Converting CMYK TIF to spot colours

LE
Posted By
Lyn_Eggleston
May 5, 2004
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798
Replies
14
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Closed
A client wanted a two-colour biz card which I was to create in Pagemaker. He sent a high rez (300 dpi) large size JPG of his logo via email, which I converted to a CMYK TIF. The logo consisted of a large letter ‘E’ in an unknown font, which had been sliced up into a jigsaw, so it would have taken too much time to recreate in Illustrator. I have never made biz cards that are printed in two PMS colours but having to use a raster version of the logo. Apart from the problems of trying to match the PMS colour, which he didn’t know and it wasn’t possible to determine until he provided a printed copy of another piece of his business stationery, I then had the dilemma of not knowing how to convert the CMYK TIF into the two PMS colours. I think it has something to do with alpha channels, but beyond that, I haven’t a clue. Can anyone explain how to do it?
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cmyk color conversion spot tiff

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TD
Thee_DarkOverLord
May 5, 2004
Duotones
RL
Robert_Levine
May 5, 2004
Lyn,

Your best bet is to bring that TIF into Corel Draw and, using it as a guide, just redraw the logo.

Bob
LE
Lyn_Eggleston
May 5, 2004
Duotones wouldn’t have worked, because they apply the two colours to the whole image, and I wanted only parts of the image coloured with each colour.

Redrawing in Illustrator or Coreldraw would have taken too long. My boss would not have let me spend that sort of time on it (although it was what I suggested I do).

So there really isn’t a way of doing this?

The whole thing will probably have to be printed in the four process colours.
RL
Robert_Levine
May 5, 2004
It might take longer to do in Photoshop. You’ll need to select the areas of color and create spot channels using those selections.

Be careful because spot channels overprint so you might need to do your own trapping.

I still think running it through Corel Trace and then cleaning up in Corel Draw would take less time and give you a better result.

Bob
May 5, 2004
My boss would not have let me spend that sort of time on it (although
it was what I suggested I do).

SO wait, aren’t you guys getting paid for this job? You said it was a client sending in the files to you, which implies that someone is paying for your time… if they sent inappropriate files explain to them what needs to be done for optimal results (i.e. retracing in Illustrator, CorelDRAW, FreeHand) and tell them how much it’s going to cost them to have the work completed properly.

If they balk then it’s DCS City from there… examine the channels to determine which one(s) will work best as a starting point and rebuild the file using spot channels. Save as a DCS (multiple file, color composite) and place into a layout app for output. The results will be subpar in terms of quality, but the age-old axiom Shit In Shit Out is in full effect here…
RL
Robert_Levine
May 5, 2004
Brian,

This is a professional forum. I’ve edited your post, please watch your language in the future.

Bob
LE
Lyn_Eggleston
May 6, 2004
SO wait, aren’t you guys getting paid for this job?<<

My boss quoted a price to the client of getting these business cards printed, based on a mock-up he did in Word (with the JPG logo inserted) and emailed to us. I don’t think she realised that the logo was going to prove as troublesome as it did. In the end, it was sent to the prepress bureau who make our films to see if they could do it. Apparently they could (I will be talking to whoever did it tomorrow) and even after we received the film back, there was a further problem getting the matching PMS. Good grief – it turned out to be a metallic blue (Pantone 8201C), so I guess with all the mucking around that had to be done, she wouldn’t have been making too much money on it.

Costs are never discussed with me.
BO
Burton_Ogden
May 6, 2004
Lyn,

I then had the dilemma of not knowing how to convert the CMYK TIF into the two PMS colours. I think it has something to do with alpha channels, but beyond that, I haven’t a clue. Can anyone explain how to do it?

The 2-color image for print? <http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@@.3bb3eb0c> message thread has information on how to create a two-color image. Once you have a two color image you can do Select> Select Color Range, set Fuzziness to zero and convert each color in turn to a selection and go from there. You could save the selections and use them as the basis for color separations.

— Burton —
LE
Lyn_Eggleston
May 6, 2004
Burton

Thanks for pointing me in the direction of that other thread – which in turn had a link to another thread again on the same situation. I have emailed the original copy of the logo home to myself and will be spending some time learning how to do this.
GH
Gernot_Hoffmann
May 6, 2004
Lyn,

I would identify the fragments by magic wand, assign
a working path, export as Illustrator path, clean up
the path there and fill it. THIS fill is vector fill,
opposed to raster fill in PhS.

Best regards –Gernot Hoffmann
May 6, 2004
This is a professional forum. I’ve edited your post, please watch your language in the future.

Whatever… like s*** it such a bad word…
LE
Lyn_Eggleston
May 6, 2004
Gernot

That sounds like a good approach. I have used the magic wand on the two coloured areas, and they seem well-enough defined to allow me to try this.
GH
Gernot_Hoffmann
May 6, 2004
Lyn,

I had cleaned up the path in PhS, using the pen tool, exported the path for Illustrator and used the esssential code fragment directly in a Postscript program.
It´s very important to state that filling a path by PhS is not really vector graphics – the path is filled by pixels which leave gaps at the path boundary, whereas filling by Illustrator should result in filling with output device accuracy.
Did you see my example in the PageMaker Forum (Reconstruction of Logos – in German, but probably understandable) ?
<http://www.fho-emden.de/~hoffmann/logo23042004.pdf>

It´s exactly your task – I had only bad raster templates.

Best regards –Gernot Hoffmann
LE
Lyn_Eggleston
May 10, 2004
Well – I finally did it. It was a combination of suggestions from here and another forum that finally led me in the right direction.

It was this tip: "You could convert the selections to paths and export these to Illustrator to shorten the recreation process".

and then this one: "The paths are not stroked when importing to AI, try select all and apply a stroke" as the first time I tried exporting paths to AI from PS (never having done this before), and then not seeing anything on the screen after doing so, that really threw me.

No more mucking around with channels in PS – which I still don’t understand.

Fortunately, the blue coloured areas were easy enough to select with the magic wand. I then converted these to paths, brought them into AI and after selecting all, added strokes. I was then able to select individual paths to add the appropriate fills and then remove the strokes.

One thing I still don’t understand is why both the blue AND the yellow paths were selected – I thought I would have to bring each one into AI separately and then somehow combine them. But I won’t worry about the mystery behind that one just for now.

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