The Secret to Finding the Right Spot Colors FAST.
If you needed to find the closest Spot Color equivalents to a group of CMYK Colors, could you complete this task faster than is humanly possible?
In this short “Quick Tips” tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Jeff Witchel demonstrates a simple way to have Illustrator do all the work for you in minutes.
See more videos at LayersMagazine.com.
Great tip! Very useful.
Thanks Ron!
Glad you liked it.
Best,
Jeff
Curious, did you charge your client for this or was it inclusin=ve in your previous project fee?
Great question Nina.
Considering it was part of a phone conversation about the project, and it only took a couple of minutes, I guess you could say it was included.
This is a great quick tip; However this should probably only be done by the designer. If you open a document that a client has created in another color space and they (or yourself) did not have their color settings set correctly (this happens more than I would like), you could get bad results. I would always say never assume the designer or your output provider is a color expert and just use the Pantones’ to design with in the first place. If you haven’t been given specifics you should always back up with a visual reference before giving them to your client unless you have a color technician on staff who color calibrates every printer, & monitor, and you are using appropriate light sources for viewing.
Hi Lawrence,
Thanks for the comments. My tips ARE for designers.
If you listen to the video again, you’ll see that I said the closest PMS colors to a CMYK breakdowns. Wouldn’t the results alway be the same?
Am I missing something in your comment?
Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Best,
Jeff
Yes let me explain this. I get artwork from all over the world to reproduce. I will get 90% of my files that are set to defaults or US prepress. The designers generally will give me a 4 color process number that they have been given, perhaps from photoshop usage or other designers, perhaps even a colorbridge (HKS E.NCS prcocess….ect) that represents the process of an output spot (generally will say CORP SPOT RED for the color name or something stupid like that). If they are working outside the US the chances of them using SWOP standards diminishes, even here in the US that is going away. So say I open this file from a gentleman from Germany who has not set his system up correctly and in fact he was given the four color numbers for a Euroscale color, I open it up on my system and see, oh I need to limit the colors down to spots… and Do the recolor. The colors will be way off from the original artists intent since Euroscale Has a much denser cyan than swop does. 99.999% of the time when designers are designing something their intent for output is the colorspace they use locally in their region irreguardless off what they have set their Illustrators color settings to.
This is why I am Agreeing with you that it should only be used by the original designer, but also they should always verify with a quick visual check before giving it to their clients.
As an example I always tell people to select any color, then turn their monitors brightness to full and then ask if the color they previously perceived is still the same.. which is not the case.
I think what Lawrence means is that the color the client perceives as the color (s)he chose (…) depends on how good his monitor is calibrated.
Let’s exaggerate and say his brightness is full open so his colors should be blown out, (s)he then choses a color and perceives it as the desired color, then they are converted to (according to the CMYK values) Pantones. When (s)he looks up the pantones in the book, the are as much as certain different then what (s)he saw on screen, right?
Or am I missing something?
Regards,
Ron
In a nutshell Ron, I am also saying that if a client supplies you with their logo using process color to make sure you both are using the same color space before converting it to a spot. It is very common I get cmyk data with no profile assigned so it it necessary for me to call the client and ask them to read me off their color settings so I can assign the process data a profile before converting to a relative spot.
Example:
Swop represents Pantone+ 072C Blue as 100c/97m/3y/3k
Eurocoated represents the color as 100c/90m/11y/2k
if you where given Eurocated numbers and you are working in swop v2 the recolor tool will re assign the blue as Pantone+ 7687C
and if you did this in reverse applied the swop numbers in a euroscale profile you would end up with Pantone+ 2746C
this would be a considerable difference in hue and be more than a Delta E value of 11.2 which is very noticeably different to the human Eye.
Hi Lawrence,
This particular client alway prints offset in the US, so it was never an issue. The question never had to be asked.
As a freelancer, I always insist on knowing who the printer is and how the piece will be printed, before I start anything.
Jeff
Jeff,
In this complex world of color processing I think it would have been better to place at least notes and place it in context in your article. (As I understand that in these kind of quick-tips its not realistic to explain everything about the color world, using profiles, calibration, etc. etc.)
I myself have been doing this work a while (not so long but still) but still have to take some time to try to grasp what Lawrence says – and I am a person who really wants to know the ins-and-outs..
As your goal with it is to educate people I feel that if you present it like this without any context the chances are (most probable) that you don’t reach the goal of what you wanted them to learn and they’ll take it as: ‘to convert any CMYK color to it’s Pantone equivalent, use this’. (of course it makes Illustrator look very good but that should not be the, only, goal, right?
)
Please don’t take any offense – I still really like your tip and thank you for the effort you put into it to present it
P.S.
I wish that someone would explain the Re-Color panel and it’s many many uses really good in a course. As it is now it’s too complex to grasp by itself I think.
Hi Ron,
No problem!
I have a longer Recolor Artwork video in the works, so stay tuned.
Best,
Jef
Hi Ron,
Stay tuned!
Next week’s video will have a lot more about Recolor Artwork, AKA, Live Color.
Best,
Jeff