thanks mattbeals (pm'd you)


ps - scrap that last bit about the the trial version - looks like the gaffer hasn't been checking her junk mail.
came straight through to my webmail address.

is there any way a pitstop preflight file can be used in acrobat? or does the pitstop app do more complex stuff than acrobat can manage?

been sent one to check some outwork, but can't seem to install the copy of pitstop (7) on a leapord mac.



and also, has anyone ever tried the trial version? I applied for it two days ago but heard nothing from them as yet.



thanks,
joe

Quote from: Tracy on February 16, 2010, 03:32:31 PMNot sure if I understand correctly but.. If they are both greyscale can you import into indesign select your image and select the spot color for each image and create a pdf?

had bad experiences doing that in the past- and i needed this to be used by some very less than technical people in the future. i'm gonna try the same thing in indesign next time i get a chance to though, just to make sure. cheers.

yeah, after playing about and finding my feet a little, i see what you mean.
went into a bit of a panic about it for nothing really, it all came back to me eventually lol. got the samples of the finshed job today and they were spot on (hehehe).


ta

UPDATE!


created a spot colour alpha channel and copied and pasted the black plate onto that - seems to look ok, apart from having a grey cast on the background of the black sep (but this is probably because i adjusted the brightness/contrast a bit before merging)

gonna have another look at it later when i get chance - please let me know if i'm doing it wrong

morning all

just opened up the files and done the above (merged the channels and deleted the ones i don't need anymore)


one question:
what colour mode should the files be in when i try and merge them?
should the green be a monotone/duotone? when i tried it, the black became green when merged into the green file.

excellent - sounds just what i'm looking to do. i'll have to check the attachment in the morning (safari can't download them on an ipod touch unfortunately)

be sure to be on hand in case google is able to spell the rest out for me lol




am i right in thinking you can apply a channel from another file? sure thats how i did stuff before layers came on the scene.

no, sorry - probably be better if was able to upload the logo rather than explaining it in text


started off with a cmyk tiff file, even though its 4colour it appears mainly as green and black.

so i opened up the file and deleted the Magenta and Cyan, leaving the Black and Yellow channels (which i want to serve as the black plate) and saved as a psd file.

then opened up the original again but deleted the Black and Yellow (which is to be the green plate) and saved as a psd file.



thats pretty much where i got to before i left on friday.




my plan was to merge the channels that remain (c&m = spot colour PMSgreen / k&y = black)
then merge the spot green psd file and the black psd file into one file - basically overlaying the black psd onto the green psd file.

this would then hopefully be able to save as a 2 spot colour pdf



both the psd files are greyscale at the minute if that matters.

no probs
still have original 4colour file in case there is a simpler method of doing this, but i'm sure i had results in the past with the spot colours ending up as a single pdf but i can't remember how.

the pitstop option is sounding good because its all pdf artwork that i'm supplied, and not usually in great condition. the application may be a great asset. just have to see which version they have got.

the first mac was a 7100 power pc (with a hardware card inside that switched from apple os to windoze because they still weren't confident about macs lol

this thread has made me daydream of the gear i first started with. started working in 95 on a pc with early pagmaker (4?) and corel draw. the people there had no idea how to get any sort of result from them (they had a book in which someone had scribbled down instructions on how to insert discs and how to open files etc which they referred to constantly) and the files were printed to a laserprinter then camered onto a photopolymer paper plate or sent out for making rubber letterpress plates. after a couple of months they invested some money into a mac and film setter at which point i started taking a bigger interest - so applied what i had already taught myself and became the go to guy for anything digital (the work was still mainly cutting and pasting paper on a lightable). they even boosted my YTS money from 45 to over 150 pounds! the work got easier as the machinery got upgraded and the stuff i knew after my 1st year at work they were teaching us at college on day release 4years later -still making us do camera film seps lol.

i've always loved the cut and thrust of getting stuff in and then getting it out no matter what i had to do to do it, but due to having to move to different companies after bad and very suspect management moves closed the them down for us, my role as pre-press guru has ended up working under someone who scolded me and a collegue for using the term 'vector graphic' ("humph, well i never heard of it before...") while i get on with the very demanding job of outputting pdf files after sending them back to the customer without being allowed to modify them in anyway to improve them. i swear if i wasn't so lazy i'd go find another trade.

thanks, thats an avenue i would never i have thought of on my own. pretty sure they will have a copy of pit stop there, i'd have to check (only started there a few weeks ago and only just got a chance to do some macwork a couple of days back). i'm gonna check around to see more about this pitstop app, heard tell of it before but never got to use it yet.



does your photoshop knowledge extend to being able to shed any light on why i couldn't merge the two remaining channels? the black and yellow channels that are the K plate shows a slight colour when viewed as layers. this is where i was up before i left and had me scratching my head!

thanks for the pitstop suggestion anyhow frailer, i'm looking forward to having a go with it, hope they have one

i don't have access to a copy of photoshop until i get bck to work but have just been wondering about a job i have to do.


there is a cmyk logo that i need to be a two spot colour logo. so far a i have two files, one containg the GREEN sep (which is a greyscale file made up up two channels after i deleted the other two) and the BLACK sep (same a s the green sep but with a bit of tweaks to the contrast). now i'm confident that these two will give a good enough result if output to litho plates, but need to cobine them to be able to proof to a customer as a pdf and also use to output from indesign for other items using just one file. this hopefully be a pdf based file.

any tips and guidence for this?

i was thinking along the lines of merging the remaining channels to a single spot colour, then combining those using calculations to save as a 2spot colour photoshop.pdf.
the background is white on both the files at the minute, does this mean i have to merge a single channel from one file to another file?



been many years since a tried any of this and photoshop seems to have moved stuff around lol.


thanks for any tips in advance!

a few weeks ago my mac went big time tits up. since then, quark xpress (8!) won't print to my rip/image setter.
when i look in the ppd manager nothing shopws up for it (although the standard 4,000,000 others do).
the ppd is for an AGFA Avantra.


has this type of thing happened to anyone else in the past?
help much appreciated.



(and before anyone says it, i DO use indesign these days but there are a shedload of jobs that are quark files and would be too time consuming to convert to indd)



thanks in advance

cheers guys

its not specifically barcodes that are the issue - the royal mail state they need certain text to be in an ocrb font in order to be read clearly at the sorting stage. the only difference between the fonts mentioned is that the "10 pitch" is smaller. the machine must read the text rather than a barcode. not having any experience with character reading hardware i was unsure if the smaller size would lead to difficulty when reading the text. probably wouldn't but it was worth checking.


on a side note - are there many UK people on here who do much involving the royal mail?if so, we should start a thread dedicated to the strife and awkwardness of doing work for them lol