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Question

Spot Colors - Limitation Resolved In CC?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
August 18, 2021
3 replies
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Has the 27 spot color limitation been resolved on the latest Adobe CC versions? In the past anything over 27 colors would automatically be assigned CMYK values and not hold.

Print and prepress

rob day

Community Expert

Missed this post, but I’m not seeing the old limitation in InDesign 2020 or the latest AcrobatPro (the Dov link is from 2009). This InDesign file has 2340 Pantone Spots, and if I choose Separations in the Print Output dialog all the plates are listed:

The spot plates also export to a PDF/X-4, although the PDF with all 2340 spots crashes, if I try to show AcrobatPro’s Output Preview. Here’s 90 spots:

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Did you try Overprint preview or hit Print to get the separations?

Both InDesign an Illustrator give warnings and Acrobat shows 28 spot colors in the Output preview, but converts one to CMYK.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

Thanks, I had cancelled the separation print, if I let it print the extra plates are indeed blank. You would think Object Inspector would show the extra swatches as process, but all 90 inspect as ColorSpace: Separation, PANTONE.

There does seem to be a kludgy workaround from InDesign. I was able to Distill postscript separations in 2 batches and combine them in Acrobat to get more than 27 plates—I had to turn off the CMYK plates before saving the .ps file, so the text is on a spot black plate. This separated PDF has 51 plates, with the composite color on page 1:

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/d29d3ebc-2a94-4c49-765e-c0859dea6544

A rare usage for more than 27 spots could be high end screen printing. Richard Estes made screen prints with 100 + separations in the 70s—this show at the Portland Art Museum is amazing.

https://www.portlandmuseum.org/urbanlandscapes

Thanks Rob for trying this.

It would be useful to have support for more than 27 spot colors.

For the reason Dov gave (simulating them on devices that have more inks in addition to CMYK) and the high end example from Richard Estes that you gave, screenprinting artwork with even 128 colors. (thanks for the link to the exhibition)

With Dove gone, maybe Leonard Rosenthal @lrosenth can comment on why this limitation is still there.

Bob_Hallam

Legend

Hmmm, This seems a reasonable limitation to me. For what reason would require more than 27?

ICC programmer and developer, Photographer, artist and color management expert, Print standards and process expert.

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

To create a catalogue of spot colors?

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

BUT would that hypothetical catalogue with 27+ spot (special) colours actually be printed on a press with 27+ special colour units on it?

Of course it could be fed through a press with 3 specials loaded 10 times, but that seems unlikely?

However, maybe erica40687420 is working for Pantone

SO many designers forget that a real "spot colour" = a special colour on press. IMO, if that’s not what's happening and the "spots" used will me made out of CMYK process colours - then its better the user take control of that by working in the correct CMYK colourspace and using CMYK mixes to replace the desired "spots".

I hope this helps
neil barstow, colourmanagement net :: adobe forum volunteer
google me "neil barstow colourmanagement" for lots of free articles on colour management
[please only use the blue reply button at the top of the page, this maintains the original thread title and chronological order of posts]

kglad

Community Expert

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