Polymer plate Ai file prep

Sounds like you had elements that had not been converted to spot colors. When you say “CMYK spot colour”, that really doesn’t matter. What’s important is that the color swatch is clicked on and made a spot color. It’s not enough to just have it as a swatch. When you click on the swatch, are you switching the Color Type from process to spot color?

It is possible that some of the stock images you had used multiple colors or multiple tints.

@Widmark- Hmm, I have never even seen a “Colour Type” setting/option in Illustrator. My colour palette default is CMYK but I’m not sure how to change the setting to spot colour from process. You’re right, my stock images were multi-layered/coloured, according to the plate maker. I just didn’t know what she was looking at to determine that there were multiple colours because what I saw, they weren’t. Oh, I need a mentor! :/

Pick up Gerald Lange’s book, Printing Digital Type On The Hand-operated Flatbed Cylinder Press.

File colors should be converted to Pantone spot color. The file can be CMYK, however the colors you use need to be spot color.

If the colors over print each other make sure you select overprint in the Atributes dialog box. Otherwise they will knock out of each other and then registration could be a challenge. You can always trap the colors if they don’t overprint using .25 line weight.

Since you have multiple colors and they overprint make sure you place crop marks on the file for registration of colors.

Keep your rule line weight to the minimum of .3, this will insure they do not wash out in the platemaking process.

If you use small type make sure the counters are open enough so they process correctly and don’t plug up during printing.

Type should be outlined. When sending files to Boxcar send an .eps file and a pdf for proof and zip both these up before uploading to their site.

My 2cents,

Casey
Inky Lips Press

I do prepress for a living, so I may be able to help you.

Regarding the spot color issue: In the swatches palette, you have to make sure the colors you are using are marked as spot colors. If the swatch has a small triangle in the bottom corner with a spot in it, it’s a spot color. If they’re not labeled this way, they’re composite colors and won’t separate properly. If you need to add new PANTONE swatches, you can do that by going to the flyout menu of the swatches palette, selecting Open Swatch Library, then Color Books, then either PANTONE Solid Coated or Uncoated. It won’t matter which. The only difference between them is whether the swatches are designed to emulate each particular PMS color as it would look on either coated or uncoated stock when printed 4-color process. The spot information is the same. You can make this easier on yourself by using the Remove Unused Color command in the flyout menu to remove any colors you’re not using and the Add Used Colors to make swatches for any colors you’re using that haven’t been added to the swatches palette. Make sure every item uses a PMS swatch. Everything one a particular plate has to have the same PMS color set to it.

As to the layers, I’d have to take a look at the original Illustrator file and the PDF file to know for certain what the problem there is. The PDF format is far simpler than the Illustrator one and sometimes converting an .ai file to .pdf will cause things to go wonky. That may be the issue. Or it may be a fundamental construction issue in the original file. Do you have any place you can post them online, like Dropbox or RapidShare?

Also check the file menu and make sure your “document color” is set to CMYK. If it’s set to RGB it will do odd things to your colors when you save and close the file.

Illustrator and Photoshop are very complex programs. Many of us have taught ourselves by simple trial and error. Today however there are tons of sites and videos to teach a new user these programs. Start there until you have a good general grasp of the program. Them more of this will make sense.

and not to complicate things, so if this makes no sense then ignore it, but colors do not have to be spots. Long before RIPs seperated spot colors properly or even before Illustrator supported spot colors we worked in solids of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow or Black.

Lammy, this is quite true, but strictly speaking, pure Cyan, Magenta Yellow and Black are spots in and of themselves.

Speaking of which (and using what Lammy said), Autumn, you may be able to fix the setup of your file by making the color used 100,0,0,0, 0,100,0,0, 0,0,100,0, or 0,0,0,100 rather than setting a PMS spot color. The color you used, 0,100,100,0, is a composite color of magenta and yellow. It won’t work as a standard spot color that will separate as a single plate. It will separate as two plates.

Thank you everyone, SO MUCH! :):)

I went back into Illustrator today & had a play around with it. I think I got it all figured out. “Think” being the operative word here. I sent a new file to my plate maker here in Australia & asked her to double check it for me to make sure I prepped it correctly. Fingers {and toes} crossed!

Thanks again! :)