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Random Spot Colors - Convert to CMYK

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:21 pm
by Liv
I am converting an illustrator to pdf. I would like to keep Pantone Coated spot colors, and change spot colors to Pantone Coated. But my issue is sometimes the customer files are sent with a random named spots, and I would like to convert them to CMYK.
seperations.png
seperations.png (4.92 KiB) Viewed 7813 times

Re: Random Spot Colors - Convert to CMYK

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 9:21 pm
by abailescollins
Hi Liv
Would this be the case for any non-Pantone color?
ie anything without 'Pantone' in the name?

Do you get dielines or emboss/deboss or 'double-hit' or anything like that as separation names?

Or brand names like Coca Cola Red, of Fred's Blue...

Re: Random Spot Colors - Convert to CMYK

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 9:31 pm
by Liv
Yes this would be for any none pantone named swatch. I would like to convert those to CMYK.
Thanks!

Re: Random Spot Colors - Convert to CMYK

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2021 9:25 am
by LasseThid
I did a flow in Switch that does a similar task.
This is the action list I use.

Perhaps it can help you as well?

Re: Random Spot Colors - Convert to CMYK

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:17 am
by bens
LasseThid that Action List will convert all spot colours because a check does not change the selection.

If you want to only convert spot colours that are not in a specific PANTONE library, you can use "Select spot color" and set it to "Select Spot Color by PANTONE color library".

If you want to select any non-PANTONE colour you could combine a bunch of "Select spot color" actions using the OR operator, then NOT to select everything else. But it's probably easier to take advantage of the fact that PANTONE colour names all start with "PANTONE":

Select spot color by regular expression PANTONE.*
NOT
Convert to CMYK

Re: Random Spot Colors - Convert to CMYK

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:28 pm
by Liv
I wish I understood regex better. How would you write that? Thanks for your help!

Re: Random Spot Colors - Convert to CMYK

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2021 11:21 am
by Terkelsen
You just write exactly as Ben suggest :-)

The regular expression to use is:

PANTONE.*

This will select any color which name starts with PANTONE

Re: Random Spot Colors - Convert to CMYK

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2021 2:23 pm
by LasseThid
Thanks for the information Ben!

I noticed that I have accidentally created an Pantone Color with Lab as Alternate color space, that's why it worked as intended.. :oops:

It's been a while since I did that flow and it was only for testing purposes.

This works as intended:
Skärmavbild 2021-02-03 kl. 14.30.53.png
Skärmavbild 2021-02-03 kl. 14.30.53.png (39.63 KiB) Viewed 7766 times

Re: Random Spot Colors - Convert to CMYK

Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2021 2:30 pm
by Liv
Thank you!