spot colors??????

[Sandrailgraphics.com]

For some reason no matter what I do I cannot get my printer to print spot colors through cs2. I have tried making color swatches that are
%100 c,m,y or k and %0 all the others and my printer still prints a full spectrum of all to produce the colors. Also is there a way of making a gradient with spot colors?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Shovelhead]

Desktop printer???

Inkjet????

 

[WB]

are you talking about a solvent printer?

are you using a RIP or printing directly through CS2?

 

[bob]

I assume the you're using some sort of RIP.

How are your rendering intents set? If you want to print spot colors then you should set your rendering intents to 'Spot', or 'Saturation' if 'Spot' isn't an option. This should circumvent any color correction associated with all of the other flavors of rendering intent.

I routinely keep all of my rendering intents set to 'Spot' except for bitmaps, which is set to 'Perceptual'. That way, except for bitmaps, what I specify is pretty much what I get.

 

[ENTDesign]

Which Adobe program are you using?

Are you saying that if you make a filled shape with color set at 100%C 0%M 0%Y 0%B your printer is not printing it out as cyan only?

Spot color swatches in Illustrator or Photoshop are selected from the Pantone libraries. The spot colors will still print out on an inkjet in CMYK (or the 6 or 8 color version depending on your printers ink set), because that is how these printers print. How true the color is depends on whether the chosen spot color is within the color gamut of the device and color space used.

The only way to print a spot color as a spot color is to use a printing or screen press with the ink formulated as that spot color.

With Illustrator, I have had better color matching on my printer by converting the spot color swatch to CMYK before printing, but I don't know if that will help you.

 

[Fred Weiss]

To print spot colors to your PC-60, you will probably need to use your FlexiSign to do it. Flexi has the capability to "map" spot colors such as are used by Roland, Summa and Gerber thermal printers. Once mapped, then Flexi's Production Manager will ask for each spot color cartridge as it needs to print them. At least that's how it works with my Gerber Edge.

I know Illustrator CS2 has spot color assigning capability but I don't think it has anyway to communicate that to your Roland.

To those responders who may wonder as to how I know what software and hardware Sandrailgraphics is using, I simply clicked on his name and "View Public Profile". He lists the following:

Plotters & Printers:
Roland pc-60
master xy380p

Signmaking & Graphics Software:
flexi 7.6, adobe illustrator cs2

 

[Sandrailgraphics.com]

Thats what I was afraid of. I love designing in cs2 and pretty much cant stand the features of flexi, also when I export from cs2 to flexi it flattens the image the quality is terrible (if even printable).
So does anyone have anyone know of a plugin or setting I can use at all for cs2. and how about photoshop elements? I have this already... can I print spots from that?
Thanks

 

[Fred Weiss]

The first thing you need to understand is that spot colors are really only practical with vector objects on single color bitmaps ... so Photoshop Elements won't do you any good for most things because it is a bitmap editor.

You would do well to reconsider your FlexiSign (assuming it is the Pro version). If you can get past the poor screen presentation, and read up on the spot color mapping feature, it is the best solution to your requirements. There is good reasons behind the fact that it costs more and is also the most popular of the true signmaking applications.

 

[OldPaint]

i just posted to another to get ARTS & LETTERS 7.0 its one of the things it does well..is spot color...http://www.arts-letters.com/

 

[WYLDGFI]

I know with my PS Rip It has PMS Spot color matching built in. It attempts to match the PMS numbered chips in the CMYK printing I do. Im within 95% on spot color matching. The files come primarily through Illustrator CS2. The colors, are the Named PMS colors and thats how my rip interperts the colors. What you might be able to do is create a list of your OWN PMS chart, and adjust the CMYK or RGB values to match the PMS #'s closely. That may be a good solution for you. Its time consuming, basically eyeballing your values in but worth the effort if you do a lot of PMS or spot color matching.