Re: Colour separation

[Stewart C. Russell]

Ian Carr-de Avelon wrote:
> 
> How does everyone produce colour separation?

What are you needing -- full four-colour separation, or just a spot
colour?

The former is usally best left to your printer (though some places can
be a bit clueless about it). The latter I usually do by setting the spot
colour to be a pure process colour (usually Magenta) and having the
printer do it in-RIP. Ghostscript doesn't (yet) do in-RIP separation.

There was a neat little hack posted in comp.lang.postscript in the last
couple of weeks to do separations. You basically have to redefine
setcmykcolor to only output the colour you want.

Separations are tricky. There are so many variables, and so many
printer-specific horrors, that the generic approach that Unix takes
towards Postscript can be somewhat lacking. Spend some time talking to
whoever's printing your seps, and spend some money on samples.

If you are doing seps, don't forget the crop marks and alignment
bullseyes. The latter are useful even if you're doing CtP; gives the
printer something to check alignment with.

 Stewart