbitrarily named colours. These have to be included in composite PostScript right from the front end in order to appear in a proof.

Can you add new spot colors to the library? ISTR that hte TorreNT RIP (which is Harlequin-based) allows you to do this…

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

I wholeheartedly agree. It is very silly. Sometimes I wonder if it was an intentional "limitation" by Adobe, given the fact that InDesign isn’t hindered by this problem. "Want spot colors in Photoshop?", says Adobe, "Use InDesign for output–no problem!"

I’ve complained several times on this forum that Photoshop must save a spot-color image as a DCS2 file, and can’t produce a DeviceN EPS. Chris Cox responded on one occasion, claiming that Photoshop can’t write DeviceN EPS files because nobody has requested that ability, which Is a claim I’m terribly suspicious of…

Be careful if you’re in Quark6 on Mac OSX. I know the marketing material claims that Quark can now (finally) handle colorized TIFFs, but I’m on the receiving end of all sorts of files. I can tell you that Quark 6 cannot handle colorized TIFFs yet, and the Quark 5 xtensions that I used to use to get around this ridiculous limitation no longer work in Q6.

Fortunately, I don’t use Quark 6. In fact, you couldn’t pay me enough to…well, scratch that. i suppose it might be possible to pay me enough to use Quark 6, but you probably couldn’t afford it. 😉

I’m encouraging my clients to move from Quark to Indesign, and a lot of them are doing it. I’ve received more frantic support calls about Quark 6 than any other single piece of software *ever*.

But then, do you eat the cost, or piss off the customer and charge him/her? Some customers can be…volatile, to put it nicely. How do you deal with that?

I have a small client base for prepress work, now that it’s no longer the bulk of what I do, and my clients listen to me. 🙂 They’re actually happy to have me do things like varnishes, embosses, and dies, because it means less work for them.

I only have about a dozen prepress clients at this point, and I’ve educated all of them to talk to me and to their printers before they do *anything.* It makes us all a whole lot happier.

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

On 11/2/04 8:20 AM, "Tacit" wrote:

I’ve complained several times on this forum that Photoshop must save a spot-color image as a DCS2 file, and can’t produce a DeviceN EPS. Chris Cox responded on one occasion, claiming that Photoshop can’t write DeviceN EPS files because nobody has requested that ability, which Is a claim I’m terribly suspicious of…

I remember the post. I sorta’ figured that since you were here requesting that feature it would show up in a later version of Photoshop. Too bad it hasn’t.

Fortunately, I don’t use Quark 6. In fact, you couldn’t pay me enough to…well, scratch that. i suppose it might be possible to pay me enough to use Quark 6, but you probably couldn’t afford it. 😉

Lucky you. I don’t have that luxury.

I’m encouraging my clients to move from Quark to Indesign, and a lot of them are doing it.

I’m making the same recommendation to the customers that I actually speak with. And, as in your situation, a lot of them are making the switch. Unfortunately, I’m in prepress in a medium-sized print shop, so I don’t speak with most of our customers. The customers that are conscientious enough to call and ask for advice will get exceptional tech support, and advice just for making the effort. But they are few and far between. Designers have a tendency to think they don’t need advice from a lowly prepress operator. 😉

I’ve received more frantic support calls about Quark 6 than any other single piece of software *ever*.

I can’t think of any other application that actually gets worse with each release. It’s weird to watch a company willingly drive themselves out of business just because they suddenly got a little competition. And really, it wasn’t all that sudden. Didn’t Adobe buy Aldus for the sole purpose of using Pagemaker’s code to help write K2 (InDesign)? Am I remembering that correctly?

<snip>

I only have about a dozen prepress clients at this point, and I’ve educated all of them to talk to me and to their printers before they do *anything.* It makes us all a whole lot happier.

