Adobe INDESIGN 2.0 - USING HELP Help Manual page 415

Adobe InDesign Help
Using Help | Contents
To reproduce color and continuous-tone images, printers usually separate artwork into
four plates—one plate for each of the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black portions of the
image. When inked with the appropriate color and printed in register with one another,
these colors combine to reproduce the original artwork. The process of dividing the image
into two or more colors is called color separating, and the films from which the plates are
created are called the separations.
Composite (left) and separations (right)
Outputting to CMYK
When you're preparing an image to be printed, artwork is separated into CMYK output
with the process colors cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black (K). (The letter K is
used for black to avoid confusion, because B might also stand for blue.)
Outputting spot colors
You can use custom inks, called spot colors, in addition to, or in place of, process colors. For
example, instead of using the four process colors to reproduce artwork consisting of black
text and bluish-green line drawings, you could use two spot colors—one of black, and one
representing the exact shade of green. In addition, you can use spot color inks to produce
colors not reproducible by CMYK inks, such as fluorescent and metallic colors.
You can use the Color palette to display the CMYK equivalent of a spot color.
To view the process color equivalents of a spot color:
1 Select the spot color in the Swatches palette.
2 Choose CMYK in the Color palette menu.
The CMYK equivalent values for the spot color are displayed in the Color palette.
You can also hold the cursor over the spot color in the Swatches palette. The formula
for the color will appear in the tool tip.
Outputting registration colors
If you want to print a color on all plates in the printing process, including spot color plates,
you can apply registration color to the objects. For composite output, these objects will
print as C 100, M 100, Y 100, and K 100. For separations, these objects will print as 100% on
each plate.
Registration color is typically used for crop marks and trim marks. (See
marks" on page 420.)
Using Help | Contents
| Index
| Index
Producing Color Separations
Back 415
"Specifying printer's
Back 415