HOW TO: Generating Shade Swatches (Color Stepped with Black) in InDesign

[Pariah Burke]

Every time I present the following InDesign tip at conferences, Adobe User Groups, or in corporate on-site training classes, people go bonkers for it. That was the case at Portland State University last night, so I thought I'd share the tip here on the forums. The video is from my weekly InDesign Tip of the Week video series on YouTube.

[rob day]

Hi Pariah, thanks for posting the video.

It might be worth noting that there is no color management in InDesign for spot color tints or mixed inks, so the screen soft proof could be considerably less reliable than a process color soft proof where there are RGB and CMYK color profiles handling the preview. A mixed ink using 2 spot colors (not black) could be really tricky because the overprint of the two colors could change on press depending on the conditions.

So it's a cool technique as long as you are not depending on precise color

[Srishti Bali]

Hi Pariah,

Thanks for sharing this.

Regards,

Srishti

[Pariah Burke]

My pleasure! I hope you find it useful.