Exporting using Magenta as placeholder for spot colour?

[jaronmader]

Hi!

I am collaborating on a large InDesign document- the final doc will be black and white + one Pantone. In the IDD file they are using magenta as a placeholder for the spot colour.

I am proofing submitted ads for the project lead in photoshop... basically making the ads greyscale and such. One advertiser has asked we make a certain word print in the Pantone, which is something we do for people, but it’s a flat jpeg. Cool.

Now I can think of a few sloppy solves for this, but my instinct was to make the ad greyscale in PS, then just add an alpha channel in 100% magenta in place of the Pantone- easy peezy.

On import into InDesign, however, I get the error that a spot colour can’t be named the same as a process colour.

So is the issue using the alpha channel for M? Should I just be exporting a CMYK from PS with the C and Y channels erased? I also tried renaming the magenta in photoshop with a plan to delete the dummy swatch and replace with real magenta once I was in InDesign but it seems that swatch info is set in stone.

The leads solution was to export the grey TIF then export the spot layer separately, and put them together in illustrator (!?) and export as an EPS but that sounds completely bats**t.

TL;DR

need to export a greyscale + spot image using magenta as a placeholder for the Spot, but InDesign doesn’t like it.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Why a potholder instead of a proper Spot Color anyway?

I get the error that a spot colour can’t be named the same as a process colour.

So is the issue using the alpha channel for M?

So you did create a Spot Channel, not just a »plain« Channel.

Please post a screenshot with the pertinent Panels visible.

In any case, if Magenta it has to be then it seems you should indeed use a CMYK image with the original grayscale in the black Channel.

[rob day · Accepted solution]

In the IDD file they are using magenta as a placeholder for the spot colour.

InDesign doesn't allow Spot colors that conflict with the CMYK process color names for good reason—in a separated workflow the plates would both be marked as Magenta, inviting confusion during press setup. You'll run into the same problem with Illustrator.

Also, InDesign also has no grayscale space, in a separated workflow placed grayscale objects are output to the CMYK black plate. The ID document can't really be Black + a spot color—the output or export will always be CMYK + Spot with the CMY plates blank.

I'm wondering if you are taking the spot color instructions too literally? The InDesign document you are collaborating on can't have a spot color named Magenta, so it would be important for you to find out what the doc‘s spot color is actually named and use it for your Photoshop spot channel‘s name.

[Test Screen Name]

In fact, there wouldn't be two plates, a process and spot magenta. The rules of PostScript and of PDF are: if a plate is called "Magenta" it goes on the process separation, and that's that, whatever boxes you might have ticked in design apps. So, really, any app which lets you create a "spot" plate with one of the four process names Cyan, Magenta, Yellow or Black (exactly that, one upper case character, not translated to other languages), is at fault unless it's intentionally giving you spot-like per-plate control of the process plate.

[Test Screen Name]

(PS: the plate names All and None are also magic and must not be used for spot plates. The names Red, Green and Blue could cause problems as they are colorants in DeviceRGB).

[rob day]

The names Red, Green and Blue could cause problems

You can use Red, Green and Blue.

[Test Screen Name]

I think you're probably OK in a CMYK workflow, as it knows they aren't colorants. If you were to send an RGB PDF, these would still probably be OK, because the final colour space is CMYKish... except in a blend space of RGB. I suspect one could come up with a situation where they don't work.

[rob day]

I suspect one could come up with a situation where they don't work.

I can't think of a way. Spot colors are by definition a custom ink printed from a separate plate, so when the output Color is to Separations, the process plates are always CMYK. You can't output a process Red plate, so there would never be a conflict with a spot color named Red.

[rob day]

I also wonder if the output from the OP's group collaboration is actually an attempt to output just the Process Black and Process Magenta plates, and then run a custom ink from the magenta plate. In that case any spot color(s) could be Aliased to the Magenta plate via InDesign’s Ink Manager, but then the name of the spots would not matter.

[jaronmader]

I believe we’re using this placeholder as they haven’t picked the colour, I expect its that or some printer shenanigans.

I‘m sure the issue is I’ve assigned an alpha channel rather than just a regular channel- understanding that it’s going to transfer to CMYK once it hits InDesign is also super helpful- I will test and come back to mark correct!

[rob day]

I believe we’re using this placeholder as they haven’t picked the colour, I expect its that or some printer shenanigans.

Any Spot Channel can be aliased to a different color over in InDesign—the only way to spec a Spot color in Photoshop is via a Spot Channel (which is different than an Alpha Channel), or a Duotone Ink.

So here I have a Spot Channel named MyTempSpot. Its color definition can be anything including 100% magenta—you just can't name it Magenta.

After placing the PSD, the spot color gets added to the Swatches panel and it can't be renamed because it is used in a Link

It can be converted to a process color via Ink Manger, which in this case moves it to the Magenta plate because I used 100% magenta as the channel color definition. Again this has nothing to do with the naming, and you can see the MyTempColor is no longer listed as a separate channel in Separations Preview

I can also add any Pantone swatch and Alias MyTempColor to the new swatch

[jaronmader]

Thanks for putting so much work into this! I used the Tempspot technique and ink Manager but they didn’t like the extra spot in their panel- so I ended up solving by using your other answer... I literally just cleared the cyan and yellow channels and flooded the appropriate area on the magenta Channel and imported it into InDesign as a CMYK TIF.

Thanks everyone!

[rob day]

I used the Tempspot technique and ink Manager but they didn’t like the extra spot in their panel

Did you ask what the name of their ID spot swatch is? It can't be Magenta.

If you name your Spot Channel exactly the same, they wont get an extra swatch when they place your file.

[jaronmader]

I have figured out the reason we want it in magenta is so wecan just reuse all the content from previous years without editing anything- and just tell the printer magenta = Pantone # and boom. It's a giant document so it makes sense, but there are some moments like this where its a bit bamboozling.

[rob day]

...we can just reuse all the content from previous years without editing anything- and just tell the printer magenta = Pantone # and boom.

That's exactly the reason for the Ink Manager and Alias feature.

They certainly can get it to work using a process plate (and it sounds like it's too late to alias), but CMYK is a color managed space so there will always be the danger of the values you spec on the magenta plate getting converted somewhere in the workflow because of mismatched color profiles. They would have to be careful that all of the CMYK files get saved with no embedded color profile.

With Ink Aliasing, there wouldn't be either a color management or naming problem, with the added benefit of the layout’s preview color being correct. The giant document could have any number of spot colors submitted, and at print time they could be all aliased to the chosen Pantone swatch. There would only be one spot plus black output.

Here there are 4 spot colors getting aliased to PANTONE 2212

The aliased output only has 1 spot color plus black