Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
LOL, so if you do all your art in PS then you send it to Illy to print, now if you do your art in Illy you send to PS to sep, lucky I know just a little bit to understand this stuff LOL. but know what you mean Dan I've been in that position waiting on a file in Illy to finish it's calculation's.
might look at the new Separation Studio 4. it separates vector work and all of the daunting steps you mentioned dissapear. Its saving me loads of time in just the underbase generating.