Thursday, May 28, 2009

Spot Color Separation using Adobe Photoshop

Somebody from Bluefame forum ask me to write tutorial about spot color separation. Actually, spot color separation works can't work perfectly on Photoshop... but we'll give it a try using channel.

These are the things you'll need:
-->Large, clear image without gradient, separation, and other effects

1.

Choose an image, use Magic Wand tool, uncheck the Contiguous and set tolerance to 20.


2.
Right Click on it and select Select Inverse


3.
Go to Channels window, and choose Save Selection as Channel.


4.
The selection will change into a channel in B/W color. Do this to the other colors.


5.
Each colors in their own channel, now it's time to split the channel, so the channel will change into an indvidual image. Click on the arrow at the corner of Channels window, and choose Split Channels.

6.
Discard the Red, Green, Blue channel, we'd never need those channel anymore. Now its time to change the resolution... choose Image> Image Size set the resolution to 300 and image size.
The images are ready to print on a transparency.

PS: If you do those step above you will have a smooth edge, if you use the color picker or color range you'll have jagged edge. So.... which one's better???