question form an indy novice

[peace flaps]

if you get sent a job in indesign with placed eps images (or any for that matter i suppose), can you tell what colours are used on the linked file without opening the original file in photoshop/illy etc.?

[almaink]

By placed do you mean embedded? And are you talking about Pantone colors? If the file is embedded and not CMYK or RGB the colors should be in the swatches pallet. If it's CMYK or RGB you won't see anything there. You could also try using the swatches pallet's flyout to select any unlisted colors. If the file is linked open it in Illustrator. There are a few scripts that will check eps files for things like fonts and colors as well.
I think the application Flightcheck does this to, although it's been years since I've used it.

[ratintrap]

I'm an InDesign novice too but here's how you do it with photos in InDesign 2.0.

First you need to open the Links pallet under Window, then activate the frame that contains the photo in question, click on the arrow at the upper right of the Links pallet and go to Link Information. The color space information is listed in the Link Information. You can scroll through the images in the document by hitting the next button.

Here are some screenshots:





-Rat

P.S. While I was typing this I see that Alma answered the EPS part of this question, I couldn't seem figure that part out myself so that is good.

[T]

Could try Separation Preview and turn colors on and off to see what is affected.

[EyeTech]

Try separation preview (as previous T said) and position your cursor over the image - that should read out the CMYK values.

[jimking]

Ditto to all above. You could also run the preflight =File-preflight.