Color definition problem in Illustrator
Color definition problem in Illustrator
- Subject: Color definition problem in Illustrator
- From: Saul Arana <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 13:19:50 -0500
Hi all,
We have a dilemma, and this mail is to share with you the problem and try to find out a solution or simply a comment. Thanks in advance for your attention.
We are testing the production of yellow pages in a color managed workflow, and we need to apply a color convertion to the documents in PDF format in order to obtain the best aproach with a press profile, with color proofs, etc.
The problem is that in a yellow pages directory production chain, the designer "paint" a yellow background and put on top of that background the adds. With the white knockout backgrounds there is no problem, but with the yellow background adds, the designer always define the add in Illustrator as a CMYK document with the formula, 0%M, 0%C, XX%K, and lets say 30%Y (the background). With the images in b/w, they define a CMYK document with a grayscale image in the black channel and painted with 30% in the yellow channel.
Applying a color convertion, the background becomes contaminated yellow with a little bit of cyan, and magenta, so we decided to use a software called Art-Link-o-Lator from Dakota Software, that in our preliminary tests, worked really great preserving the purity of the inks, specially the background, special thanks to Eric Magnusson.
Then the real problems started...
The ALOL color link only preserves the pure defined colors, lets say, 100% C = 100%C, 60, 40, 30, and so on. But in the case of the black and yellow adds(no b&w) the color definition is, let4s say, 60%K + 30%Y (the background) and the ALOL didn4t convert that combination due the presence of the yellow background, so the result is a kind of non neutral, dark, bluish or redish black.
Ok,we said,we can change the habits of the designers and tell them to not include that 30% of yellow, and define the blacks gradients to overprint the yellow background. But it only work fine with vector defined adds, where they can change the definition.
Here is the question, we didn4t find out a way to define in Illustrator how we can overprint a grayscale image on top of a yellow background without leaving a white knock out around the image. We4ve tryed many options without success. We are just about to abort the project only for this stupid issue.
Any help or comment will be apreciated,
Saul Arana
Lima Peru
BTW, we painted the grayscale image in QuarkXpress and when is distilled to PDF, the result is a CMYK document with the black channel with the image and the yellow channel with the background, in other words, it didn4t work either, because when that PDF is color converted, we obtain the same contamination.
_______________________________________________
colorsync-users mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/colorsync-users
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.