Red Color Separation? How to…?

L
Posted By
ladieskiller101
Jan 22, 2007
Views
716
Replies
7
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Closed
Hi everyone,

I designed a print ad for my boss and he says that the printing house asks for the Red Color Separation in the print ad. What does this mean? and How am I about to accomplish this without looking stupid with my boss :-)? Please advise.

I’m using Photoshop CS and design the print in CMYK mode.

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L
LenHewitt
Jan 22, 2007
The only way you would get a red separation is if you have used a spot colour channel for a spot (special) red – otherwise you would only be able to separate into c,m,y,and k from a cmyk mode file.

The only other scenario I can envisiage is if you have created a duotone and then converted to CMYK, but without a bit more information on your image, it’s difficult to know what your print house may be talking about.
EH
Ed_Hannigan
Jan 22, 2007
I would ask them exactly what they mean. I don’t know what they mean either. I don’t think you will look stupid. If the job looks awful in print, THEN you might look stupid.
L
ladieskiller101
Jan 22, 2007
Thanks everyone for your replies!

I’m trying to track them down for more information but couldn’t reach them.

In the meantime, I just talked to my boss and he vaguely explains that the printing house wants to print only black and red instead of full color printing. Any ideas? Thanks!
EH
Ed_Hannigan
Jan 22, 2007
That can be done any number of ways. One way is to make a duotone choosing red and black as the colors. Image>Mode>Grayscale, then Image>Mode>Duotone.

But whether that is appropriate for your project or not is another thing.
L
ladieskiller101
Jan 22, 2007
Thank you very much, Ed!

I’m going to try that and will report back.

Thanks!
EH
Ed_Hannigan
Jan 23, 2007
If you make it a duotone you will have to specify the inks. I suspect you are placing the ad in a publication that is already printed in two colors and therefore already has standard red and black inks they use, so it should not be much of an an issue.

One thing I have found over the years is that there is not enough (or any) communication between designers and printers. Each makes the assumption that the other will understand what they are thinking, but that is often not the case.
SB
Sandy Birrell
Jan 23, 2007
wrote:
If you make it a duotone you will have to specify the inks. I suspect you are placing the ad in a publication that is already printed in two colors and therefore already has standard red and black inks they use, so it should not be much of an an issue.
One thing I have found over the years is that there is not enough (or any) communication between designers and printers. Each makes the assumption that the other will understand what they are thinking, but that is often not the case.

I found this which might explain it.

Taken from here.

http://custom-studios.com/art.htm

"Submitting Artwork Customers always ask if they can submit artwork on disk. We say Yes but we would prefer all artwork be submitted Black & White camera ready art, if more than 1 color, submit it color separated in Black & White, see example below. For example if you have a 3 color design that is red, black & yellow. Each color should be on a separate piece and in Black print (not in the color of what it is going to be printed). The reason we prefer black & white art is that if we have problems reading the customers disk or since we use only graphic PC compatible and it’s in a MAC format we are unable to use it. Also many times customers disk for some reason the artwork is not there or is not readable by us. By having camera ready artwork we know we have what we need to start your job and there will no delay in getting your order done on time. A black laser print of 300 x 300 or better is usually good enough to reproduce from. You can enclose the disk with the art (PC 1.44 or zip disk) should we need to enhance, change it or reprint it. Or need a type font from it. Always enclose the type font on the disk as we may not have the type font that is needed for your artwork. We use a special graphics program that has it’s own special format .GED, but next to that we prefer a .EPS, GIF file or a .TIF file because we can usually convert it to the format we need from that. TIF files depending on their format can pose a problem when trying to convert them. Artwork submitted should have a line width of 1.5 or thicker. Anything under 1.5 cannot be guaranteed to print properly. The only exception to submitting art is when we are doing a four color process imprinting because we then output the films directly from the disk as it is less expensive and faster to it this way, in this case we can accept MAC or IBM format (Photoshop works well) when doing this. When doing four color process films from disk we usually output at 55 LPI and prices for films are about $18.00 ea. for 10" x 12" size. Four color process consist of Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Black. Please keep in mind when doing four color process on t-shirts that additional time (1 week’s times is needed) because of film work, special plates, proofing and getting colors to print right takes time, sometimes color printing output is not definite because of what we start with and how well colors print together after films & plates are made. Those of you who wish to supply us with your own films have them output to 55 LPI and plates supplied mount them on a 305 mesh.
Example of a 2 color separation is shown below. Each piece of artwork color should be in black & white regardless of what the printed color is. As you can see the blue design on the left and the red color separation next to it fits perfectly with each color. On the right is what the two colors look like when put together, there is a very slight overlay when the 2 colors butt up to each other. When in doubt and you want us to do the color separations you can submit your 1 color design and include a colored-in art piece to show where the colors go. We then can do the color separations here, there is a charge for us to do the color separations. We do not recommend printing ink on top of ink as you get ink build up and tend to lose detail when doing this."



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