Duotone with Transparency?

[Cory]

I've got a 2 Color Duotone placed into Illustrator 10, on top of the duotone in illustrator is a white box set to 70% transparency..

how can I get this document saved so it will be honored as a 2 color job in the RIP?

If I save it as an EPS without embedding the duotone, the small box just turns white...If I embed the image, Illustrator converts it to RGB.

i'm going in circles here...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

[T-Rex]

Are you saving it for sure as PostScript Level 3 compatible? Level 2 would certainly balk at that.

Did you try to flatten transparency of that area (under the Object menu)?

[nayrb]

from what i understand transparency just doesn't play nice with anything other than cmyk.

i was having a similar problem with a letterhead that had a black gradient ontop of a spot color and never really got it right.

i would appreciate any comments on this matter as well.

[Lammy]

If it's a true duotone, kill the white box and reduce the image in PS. It's the only way to retain the spot colors.

[cari]

transparency CAN play nice with Duotones... However not in all circumstances ... It depends on which application/file format you are using.

Which version of Illustrator are you using Cory?

If in CS it can work... Here's what I just tested
Duotone (with layer mask) saved as Photoshop PDF [from Photoshop], placed (with link) into Illustrator. Added 70% opaque white box over top, then printed to Adobe PDF using Press Quality Adobe PDF settings and checked separations:
All plates are there... that is ONLY the 2 spot plates, no process colour plates are generated...

It won't work if you try and embed the image as Illustrator would then have to cope with spot/transparency issues, and it doesn't handle that well -- maybe a future release will have similar support to InDesign cs -- [ wishful thinking on my part ;-) ]

[ricnic]

i've run across the same situation, and usually saving the file as an illustrator file and outputting directly from AI solves that.
Problem occurs when you try to save as an .eps or .pdf and place another file (like InDesign) for outputting, right?

[mpreston]

Given that InDesign understands the native application files from Illustrator, wouldn't it make sense to import them into InDesign natively, then output to your device?
MP

[garmp]

I have to agree with nayrb. Transparencies will print as cmyk. The only way that I've found around it is to save back to AI 8 and then correct it by using percentages of the color. But this isn't always effective either.

[T-Rex]

The problem with EPS or PostScript handling transparency and spot colors is that the latest PostScript level 3 is not capable of handling it. Which is why Adobe is getting InDesign, Acrobat and Illustrator to handle their files natively. Until the next version of PostScript comes out (vesrion 3.5, 4.0?) if it does, we have to work with native PSD and AI files in the other apps to handle it well.

[Lammy]

Be afraid. Be very afraid.