Do you know any software that can Color Separate?

[polites]

Guys do you know any software that can Color Separate PDFs correctly? for windows based.

PS
With trial softwares would be nice :P

Acrobat Professional version 6.
Tryout(30 days)
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/tryout.html

[bctshari]

I guess it should depend on if you are going to spot color or process color. I have not used Acrobat 6 like one of your previous responses, but in our shop(we do spot color), we create a postscript file, import that into CorelDraw as a postscript interpreted file then change the colors to spot color. The problems this can create are what if the original file is not a vector image. ie. there are color bitmaps embedded....trouble, what if the fonts are not included or license restricted, what if the wrong postscipt driver was used to create the .pdf, what if there are screens involved. If you convert the screened images to grayscale, the percentages will end up different. There can be all sorts of trouble.

Just some things to think about...

[j_bessant]

I see the logic in what you are doing in Corel .... but then again I do not.

You are in effect, performing a double job on the file.

If you have a chance to test drive Acrobat 6 (30-day Windows trial now available) then you can see how powerful the colour output features are within Acrobat 6 Professional.

ARTS CrackerJack can colour separate and Quite Revelaing can 'reveal' colour seps.

Jon

[bctshari]

:wink: Jon, the shop that I work for is a very different animal than most and that is why we have to take the extra steps. I work for a wholesale printshop that bases it's profit on grouping jobs together. So we do not drop our received files directly into our Rip. The one thing that these extra steps has taught me, is how to deal with problems that come about from files submitted from the average desktop publisher. My job is almost all problem solving....and getting the submitted files to work with our "system". The program we use for order entry is also tied in to our plating program as well as billing. It is very limited as to what type of files it will recognize, .tif and .eps only. On top of those limitations, it is Dos based. You really need to see it at work to understand why the software is continued to be used, and why it saves so much time. We have become very efficient at figuring out how to make most files work into our format. So there is my very short explaination.

Take care

[richsweeney]

Are you talking about spot colors? I am still working on trying to get that one down, have not used A6 yet, but normally what I do is use enfoucus to get the colors seperated out. If you talking 4 color process that is much easier. I still use Enfocus and make sure that the color preferences are changed to US prepress defaults or photshop 5, then convert the file with the action function to convert to 4 color process. With this method you can convert from any program to print decent 4 color. Even MS Power Point.

[cari]

Acrobat 6 Professional - Print output supports Spot and Process colour separations.

[-WorldSpawn-]

You can open PDFs natively in CorelDraw (12 does it best, but some PDFs output with Acrobat 6 will not come in) and output separations from there.

[j_bessant]

I don't want to be negative - but try and avoid using third party applications to parse a PDF file .... I would stick to Acrobat 6 or a plug-in (or a fully fledged workflow) to open and print PDFs.

Jon