Photoshop/Illustrator help: please!

[El Salsero Gringo]

My turn to cast the yarrow stones and humbly beseech the wise men of this community for help:

I have a jpeg file that's a corporate logo. It involves two colours, let's say yellow and black.

I need to include the logo in a file that's being printed with two inks, black and a spot yellow.

How can I covert the (RGB) jpeg file into Adobe Illustrator and specifiy the pantone reference for the second colour so that when it's later set in (say) XPress it doesn't trigger a full CMYK separation for the file?

If it's any help I can convert it to "indexed colour" mode in Photoshop, and specifiy a custom colour in the colour table, selecting the correct pantone reference. But no way can I find to export that so that bringing it into Illustrator keeps it as a spot colour.

The autotrace feature in Illustrator (or 'convert selection to path' option in Photoshop) isn't faithful enough to the original logo to be any use. Nor do I have the skill to manually trace around the logo with the pen tool.

Can anyone help?

[azande]

First of all bear in mind that I haven't had anything to do with Photoshop for the past couple of years but from Photoshop 5 it should not be too difficult to convert an image to spot color without having to import it in Illustrator.
If you can decently separate the two colors by just selecting them and creating alpha channels you can then create the two spot colors and fill the alpha channels with them.
You also have to save the image in DCS format.

If the yellow color is "superimposed" on the black (I'm talking here about how the logo looks like) I would also set the trapping, usually to .216 points.
To set the trapping you need to convert the document to CMYK temporarily, after that you can convert your file to grayscale, since there is no color information to be imaged in the primary channels, and changing mode will reduce the file size.

Hope it helps.

[El Salsero Gringo]

Is DCS a format that will "keep" the spot-colour format? Everything else I've tried it goes back to CMYK.

Thanks

-A

ps. I've sorted it temporarily by using the process yellow separation as my 'other' colour and discarding the cyan and magenta outputs. Then I can use photoshop in full CMYK mode etc etc.

[azande]

Yes, DCS stands for Desktop Color Separation, DCS 2.0 supports the primary colours (CMYK) and additional channel colours, but make sure is the 2.0 version you are using, the 1.0 only supports CMYK separation.

[LMC]

oblig. & inevitable

<<<< streaks through thread >>>>

[El Salsero Gringo]

Originally Posted by LMC

oblig. & inevitable

<<<< streaks through thread >>>>

You know, LMC, I can't tell you how my heart leapt when I saw the latest contribution to this thread was from you. "Aha," I thought, "LMC is going to astonish us all and turn out to be a total expert in digital pre-press solutions. Finally we are going to discover that LMC has a purpose!"

The disappointment has hit me hard.

[LMC]

I'm touched that someone noticed (it is the third time I've streaked through a technical thread to add interest... I'm not even going to speculate what kind of interest)

[El Salsero Gringo]

Originally Posted by LMC

I'm touched that someone noticed (it is the third time I've streaked through a technical thread to add interest... I'm not even going to speculate what kind of interest)

Well, by the third time, we're all sitting here with our cameras out. I'm surprised you haven't noticed. Or perhaps you have?

[LMC]

If you're putting the photos up for sale then don't give up the day job.

Oh, and my skintone is pantone ref 155 or thereabouts (well, it is on my screen ).

You probably already came across this website - http://www.seoconsultants.com/css/colors/conversion/ - which gives spot colour/pantone conversions. It's probably no good to you whatsoever, as it's perfectly evident that I don't understand what the thread's about, but it seemed marginally relevant...

[ducasi]

Isn't it nice we've now got our own we forum to ask and answer these sorts of questions... :non-existant-cosy-smiley:

Can't help this particular time though... Although I occasionally use both programs, I'm very much an amateur.

[El Salsero Gringo]

Originally Posted by LMC

If you're putting the photos up for sale then don't give up the day job.

No, they're going to be second prize in a competition.

(First prize is a nude pic of Clive Long with a boa constrictor.)

[Clive Long]

Originally Posted by El Salsero Gringo

No, they're going to be second prize in a competition.

(First prize is a nude pic of Clive Long with a boa constrictor.)

That wasn't a boa constrictor you saw in that picture

(Thought I would throw that in before CJ got his hands on this thread)

Clive Long