InDesign Master Page PMS Color Changes in PDF

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
March 9, 2018
2 replies
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I have PMS color swatch block on my InDesign master page in a document (with 6 total pages).

When I out put a pdf "High Quality Print" setting. 2 of the 6 times you see the block it is a different shade of the color?

It looks like those 2 pages are color managed to cmyk, by the look of the color. The other four pages look correct?

Does a pdf output color manage its page output to either cmyk or rgb?

This could explain it, except all six pages are in the same ID file and exported at the same time, and should all be the same in the document.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

TIA

palnudb

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer BobLevine

Use PDF/X-4

rob day

Community Expert

Do you have the PMS colors set as a Spot—you are not using ink manager to convert the spot to process?

If you have any transparency on the page the Overprint Setting in both ID and Acrobat will affect the spot color display, even when you export as PDF/X-4 as Bob suggests.

So here I have PANTONE Purple on a page with transparency and on a page without. In Acrobat Reader or Pro, make sure your Overprint preference is set to Always:

Here I have my Use Overprint Preview pref set to Never.

Set to Always.

A

asvbrianAuthor

Participating Frequently

OK so my colors are picked from the PMS color books they should be a spot.

I do not convert to process color my rip does that depending on the printer and material its going to.

I did figure out why my colors were different. 4 of the pages had placed Jpegs and 2 had pngs even though they were 100% with No transparency the colors shifted. so I guess is should stick to all jpgs for these lo res proofs. My print files are either RGB LZW TiFFS or PSDs.

Thank You all for your help!!!

palnudb

rob day

Community Expert

You can't use spot colors with jpegs or png images. To use a true spot color with an image you would have to use an extra Spot Channel and save in a format that supports Spot Channels:

Alternatively you can save flattened grayscales and apply a spot color in InDesign. Or you can use Pantone's Bridge Libraries which are process CMYK colors and could be applied to a CMYK JPEG, but not a PNG, which can't be CMYK.