Recolor clipart for use in InDesign spot color layouts

[sauce]

I made a thread about this a month ago and no one could find the true answer. I googled for answers too with no results. I was really confused about why you can do it in Quark and even Publisher, but not in InDesign, Anyhow, here is a tutorial on how to recolor clipart for use in spot color layouts, all without flattening and keeping the vector data.

If you choose a WMF file I recommend doing the following...
A) Paste clipart in Publisher
B) Copy clipart from Publisher, this step seems to make the data import to Illustrator a lot cleaner

1) Paste clipart in Illustrator
2) Save as PDF
3) Open in Acrobat
4) Open Enfocus Pitstop, Show Inspector (Alt+Ctrl+I)
5) Select All (CTRL+A) in the file, to select all of the clipart
6) Color Tab --> Fill Color --> Spot Color
7) Choose your spot color, click OK, watch it get recolored!
8) Save PDF
9) Open PDF in Illustrator, note the correct color swatch
10) Save as AI
11) Import into InDesign
12) Rejoice

This is going to make my life a lot easier. I hope it helps you guys too.

[almaink]

That sounds strangely the same as what I told you to do in the first place.
I guess my New Jersey accent got in the way of the explanation.

[Pointyhat]

That's what Everyone told him to do

[prepress_brillance_43]

I dont understand. :twisted:

[sauce]

I didn't have PitStop at the time. Thanks for the help. Everyone else was telling me just to flatten as TIFF and drag-and-drop a swatch on to it.

[almaink]

You don't need PitStop it can all be done right in Illustrator.
1. Open WMF in Illustrator.
2. select color and change to spot.
3. Save as ai or eps or PDF.
4. Place into Indesign.
5. Rejoice.
8)

[prepress_brillance_43]

Now that I understand. :twisted:


publisher, psssht. What is this word you speak? :twisted:

[TimS]

Originally Posted by almaink

1. Open WMF in Illustrator.

Perhaps be careful with that one, I work on the PC a lot and find Illustrator's WMFs a bit unreliable (i've had line weights change and other oddities). I would bring the .wmf into corel draw (which handles wmf beautifully by the way), and then save as Illustrator, and so on as you describe.

[almaink]

I get RGB WMF all the time from windows feebs and have yet to have any issues with them, of course as always YMMV.

[sauce]

Originally Posted by TimS

Perhaps be careful with that one, I work on the PC a lot and find Illustrator's WMFs a bit unreliable (i've had line weights change and other oddities). I would bring the .wmf into corel draw (which handles wmf beautifully by the way), and then save as Illustrator, and so on as you describe.

That wasn't step 1, you retyped that line :\

If you read steps A) and B) I explain how to deal with that. Paste it in Publisher, copy it from Publisher, then paste it in Illustrator. I imagine Corel would work too since I hear so many good things about it but I don't have a copy to test.