Corel: Embed Spot Colors in Bitmap for PDF ????

[54warrior]

I outsource all of my print jobs to a local shop. They (of course) use Illustrator and then ONYX. He recently upgraded to Epson Printers and has been very succesful with Spot Colors. I have had zero issues exporting a PDF from corel and getting the Spots to transfer thru in the PDF for him to open in Illustrator when it is in VECTOR format. What has been a problem though are gradient fills generated in Corel Draw. They just don't seem to transfer the spots over thru the PDF into Illustrator. Or they cause an error. It can be as simple as a 2-color gradient.

Is there a way to convert the artwork to a Bitmap and have the Spot Colors Preserved in the Bitmap when exported to PDF??? We have attempted this with no luck so far.

(also, using the latest/current versions of ALL software involved in the process)

 

[Bobby H]

Spot colors are not good to use in a gradient fill, not unless the gradient is merely varying percentage tints of one single spot color. Mixing different spot colors in a gradient fill or mixing spot colors and CMYK/RGB colors in a gradient fill will lead to unpredictable, unreliable results. It's also not a good idea to use spot colors in any fills or effects using transparency.

Pixel-based images aren't going to retain real spot color fills unless you have a separate alpha channel defined using such a fill.

 

[autoexebat]

I've been doing this for years , From my own experience you can't put a spot color into a BMP and still have the spot color as it turns into a RGB or CMYK . You have to keep it into vector format and export to pdf , eps ..

 

[Saturn]

You should be able to apply (colorize) a true spot color on a true grayscale tiff in Illustrator no problem. It won't do a gradient fade from one color to another color, but obviously it would give that illusion of fading to white if the image is a gradient to begin with.

You can verify the file is set up properly by opening it in Acrobat and checking the Output Preview—Spot Plates—in the Use Print Production options to see that there's a spot color plate after the 4 process color plates, and that turning it off does in fact affect the element you think it does.

This is also a great way to build a white channel behind raster art for printing on clear, holo, etc.

Here's a PDF example I just ran through Onyx on my Epson to triple check myself. Depending on RIP and RIP settings though, you'd obviously want to do some testing.

 

[Saturn]

And sorry, my brain's on Illustrator, so I glazed over the fact it needs to be in Corel...

 

[Bobby H]

In CorelDRAW it's possible to take a grayscale pixel-based image and apply Pantone spot colors to it by going to the Bitmaps menu>Mode>Duotone. In that dialog box one can choose Monotone, Duotone, Tritone or Quadtone and use Pantone spot colors for the colors. Tone curves can be edited too.