Is there a way to convert anything that is 100%CMYK to a spot color?

[cbishop01]

The issue i'm having is that the artwork is made in photoshop and is 400% coverage. 100%CMYK, is there a way when exporthing the artwork to have it merge with a  spot color?

[Eugene Tyson]

Is it a big deal to open in Photoshop and change it to the spot colour there?

https://planetphotoshop.com/working-with-spot-color-channels.html

[cbishop01]

I'm not well versed in Photoshop. I'll give this a shot to see if it works ok. thank you

[cbishop01]

It doesnt seem to work for me. I'm probably doing something wrong. when i make the background "rich black" it coevers everything with black.

[Eugene Tyson]

You don't need to make the background rich black in Photoshop.

Click the black square

Click Color Libraries

Select whichever colour you need

Import to InDEsign

Swatches panel

Ink Manager

Then pick your Ink Alias

[rob day]

Hi @cbishop01 , If you open the PSD and save it as a flattened Grayscale the black pixels in the grayscale will output to the CMYK black channel. If you then Direct Select the grayscale image, you can apply any spot or process color:

[Eugene Tyson]

Far simpler Rob - was thinking the same - but wanted to show the Ink Alias.. 

Thanks @rob day 

[cbishop01]

The issue i have when i do this is the other artwork in the PSd file. Its basic but i'd like to keep it as just 1 file rather than 2 if i can.

[cbishop01]

I got this to kind of work however when i change the color of the overlay it changes the look of the color.

[cbishop01]

This is the org art. all the black you see is 100%CMYK

[cbishop01]

Aside from going into the PSD file and altering every version of this art, i was hoping to be able to convert it inside of Indesign. it would be much faster taht way.

[Eugene Tyson]

That's a screengrab - can you supply a sample image please - and you can use dropbox or a file transfer service to show us the file. 

[cbishop01]

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2uo20d4jczy1foh/AADNAot9heSomfmL89_XA-C2a?dl=0 there's probable a very simple fix.

[rob day]

Hi @cbishop01 , The black background in your layered CMYK PSD is set to 100|100|100|100. Do you really want to print a Spot color—a separate separation plate with a custom ink on an offset press, or are you printing process CMYK and want to fix the 400% total ink problem?

[cbishop01]

Yes i'm just wanting to fix the problem. i was thinking if i convert the color to Spot i can have my rip convert it to any shade i would like. but Total ink is what i'm trying to fix

[rob day]

Also, if the issue is the 400% total ink, you can convert to RGB or Lab, then back to CMYK, and the total ink will be limited by the CMYK profile you use for the conversion—US Web Coated SWOP has a maximum of 300%.

You should be able to attach a PSD to your reply—look for Drag & drop or browse

[Luke Jennings3]

If all of the black is 100% 4C as you say, you can map it to a spot color or a rich black in Acrobat using a preflight profile, (see screen shot), for the destination color, choose "create as spot color". 

Have you considered using a gold spot color and two hits of black?

[cbishop01]

I am not good with acrobat at all.

[Eugene Tyson]

No time like the present!

[cbishop01]

I was ultimatly hoping there was a feature or script that could do this. as there are tons of art sent to me like this.

[Eugene Tyson]

The guys who have replied so far are good scripters. 

I don't know who else might advise - @m1b @Manan Joshi @Peter Kahrel 

Might have an idea..

[rob day]

I don’t think there is a way to automate a fix that keeps the layers without altering the image appearance.

The problem is editing in CMYK mode, which doesn’t put any limits on total ink—the background layer is at 400%. Ideally the art should have been created in RGB mode

You could flatten the images, convert to a large gamut RGB space (AdobeRGB, eciRGB), place the RGB files and let the CMYK conversion happen at export or output. In that case the total ink allowance would be limited by the destination CMYK space, which for most coated profiles is between 300% and 350%

[cbishop01]

thank you all for the replies. i'll just go into the psd files and fix them there. when i use acrobat it messes with some of the other art

[rob day]

when i use acrobat it messes with some of the other art

If you are trying to preserve the appearance, I don’t think there is an easy way to do it in CMYK mode. Here’s what I get if I replace the 400% background with a 265% rich black—the transition into the rich black is different:

Here’s flatten>convert to ProPhoto>convert to Coated GRACoL 2013:

[m1b]

Sorry @cbishop01 I'm not any help here. I cannot see any room for usefully scripting anything here because I can't see any one process that would solve this for multiple examples, unless they were each set up exactly the same.

The confounding factor is the use of "Hard Light" and "Overlay" transfer modes on the orange gradient layers in CMYK. In my opinion, this sort of job should be done in RGB (which plays well with transfer modes) and then flattened/exported to CMYK using a color profile that gives the appropriate total ink for the print method, or even manually using "Custom CMYK". But if the final background CMYK black would need to be consistent with other background blacks in the job, so you would need to take care of that.

- Mark

(Off topic: if I was setting up this artwork, I'd do it all in Illustrator, and make the honeycomb a pattern, and keep the document in RGB, and then export/rasterize to CMYK for the printing. Or even better, I'd re-jig the artwork so no transfer modes/transparency were needed and do the whole job in CMYK, with full control over the ink everywhere.)