What didn’t work?
To go from CMYK to duotone, first you have to convert to grayscale and then duotone. Pick your two inks and then save as EPS.
Bob
Carey,
Are you looking to apply spot color to only a specific area of a grayscale image? Or are you looking for a more blanked applicaton of color, like Bob suggested by using a duotone?
First of all, if the file is CMYK, it does not contain a pantone red, it contains a CMYK red based on choosing a pantone red in the color picker… Therein lies your problem. The file has 4 plates not 2 and the "black" areas have tone on all 4 plates instead of only the black.
Try this:
Convert to RGB.
Change CMYK ink setup to custom, and change GCR to maximum.
Convert back to CYMK.
If the reddest part of the red does not contain 100% magenta, use selective color in reds to make it so (add saturation).
Copy the magenta channel, make a new SPOT color channel designated with the proper PMS number, and paste.
Either delete the Cyan, Mag and Yellow channels or fill them with white. It’s up to you.
Save as a DCS2 file, single file, color composite.
Remember to reset your CMYK ink setup after doing this!
Cary,
In the Channels palette, switch off the black channel. Select all and copy. Create a new spot channel, for your pantone red. Paste the contents of the clipboard into that spot channel.
Do the same for the black channel – i.e. switch off all other channels and copy the content of the black channel into a new (black) spot channel.
Switch mode to multi-channel and delete all but your two spot channels. Save as DCS2-EPS, Multiple file with colour composite, 8-bit preview and ASCII encoding
NOTE:
Spot channels overprint by default. If you require knock-outs you will have to create them manually by deleting that area from the other channel
Okay…no, I’m not looking for a duotone; what I need is spot color. My project is a carry-out menu with mostly black text, some red. I also have shades of gray in boxes, borders, etc. I think the real problem lies herein: I converted several 4-color photos to look something like sketches (per an article in Photoshop User), then copied the redish areas to a top layer and color overlayed. I believe those photos will pose the biggest problems, as underneath all the filters, etc. they really are 4-color. I’ll give your complicated techniques a go and let you know what happens. Thanks for your imput.
Thanks, all. Worked out great. Printer is tickled.
