Displaying overprinting opaque inks in Illustrator / PDF

[adrianr]

I am trying to create a pdf with showing an opaque gold ink separation (which is overprinting a dark brown background) in Illustrator CS4.

Is there an alternative to Esko's ink manager where you can define inks as opaque so they display as opaque. I want to display my traps on the pdf with overprint preview turned on but I need to see my gold as a bright gold not an overprinting dark gold, I hope this makes sense.

My work-around is to turn the gold overprint off to create the PDF however this is not ideal if left turned off.

Acrobats Ink manager allows me to define my inks and print sequence but this does not change the screen view.

Any thoughts would be great thanks.

Adrian

 

[spider]

Printing gold that can be a nightmare, but the best results I've found in the past.
Was to print yellow underneath.
Something like, when you try to do a black solid, you always print with a blue screen underneath the black

 

[adrianr]

I can't run any colour under the gold, as the customer checks the pdf for separations.

 

[spider]

oh.... In that case, the only one option you've got.
Is to reverse it out of the brown and drop the gold in ?
You've done it with a blue

 

[frailer]

If you have PitStop Pro, you can Export a base PDF without the Gold; then Export another PDF of the Gold-only. Knock back the opacity of the Gold using Inspector Panel, then Place the Gold PDF in the Base PDF, using that functionality in Pitstop. Your "translucent" Gold will show you placement and Trap.
Just a thought, but only with PitStop. Only for proofing purposes, obviously.

 

[pcmodem]

Is the gold going to be printed at the same time as the other colors? If so, you are going to have the brown from behind mix with the gold. If you are going to print the other colors first, let it dry and then come back and print the gold you should be fine. If the gold is actually a Foil, then this would be best.

Why not just have the gold knockout the brown and trap the two colors?

 

[leonardr]

I am trying to create a pdf with showing an opaque gold ink separation (which is overprinting a dark brown background) in Illustrator CS4.

Good luck!

The Adobe imaging model - as used by our authoring products and also exposed in the PDF file format - does not support metallic inks nor does it support ink solidity/opacity. This is a known problem/issue especially in the packaging industry where such inks are used commonly.

I am working with the ICC, the ISO and others to come up with a solution for the future...in fact, we just met this past week and believe we have a working proposal to take to the various standards bodies. If all goes well, we hope to have a standard in place by 2012 after which products supporting it should begin to appear.


Leonard Rosenthol
Adobe Systems

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Sounds great!

 

[rich apollo]

Is there a reason why you couldn't simply set the gold to knockout? It would print and display correctly.

 

[spider]

why can you do this to the Blue ?.......but you can not do this to the gold ?
what's the reason you knockout the blue from the brown

 

[Stephen Marsh]

why can you do this to the Blue ?.......but you can not do this to the gold ?
what's the reason you knock out the blue from the brown

Spider, it is my guess that the person soft-proofing these files is savvy enough to know that the gold should not knock out the underlying inks and that it is opaque and probably printing last in the ink sequence - while the blue is printing earlier and the ink is transparent and thus requires a knock-out and trapping.


Regards,

Stephen Marsh

 

[adrianr]

Hi All,

Thanks all for the relpies, sorry for not replying sooner I thought I received email notification for replies but obviously not!

Yes the client is soft proofing these and we have a 'single pdf' workflow, therefore the same PDF get approved that is the print tool. Therefore I can't have two pdfs one thats correct for colour and the other thats correct for separation. The gold is not gripped/trapped and just overprints (like a foil gold) where the other colours trap. Esko lets you define ink separations that are opaque and provides a pdf that looks correct and prints correct, I am looking for an alternative. I hope I'm making sense ?

 

[pcmodem]

Why do you need color under the gold? If trapped correctly you wouldn't need color under the gold.

 

[adrianr]

simply because the mis-registration error is higher with metalic foil blocking station than a normal colour, so the trap/grip would have to be larger plus the foil is opaque to cover the inks without any show-thru.

 

[adrianr]

See attached pic of Esko's ink manager window. This lets you define ink properties /print sequence. Unfortunately I only have a demo version !