Printing color separations from Illustrator.
Scenario: As a designer, you will be required to create color separation proofs to insure that your files are print-ready.
About color separations and separation proofs
On a commercial printing press, each color is printed using one ink on one printing plate. Each plate is created from a film negative which contain all of the images that will print in the specified ink color. Although these negatives are referred to as color separations, designers must make color separation proofs to vreify that the correct colors end up on the proper plates
How to print color separation proofs from an Ilustrator document:
Step 1. Set up the separation parameters.
- With the Illustrator document open, Choose File>Print....
- In the print dialogue box,
notice a list of options in the upper left side.
you will need to set up several of these, starting with Setup. - Click on the "Setup"
option.
- Click the button labeled
"Scale To Fit".
- Next, click
the Marks and Bleeds option (directly beneath "setup").
- Click the checkbox labeled All Printer's Marks. Notice the thubmnail preview at the bottom left. Because we check Scale to fit in the last step, the page image shrinks to allow the printer's marks to show up on the printed page.
- Next, select the option labeled Output.
- To the right of the label
"Mode:" , click and hold the mouse button on the default
setting (Composite ) to popup the other settings.
Select "Separations (Host-Based) " from the popup menu.
- Notice the ink colors listed below, with a small printer icons on their left.
- Click on a printer icon to remove it from a color. this will turn off the color so that it won't print.
In the example below, process cyan, process magenta, and process yellow are turned off. The two colors needed for the documen, process black and pantone 161 U are the only colors that will print.
