Merge CMY into K

[DCurry]

Does anyone know of a way in Nexus to merge the CMY plates into the K plate?

My scenario involves a PDF with some CMY gray matter that really needs to print on the K plate, and for some reason nothing I do in Pitstop will change this stuff, even converting the entire page to gray. Very weird.

My workflow involves sending JDF from Preps. I was hopeful I could alias the inks printing from Preps, but apparently you can't do that with process inks into other process inks.

[Joe]

Pitstop V. 10 update 3 should be able to remap the separations to the black.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

Making them grayscale in Pitstop doesn't work, Dan? That is odd. Are you changing the output intent?

[Joe]

Making them grayscale in Pitstop doesn't work, Dan? That is odd. Are you changing the output intent?

I run across PDFs like this every now and then that no matter what you do they still display in all colors but when I output they only come out in the black. I think it is an Acrobat issue.

[andyfest]

Does anyone know of a way in Nexus to merge the CMY plates into the K plate?

My scenario involves a PDF with some CMY gray matter that really needs to print on the K plate, and for some reason nothing I do in Pitstop will change this stuff, even converting the entire page to gray. Very weird.

My workflow involves sending JDF from Preps. I was hopeful I could alias the inks printing from Preps, but apparently you can't do that with process inks into other process inks.

If you are outputting 1 bits from nexus, you could merge them all into the K tiff using DotSpy.

[DCurry]

No, Pitstop doesn't do the trick no matter what I try. It's not version 10 - probably 8 or 9. Not only does it display wrong, but it rips wrong, too. I'm making sure to strip out all ICC profiles, too, as that can cause weirdness sometimes.

The Dotspy trick is a good idea - can you point me in the right direction? I've only used it to look at the ripped files, not actually edit them.

I'm shocked that there's not a way to tell Nexus to do this in the first place - even really old rips like PS/M could do it easily.

[andyfest]

I'll check into it in the am Dan. I believe you put a dupe of all of the applicable tiffs into one folder, drop into DotSpy and under one of the menus (Edit?), there is an option to merge the tiffs into one. I'll let you know for sure tomorrow.

[DigiCorn]

Does anyone know of a way in Nexus to merge the CMY plates into the K plate?

My scenario involves a PDF with some CMY gray matter that really needs to print on the K plate, and for some reason nothing I do in Pitstop will change this stuff, even converting the entire page to gray. Very weird.

My workflow involves sending JDF from Preps. I was hopeful I could alias the inks printing from Preps, but apparently you can't do that with process inks into other process inks.

Don't know Nexus, but Rampage has a "Multi-Burn" option that lets you do this. You'd have to create a phone K sep on the CMY portion to get it to work right - it won't merge on a sep that doesn't exist.

[frailer]

FWIW, which may be nothing, I always use Preflight>Fixups>Convert to Gray in Acrobat. Seems to work when PitStop and other tricks fail. Maybe do a bespoke Optimise reSave beforehand.    :undecided:  Could shake some stuff out that's tripping it up.

[Greg_Firestone]

 Hey Dan,

Would you be able to post the file or a sample? I'd like to see if my software can fix it.

Greg

[Lammy]

Don't know Nexus, but Rampage has a "Multi-Burn" option that lets you do this. You'd have to create a phone K sep on the CMY portion to get it to work right - it won't merge on a sep that doesn't exist.

The better way in Rampage is just to use a profile that is set to grayscale for the color space. I forget exactly where you set this up since it's been quite a while since I've been in front of a Rampage system.

Either way, doesn't do the guy any good if he's running Nexus now does it.  :undecided:

[DigiCorn]

Don't know Nexus, but Rampage has a "Multi-Burn" option that lets you do this. You'd have to create a phone K sep on the CMY portion to get it to work right - it won't merge on a sep that doesn't exist.

The better way in Rampage is just to use a profile that is set to grayscale for the color space. I forget exactly where you set this up since it's been quite a while since I've been in front of a Rampage system.

Either way, doesn't do the guy any good if he's running Nexus now does it.  :undecided:

I misread your issue. I thought it was a 4-color job. Yes, in the OUTPUT tab of Rampage, you can convert all to grayscale. I have a special queue dedicated to it.

[andyfest]

No, Pitstop doesn't do the trick no matter what I try. It's not version 10 - probably 8 or 9. Not only does it display wrong, but it rips wrong, too. I'm making sure to strip out all ICC profiles, too, as that can cause weirdness sometimes.

The Dotspy trick is a good idea - can you point me in the right direction? I've only used it to look at the ripped files, not actually edit them.

I'm shocked that there's not a way to tell Nexus to do this in the first place - even really old rips like PS/M could do it easily.

Sorry Dan - forgot to check - way too busy this week. I'll leave a note for myself for Monday. Must be getting old... 

[DCurry]

That's okay - I haven't had a chance to get back to this job anyway.

My boss said that there is a way to merge the channels in the Nexus rip, but she doesn't like to do that because she wants the file to be right so if we have to re-process it sometime it will be correct. I agree with this only partially - in my mind, if you set up a good workflow to convert and/or merge crap like this, you just always use it and save yourself some headaches. Especially considering this is a book printer and deal with high page counts and it gets pretty tedious checking stuff out with Pitstop.

Greg - as soon as I get back to the job I'll try to get you a page of it to mess with.

[abc]

Hi Dan
Can you post or send me the file, would like to take a look in Pitstop, which functionality did you try it with and what version do you have?