You don’t know how good you’ve got it! 😉

Tim

BTW: I hope you voted/are voting today. You’re in Florida, right? If so, that means you’re vote will actually count for something. You don’t have to answer me on this, as it’s really none of my business! 😉

In article ,
(Tacit) wrote:

Can you add new spot colors to the library? ISTR that hte TorreNT RIP (which is
Harlequin-based) allows you to do this…

I certainly haven’t found any such facility, but I can’t guarantee that it can’t be done either. It still wouldn’t allow building a composite proof from separate plates, but would at least let us use separated PS for both proofs and film for jobs that contain ‘special’ plates or arbitrarily named colours like "Corporate Blue" (it seems some designers find the Pantone numbers so prosaic that an exercise in creativity is called for to rename them).

—
Odysseus

Tim Monk …

paths to Illustrator, open them in Illustrator, fill them with spot colors named "varnish"/"emboss" respectively. Set their fill to overprint in the Attributes window, and save them as Illustrator EPS files. Place them into QuarkXPress in the correct X Y position, and you’ll be much better off than if using Photoshop DCS files.

Hi Tim,

That wont be a good idea if you have spots with feathered edges. For feathered spots, nothing like Photoshop can do the job precisely.

Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer

Not sure which library you are talking about, but if you mean the Quark one, just make up a small text box with a few characters in it, and colour each one with your common spots – then in a new document, just drag the text box from the library to your doc, then delete it – colour channels will remain…

Cheers, Jason (remove … to reply)
Video & Gaming: http://gadgetaus.com

I’m making the same recommendation to the customers that I actually speak with. And, as in your situation, a lot of them are making the switch. Unfortunately, I’m in prepress in a medium-sized print shop, so I don’t speak with most of our customers.

That used to be me, ’til I branched out on my own. I worked in a large, busy prepress shop for years, and finally decided I was sick of the fact that day after day, I kept seeing clients making the same mistakes over and over and over again. So I finally decided that I could make some money as a prepress consultant and trainer. Nowadays, i spend most of my time training (Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, and so forth, as well as general prepress, color theory, trapping, color correction, and the like) and consulting, primarily for ad agencies and design shops. It’s *much* more rewarding…but then again, there’ve been times when I think "crack whore" offers more job satisfaction than prepress. 🙂

I can’t think of any other application that actually gets worse with each release. It’s weird to watch a company willingly drive themselves out of business just because they suddenly got a little competition.

Yeah,a nd you’d think Quark of all companies would know better–they completely demolished Aldus just by offering a better product than PageMaker, so they ought to remember that the same thing can happen to them. (I hear the big, radical new feature in Quark 7 will be XML support. Ooooohhhhh….)

BTW: I hope you voted/are voting today. You’re in Florida, right?

Yep. Doesn’t look like the election went the way I wanted it to, though. :/

—
Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

In article ,
"Gadgets" wrote:

Not sure which library you are talking about, but if you mean the Quark one, just make up a small text box with a few characters in it, and colour each one with your common spots – then in a new document, just drag the text box from the library to your doc, then delete it – colour channels will remain…

No — I guess you missed the first part of the thread — we were talking about the (presumed) internal Pantone library in the ECRM "Eclipse" RIP plug-in for driving an Epson 7600 inkjet.

AFAICT all of QuarkXPress’s colour libraries are always available, regardless of what colours actually appear in the colour palette.

—
Odysseus

(Tacit) wrote in message news:…

That used to be me, ’til I branched out on my own. I worked in a large, busy prepress shop for years, and finally decided I was sick of the fact that day after day, I kept seeing clients making the same mistakes over and over and over again. So I finally decided that I could make some money as a prepress consultant and trainer. Nowadays, i spend most of my time training (Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, and so forth, as well as general prepress, color theory, trapping, color correction, and the like) and consulting, primarily for ad agencies and design shops. It’s *much* more rewarding…but then again, there’ve been times when I think "crack whore" offers more job satisfaction than prepress. 🙂

Hi Tacit,

With all due respect to your efforts, you forgot to mention when did you lose your virginity! (No offence).

I like most of your posts, and you do a great job in helping people here. Actually, you should be rewarded by Adobe cuz you really do them a favor by posting here. However, you may consider the idea of being bit humbler, and stop talking about yourself, and your achievements. Again, no offence.

Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer