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You would be surprised of the layer effects and styles you can do with Illustrator. If you give it a shot I would warn you of a few things. Avoid pantone to pantone gradients...they will neutralize in the middle. Pick most critical spot color (which you can adjust in the rip) and a process...

You don't need to measure any individual colors. Search in the onyx/sample/pantone folder for Pantone Coated Solid. Print it. Pick the closest matching color. Use swatchbooks to refine your color. I like to use the LCH method. We have the pantone chart printed and on the wall for anytime...

I guess the main question I have is what are these images/layouts you are creating? If you are designing it all, is it necessary to use both photoshop and Illy? There are half baked methods to achieve what you are trying to do...such as point sampling the color in job editor, and altering it...

Illustrator will not change your image quality. You will have to be thoughtful about the resolution during file creation. Avoid enlarging your placed image once in Illustrator. If you enlarge your placed image 200% in Illustrator...the resolution will be half of your original...and so on. Same...

Better bone up on Illustrator! There are no "magic wands" to create good clean vector art for Onyx. The problem with autotracing and generating work paths in Photoshop is there can be a trillion vector points...I don't think most cutters would like that. Photoshop really can't do it all...and...

The rip will not honor a photoshop "pantone" because it is pixels. Your spot color from illustrator is being altered by Onyx spot color replacement. This is why it's bad to place a pixel based image using a pantone over the same pantone in illustrator...they won't match because of your rip...

The dirt and dust getting tracked in is what I would be concerned about. Be careful when sweeping and blowing air around. We have a coating of dust on our production machine after only a day or two of sitting. I wipe down all the surfaces the carriage...(and more importantly) the printheads will...

It's wrong because the rip turns it into printer dots or screens...not square pixels. Keeping it as vector data allows you to tweak all instances of an independent pantone or spot color. This is important if transparency or tints of a color are used. If you have a layout with vector objects of...

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Why everyone with the .eps files?! Can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE kill postscript files? They are bloated, and can do strange things in transparency effects. I can understand if you are working in corel...or quark...but if you are working in exclusively in adobe apps...PDF! It also depends on...

Experienced designers and experienced printers are quite a different breed.

Also, indesign may handle vector objects correctly...but not effects. It rasterizes them, and embeds them. We've found this can lead to color shifts, as well as messy production files.

Obviously the techniques to break up artifacts are dependent on the print technology you are using. We print dye sub, so there are specific areas we target due to known issues. Note about the schmutz layer...I use a blank layer and do a noise filter with Gaussian blur. (only 1 or 2%) It's...

Why is this pixel stretching software being used? All of these same steps can be done in photoshop. Upsampling can be achieved, and you can keep everything as native .psd or .psb (the compression is the best balance of quality and size reduction) Don't use jpegs...don't use tifs, and for the...

It may be a process control issue. I've had to regiment every facet of my process to alleviate impacts of printing in a dirty, uncontrolled environment. My machine takes $3000 heads (16 of 'em!!!) We have sawdust, lint, dust, fabric fibers constantly floating about. Also you mentioned "light"...

The "resizing" in Illustrator is a half hearted approach at building lean production files. You can do it, but if you are working the file at all in illustrator, it will have to re-render the preview at each step. Not a big deal unless it is a huge raster image...wink wink. The better approach...

It is possible. After you load your image, go to the last tab in the spot colors (visual) and use the eyedropper with the star. Also you'll want to click on "images" instead of vector. I still would never use this, but we print over 10 ft. wide and what can look like a small artifact can turn...

If it's raster based...photoshop is your tool. Caldera has global color corrections, but I don't suggest using it. Color replace works through ONYX on raster images, again, I advise against using it. The spot color replace tool in any rip is made for vector spot colors, if used with raster...

A good profile is key, but most of us have done the trial and error method. I've found most newer rips allow lightness, hue, and chroma variables. I usually get a hit on the first try. Hard to get the flavor right through cmyk for me. We have a managed color workflow, but still have to use...

Pure hues What RIP are you using? Some of them have the ability to only print pure hues, negating additional channels from the build which can muddy up a yellow in a heartbeat. The problem I have with most of these posts, is that all cmyk inks are different. I cringe when I see a "simple"...