Using Multichannel Photoshop Files In Illustrator

Question

I am currently working on a packaging design where we are going to be using the old-school technique of swapping one of the process colours for a spot colour on press. This because we only have 6 colours available on press and I need 3 of them to be Pantone colours in order for the non-photographic parts of the design to print correctly and colour match the rest of the packaging in the range. In this particular case I will be swapping Process Magenta for Pantone Rhodamine Red.

I've changed the photographic elements of the design in Photoshop to Multichannel and changed the magenta channel to Pantone Rhodamine Red and saved as a .psd file

When I come place this in Illustrator I get a message saying "Unsupported colour model or depth..." Saving as DCS 2.0 will allow me to import the file, but just about all the advice I am reading here and in other places on the web are saying that DCS 2.0 is an outdated file format and I should avoid using it.

So, how exactly should I go about creating artwork for a design where I will be replacing Magenta with Pantone Rhodamine Red? Is using DCS 2.0 files still acceptable in this case and if so which particular variant should I use to ensure that everything outputs correctly.

Please don't suggest doing all the Pantone Rhodamine Red work in Magenta and then swapping the colours on press. This job is going to be printed in China and I won't be able to attend the press to ensure that the ink substitution has been made, so I need the separations to be identified in the correct colours so there is as little chance for confusion and error as possible.

Ton Frederiks · Accepted Answer

Why not use a Rhodamine spot channel in your CMYK .psd file.

Cut the contents of the Magenta channel and paste it into the spot channel.

I did a little test with multichannel DCS, but that did not separate correctly from Illustrator (empty plates).

The one with the spot channel(s) did come out right, but you should make sure that they don't output the empty Magenta plate.

Mario Arizmendi · Answer

What you describe is what I do every day in my workflow, so my advice, doesn't use Multichannel and DCS.

1. Open ur photo in CMYK mode and do all the prepress adjustments u need to do
2. Go to channels and duplicate the magenta channel and convert it to a spot channel assign Pantone Rhodamine Red

3. Go to Layers/New adjustment layer/ Channel mixer, this must be on top of all the layers you have

4. In the properties select the magenta output channel and change the value from 100% to 0%

5. Save as .psd and place this into your illustrator document as linked file (keep the CMYK mode)

You may ask your printer provider what kind of file they need to generate the final plates to print, a High Quality Print pdf file or a .ps file (pre-separated file) should work, modern rips can process this with no problem.

If they do not tell you I suggest sending 2 files as follows

1. A copy as .pdf file (Press Quality)

2. A copy as .ai file (With all text converted to outlines) even send all the linked files, if you have Illustrator recent versión you can use File/Package to generate a folder with all elements needed.

See a picture attached of the photoshop file described

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