need serious asap help on color seps with illustrator cs...

alright...

im printing my seps in black... screen printing.

i've got them printing in process color... over print in black... seperations (hotbased).. positve...

thats the configurment in the output panel.


however what prints out is not really seperated properly or something. i get grey objects... some objects are grey... some objects that need to be black arent black and some that dont need to be black are black. im not sure whats going on.

i gather its reading in percentages for some reason.

i basically need all the reds to be printed in black on one sheet...

all the blues be printed in black in one sheet

all the greens " " " "

etc. etc. you know seperated... but in black.
but its not doing it properly and im not sure whats up.

anyone know anything about this stuff and can help me out? thnx man.

Toppa G's said:

Do you have each separate color set up as a spot color as opposed to a CMYK or RGB mix? That's one possible reason you might not be getting the output you want. Also, check to see if there is a "Convert Spot to Process" box somewhere in the Print dialog that is checked. That's what I'm coming up with off the top of my head. Good luck!

Click to expand...

alright... ill be checking to see if each color is spot... is there a way that i can select all the colors and just click something so it will change it to its spot equivalent?.. makes it easier. thnx man.

yeah... there is a convert spot to process box. i basically want to leave this unchecked right? so i can have them come out as spots.... not cmyk.

Toppa G's said:

Yeah, leave the box unchecked. I know you can select all the similar colors by selecting one, then going to the select menu, select same fill color, and change them to spot colors that way, but I don't think you can make that kind of change for every color at once. I could be wrong though

Click to expand...

thnx man. yeah... i am seeing some as process. so thats why right? why im having this issue.

Toppa G's said:

Yeah, if it's process, it'll break down into the C, M, Y & K channels, and definitely won't print solids. So make sure to change it to a spot. Even if it's not the color you want to print it in, as long as it's a solid color you'll be good for printing the seps.

Click to expand...

thnx dude. im having to create new spot colors... but where can i select my new spot colors? i dont see that option?

thnx man it worked out!

know anything about how to do halftones in illustrator? thats my next issue.

any links or advice you can share on trapping? chokes and spreads?

okay say you have a six color job. the resulting seperations have a number of knockouts. i dont want the resulting image to be misaligned because of the colors not exactly touching each other in the knockout. so what im suppose to do is trap the bottom color... this is called a spread right? where the bottom color is yellow or lighter then the top and becomes fatter. the yellow is spread under the darker color thats to be placed on top. or is that a choke? because as i read it says that ones suppose to use a spread when a light color prints over a dark color and a choke when a dark color prints over a light color. but that yellow is becoming fatter so as to correct any misalignment... not having space show thru.
i hope you understand what im saying.

alright thats one issue... heres another.

that lighter color has knockouts... say its a circle and in the circle there is a knockout of text... because the top color or top sep has text on it and this will be blue or a darker color. that circle also needs to be trapped on the outer part of the circle because the top sep.. blue has text and a stroke around that goes around that yellow circle in blue. my issue is this.
you need to trap the yellow text... and the outer yellow circle... how do you do this both with illustrator without having to develop seperate files for the sep? or do you recommend makikng seperate seperation files for more colors? does illustrator take care of this easily? i have illustrator cs2.
man i hope im making sense. let me know if you need a graphic so that i can illustrate my issue.