Spot color gradient suddenly performing differntly - HELP PLEASE!

[aliciab24292643]

Hello, I have a file that all of the sudden when attempting to print, the spot color gradients aren't showing up in the print preview, or printing. Whats weird is that I already printed this same file months ago, and the spot color gradients printed fine as expected. I need to reprint them because the opacity needed to be adjusted and the project got scrapped for a bit. Now the project is back on so I opened the file, adjusted the opacity and attemped to print again, but those spot gradients just wont show up. 

Its basically a two color design. Black and pink. For both colors there are solid spot colors and gradient spot colors. Months ago the solids and gradients printed fine when only the spot color options were selected to print. In fact because I had changed everything in the file to spot colors, the process color options werent even selectable when in the print preview box. Now all of the sudden the process colors are back and those gradients will only print when I select the process colors. For instance, before I just chose the black spot to print and it printed both the solids and gradients at the same time, like I expect and I am used to. Now when only the black spot is selected, it only prints the solids. And the gradients will only print when using the process options. 

Did something change in an update? I need these solids and gradients to print on the same film (screen printer here). Please see photos attached to see what I mean. In the image with the gradient edit points shown, all the black dots are spot color black and all the white dots are spot color white. There are no process colors in the file at all yet when I go to print Illustrator says there are. I even tried changing the white dots to a really light grey and even light blue, same results. They will only print as process colors. 

They are complex gradients, but it worked before and now it wont. And I am running out of time. Can someone please help? What changed in the last 5 months? Please help!

[Ton Frederiks]

Maybe (as a workaround) you can Rasterize the Freeform gradients as greyscale and colorize them again with the spot color?

[aliciab24292643]

I suppose I could try that, but any idea why this is happening? I am going to have to try to see if I can get ahold of Adobe about this because something isnt right. Is it possible trashing and reinstalling the app could help? 

I really do not want to rasterize anything. I feel like the first time I went to print it today, the first time, it was normal, but I cancelled that and changed the opacity on a spot color, then went to print it again and all the gradients will only print as process colors. 

[Ton Frederiks]

I have not heard of this happening before, but I have seen other strange behaviour of Free Form gradients.

Before reinstalling, I would first try things like restarting your machine and resetting preferences:

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/setting-preferences.html

[Mike_Gondek]

Sounds like user error as the screenshot you sent are not what someone would send if they were proficient with working with spot colors. Thanks for trying but we need to see color channel names. Use windows > Separations preview to find where the process colors are.   If you need help show us that artwork with all channel on, and then solo the visibility of the color channels, and we then will have a chance at helping you.

[aliciab24292643]

What do you mean its not what someone proficient with spot colors would send? How else do you create a free form gradient to get the effect in the photo? I am sorry if I am misunderstanding you here, but how can I acheive that gradient more proficiently? I would love to know because it is a labor intensive gradient, im working on a 2018 MBP running Sonoma 14.4.1 which is the latest I beleive. 

I am self taught in Illustrator so it wouldnt surprise me if I am doing something wrong, but again it worked before and now wasn't. And I didnt change anything other than the opacity on a solid spot color in a different layer. So it really makes no sense other than a bug. 

The good news is that I ran an update and now all files are miraculously working fine, like they were before. So sounds like it was a bug afterall and not an error on my part. I am curious to learn a better way to produce these freeform gradients. Oh and the full image is attached, but not a shot of the layers/channels. The solid greys you see are black spot colors with reduced transparency. The eyes are the black to white gradients, with varying trasparencly reductions. There is a solid pink is at full opacity as well as pink to white gradients with transparency reductions, on the nose and cheeks. It is an illustration of one of those creepy clear masks. 

I will dig into the separations preview to find out where the hidden process colors are, but turning them off in the print preview is working for now. If you could explain a little more what you meant about proficiency, I would appreciate it. I am always interested learning/improving.