SPOT COLOR AND RIP TIP:
Have you ever set your art file up to print all spot colors, but your spot colors are not getting recognized?
Some RIPS are set to recognize certain pantone color makeup early on at development. I’ve experienced with some rips, you may need to change the new pantone color book swatches to older number system that your rip can recognize.
Double click on the problem color. More often today, it’s the newer pantone high number colors from the new Adobe color book swatch books if you are using them. NOTE: You can download the latest color books and update your adobe programs with the new Pantone color books from their website. All you have got do is register an account on Pantone.com and provide your pantone color book serial number on a new Patone swatch book. This will eliminate any Patone color issues with most programs.
These are new numbers that the older pantone books in your current program didn’t have.
Click on the color, (double click)to open the color book (color makeup). This is where you also change from a process color to a spot color. The colors below that...are for previewing in various color spaces of your file.
Couple things here.
1, Change the numbers of the COLOR BOOK preview of the RGB or CMYK or HBS, or however you have them. Change them to CMYK.
2, Once you do that, (change to cmyk) you will see that the numbers may also contain decimals such as 87.98. (Round that off to 98). The decimal cmyk color numbers would only be important if the rip is going to convert the number to CMYK output, but you are printing in spot. Therefore, the colors are only references for you. Red is red. Blue is blue. You don’t have to be concerned if it looks exactly like the pantone red or blue and your change should not be that impactful to recognize a color difference on your monitor anyways.
Be sure to label (name) the color the correct pantone color you really need so that the press team or ink mixer can create the correct color for you.
This applies to Photoshop file also. I often do separations and put in color numbers using the pantone color swatch and it never fails that some of my customers email me back to say that they cannot open the file due to a color matching error (Color book swatches cannot be found (or something similar to that). All I do here in photoshop is open the file back up, double click the colors and drag slightly off from the original numbers using the color picker and that works for them.
