detecting spot color

mwinker · Post by **mwinker** » Tue Oct 18, 2011 7:26 pm

I want to set up a component or an action of a preflight to give a warning if a particular spot color is NOT Present in the document. I can see where I can make it fail if it is present. I can also see where you can check for a required color set, but our spot color library is way too big to put in there. I can't seem to find an action or combination of actions to get this.

Thanks,

Mike

mwinker · Post by **mwinker** » Tue Oct 18, 2011 9:41 pm

FYI: I'm using Pitstop Pro 10 update 2. The action is to be used in PitstopServer with PowerSwitch in a flow.

dkelly · Post by **dkelly** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 5:29 pm

In Pitstop, create an Action that checks for the presence of a spot color by name. Have it report a Warning. In the Switch flow, if a job produces a Warning then the PDF contained the spot color.

You could use Apago PDFspy to detect the absence of a particular spot color in a PDF file.

---

Dwight Kelly

Apago, Inc.

dkelly@apago.com

mattbeals · Post by **mattbeals** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 7:45 am

How about something like this?

http://www.mattbeals.com/misc/Detect_if ... resent.zip

mwinker · Post by **mwinker** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:22 pm

Thanks Matt,

I just noticed your reply. Now, I must admit that I don't know how or where to put that file to use it. My programming side is in it's infancy. Does that go into a Pitstop Server action or configurator?

Thanks,

Mike

mattbeals · Post by **mattbeals** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:29 pm

Open the flow in Switch and you'll see some folders connected together. The connections have the logic to detect if there are colors named "PANTONE" in the PDF's or not. It's functional but by no means complete. Just copy those elements into your flow.

Test out the flow by itself and see how it works. You can always adapt it.

mwinker · Post by **mwinker** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 7:06 pm

So, When I open the zipped folder there's two files:

flow.xml and manifest.xml

When I go to import the flow it's not selectable (grayed) or importable

By the way this PowerSwitch 09 update 3 on a mac running 10.6

mattbeals · Post by **mattbeals** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 8:04 pm

You must be using Mac OS X's unzipping utility then. It should only extract the .sflow file. That's one of the troubles of Mac OS 's unzip utility; it goes too far.

An .sflow file (Switch Flow) is really just a .zip archive. The flow I created is for PowerSwitch 10, I'm not sure if it will work in 09.

Try this; create a folder called "spot flow" and move the two xml files into it. create a zip archive of "spot flow" and change the suffix from .zip to .sflow . Try importing the newly named spot flow.sflow into Switch. It might work. Then we'll see what kind of logic is lost when using Switch 09.

Switch 10 by the way is well worth the upgrade...

mwinker · Post by **mwinker** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 8:10 pm

Alright. I unzipped it on a PC first, then loaded it to PowerSwitch. Thanks. There are some differences that I'm guessing were attributable to the update. There was an error, something about icons. When I clicked on "condition with variables" it came up blank, but I pretty much got the idea looking at it as it previewed.

We are upgrading very soon. I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks,

Mike

bert_vr · Post by **bert_vr** » Wed Dec 14, 2011 8:52 am

I know this is a bit late notice...

If I remember correctly the action 'Select/check spot color' has changed in PitStop 10 update 3 exactly to check if the document doesn't contain a spot color.

bert

mwinker · Post by **mwinker** » Wed Dec 14, 2011 7:55 pm

Thanks Bert, I'll check it out. I'm still on update 2.