Can't export pdf with SPOT colours - what am I doing wrong?

[MikeW]

19 minutes ago, Daniel Richards said:

Here's a copy one of my project files - if anyone wants to have a go at exporting it, be my guest! It is a test piece for printing with three different inks - black, grey and white. It seems that the black and grey spot colours export to the pdf without any problem, but the white doesn't register in Acrobat output preview (when hovering over the white areas with the pointer) - this seems to indicate that there is nothing there...

Rockheim_Takboks_SØ_TEST.afpub 5.72 MB · 0 downloads

White, unless it is a spot color, is simply the paper color. i.e. no color.

[Daniel Richards]

3 minutes ago, MikeW said:

White, unless it is a spot color, is simply the paper color. i.e. no color.

Yes - I'm trying to create a (initially pixel-based) file which includes white spot colour and successfully export it as a pdf - but it does not seem to be possible. At least nothing suggested so far has solved the problem. The final product will be a print on transparent self-adhesive vinyl, so anything which should be white has to be printed on.

[Old Bruce]

This is what I see if I export your file as a PDF using the For Print preset and place the PDF on a coloured background. just think "Transparent vinyl" for the orange colour.

[Daniel Richards]

Hi Old Bruce!

Looks good - but how do you know if the white part has the correct colour profile (spot white) in the exported file?

[Old Bruce]

Just now, Daniel Richards said:

how do you know if the white part has the correct colour profile (spot white) in the exported file?

I have no idea.

[MikeW]

Pantone actually doesn't specify a solid White swatch. Pantone says to create a swatch named Opaque White as a spot color:

How can I specify white for printing purposes?

Although opaque white inks exist, Pantone does not provide a reference for white. Generally, if you are printing on white paper and apply no ink to an area, you will achieve white. When ink is needed, it should simply be specified as opaque white, without a PANTONE Reference.

-------------

Here's an attached pdf using an Opaque White swatch.

 

opaque white.pdf

[Daniel Richards]

That's great MikeW - the white registers as 100% when inspected in Adobe Acrobat.

But how did you make and export this pdf?  I have pixel layers which I process with 'convert to image' and then apply global (spot colours) to before exporting.

[MikeW]

Look up the help topic for creating spot colors. Once created, and when applied to a grayscale image, it will export as Opaque White spot color.

But do check with your print establishment as to what name they require, if any, for the white ink. Some print establishments require a specific name.

I would look at the sample file you have, but I use APub v.1

I've attached a palette containing the Opaque White swatch you can import into your APub file.

 

Unnamed.afpalette

[lacerto]

14 hours ago, Daniel Richards said:

Here's a copy one of my project files - if anyone wants to have a go at exporting it, be my guest! It is a test piece for printing with three different inks - black, grey and white.

Here is a version where the bitmap source of all three inks (black, gray and white) has been converted to grayscale -- which is not necessary but just does not need playing with the K Only button. 

I might have understood something of your goal wrongly, but as long as you are really intending to print in three different inks, you should have your grayscales solid (that is, K100 where you want the ink to have 100% shade, and then less, or using transparency, where you want it to be lighter). The problem with your sources was that you had your gray and white as shades of gray, and 0% of black (aiming to produce solid white) naturally does not produce a pixel when exported (because it creates a 0% tint of any ink). So I thresholded your gray and inverted the white bitmap and then reimported them and finally exported to PDF (in format that supports transparencies).

Spotcolorjob.zip

Rockheim_Takboks_fixed.pdf

[Daniel Richards]

Hi Lacerto -

Thanks for taking the time to look at this. Everything looks good in Adobe Acrobat - the only problem being that the white layer is inverted (what should be white fill is transparent, and visa versa) - but I see that is an error in my uploaded file!

Could you elaborate on - 'I thresholded your gray and inverted the white bitmap and then reimported them' - I didn't quite follow that. The final PDF output format is (as far as I can see) 'U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2' - is this right?

By the way, is there any advantage here to working in afpub instead of afdes - where I tend to do most of my work? I haven't really used afpub yet, so I'm not that familiar with it. 

 

[lacerto]

54 minutes ago, Daniel Richards said:

Everything looks good in Adobe Acrobat - the only problem being that the white layer is inverted (what should be white fill is transparent, and visa versa)

Ok, please check if the updated files have this fixed.

55 minutes ago, Daniel Richards said:

Could you elaborate on - 'I thresholded your gray and inverted the white bitmap and then reimported them' - I didn't quite follow that. The final PDF output format is (as far as I can see) 'U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2' - is this right?

I just mean that I modified these two files so that what was a shade of gray (K45 in a CMYK file) was changed to K100 (solid ink), and what was white (K0 in a CMYK file), was changed to K100 (solid ink), while the transparencies were left as they were. So the actual coloring is determined by the spot ink specification, not as shades of grays. In white ink it means that solid white will be 100 black in the source.

1 hour ago, Daniel Richards said:

The final PDF output format is (as far as I can see) 'U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2' - is this right?

The document color profile was that, and I did not change it. But I did not embed any profiles. As this is a pure spot color job, the color profile does not matter. The spot plates are just grayscales and the source levels and transparencies are just passed through in the exported PDF.

1 hour ago, Daniel Richards said:

By the way, is there any advantage here to working in afpub instead of afdes - where I tend to do most of my work? I haven't really used afpub yet, so I'm not that familiar with it. 

In this case, I do not think there is any difference (except for the small convenience in Publisher of being able to convert pixel layers to image layers using a menu command -- but as mentioned, if you're on macOS, this is possible also in Designer and Photo; on Windows you would need to use Clipboard, or place a bitmap from a file).

Rockheim_Takboks_fixed_new.zip Rockheim_Takboks_fixed_new.pdf

[Daniel Richards]

Amazing! Thanks lacerto. I should be able to process the rest of my print files in the same way (hopefully 🤞).