Colour Mapping and custom colours in Nexus

[prepressguru]

Hey Gang

How is colour mapping handled in Nexus? We have a 8.1 system. I can't seem to figure this out. We have been cleaning up our native files so all PMS colours are named correctly. But things like dieline always come up using the same cmyk mix. Sometimes I would like the option to choose a different colour for dieline. Or have another custom colour name for dieline like "Dieline Mag" = 100 magenta and have it set to overprint. Or say we have a customer and they always use a custom colour say "Johns Red" how can I add this colour to Nexus so it picks up the correct values all the time?

Thanks, p

 

[MrDHG]

In Nexus Manager, double click on the Merge OPPO files module in that particular jobs workflow. You will see a list of color separations that are used in that file. Double click on the color you want to edit the values on. Click OK. Prompt will ask "Would you like to add this color to the user list?" click ok. These values will hold for subsequent jobs. So next time if you have a color called "Johns Red" Nexus will know how to handle that color

 

[prepressguru]

Hey MrDHG

Thanks for this info. I created a test job and added "Dieline" with 100% cyan. When I ran it for some reason it mapped this colour to another value in Nexus (100 m 100 y). Not sure how it is doing this? Do you? Does Nexus have a default colour for Dieline which it remaps the colour to? I was also looking for a overprint option as well so any time a custom colour is used it overprints.

Thanks, p

 

[Sev]

In Nexus Manager, double click on the Merge OPPO files module in that particular jobs workflow. You will see a list of color separations that are used in that file. Double click on the color you want to edit the values on. Click OK. Prompt will ask "Would you like to add this color to the user list?" click ok. These values will hold for subsequent jobs. So next time if you have a color called "Johns Red" Nexus will know how to handle that color

In some older versions of Nexus, that did not always work. Sometimes Nexus would forget the custom spot color. We found that out during our Nexus training. The training file would have a custom spot color called Honda Red. The next time that color was used, we would get an error in the Merge OPPO files module, and would have to re-enter the color values. If I recall, that was using Nexus version 7.x. Of course, alot has changed since version 7.x.

-Sev

 

[prepressguru]

@ Sev interesting.

Well I found a text file within nexus which contains the values of the user colours. I'm not so concerned with the way they will display or proof more how they will overprint. I still do not understand why or how dieline is mapped to the default colour? Any idea how it decides this?

p

 

[prepressguru]

Anyone know how the colour mapping works.

Or even if you can automatically have special colours overprint, like dieline?

Thanks, p

 

[Point918]

We always deal with this in the source application, in our case Illustrator. Nexus properly honors Illustrator defined characteristics of the color dieline as a spot color (that appears as 100% cyan) and overprints.

We always replace whatever dieline file the customer has placed with our known good dieline file from our CAD people. Been burned too many times by customers quietly making minor "improvements" to the die file that of course does not magically fit the cutting die.

 

[prepressguru]

Hey Point

We are working with dielines the same way in the native application. Select stroke overprint. But it would be better to have an automated step which would take the dieline colour and overprint. Not a huge time save but could be if we forget to overprint a dieline or say a line in the artwork.

p

 

[pressdisk]

And it needs to be defined as a spot colour in Illustrator.

 

[pcmodem]

You can't tell a color to Overprint by default using the Raster part of Nexus.

I believe you can when using the Vector part or the PDF part. You create a trapping pair and make dieline a technical ink.