Topic awaiting preservation: 3-color printing? (Page 1 of 1)

i'm working on some cd packaging and will also be doing the on-disc art which is 3-color. any thoughts on the best method/software progression/etc. to do this with? i've done some 2-color work before that i just grayscaled and duotoned in photoshop but i'm not sure if that would be the best way to approach this or not. thanks.

chris


KAIROSinteractive

It all depends what the artwork needs to look like as far as software you should use.
Vector? = Illustrator
Pixel? = Photoshop

And Photoshop is not limited to monotone, duotone anymore for spot colors. Spot channels came along in version 5.0 and you can accomplish some really sweet stuff using just them. It all depends what your vision is for the artwork though.

Care to elaborate?

thanks for the info jeni. ok, elaboration. we've got some cool shots of the artist in this really cool drainage thing (that i'm rather sure we were tresspassing on but the photos are worth it) leaning up against a rusty column for the cover. i want to use a close-up pic of the rust for the on-disc art and have the artist's name in white or another contrasting color over it/next to it. that help? possibly duotone the bg and use a third spot color for the text? using ps 5.5 btw. appreciate the help

chris


KAIROSinteractive

That helps, thanks. Totally do-able.
There's a little tutorial here that will help you get a basic knowledge of spot channels. They're basically an alpha channel. What is black is 100% ink and so on. So, keeping that in mind, know that anywhere that you have ink in that spot channel will overprint everything else. If you want solid Red type for example, you'd fill it in the spot channel, but in the CMYK composite, you'd need to make sure that it is white exactly where the type is, otherwise IT WILL OVERPRINT. If you have any questions or need any help along the way, I work with these on a regular basis, drop me a line or post here or ICQ. Good luck!

awesome, that helps immensely. i'm finishing up the cover art now (this is actually for a single so its just a sleeve, doing full jewel box packaging in another month or two) and should be doing the on-disc art this weekend as we're trying to get it out early next week. the tute looks pretty straightforward, i may shoot you an e-mail to double-check the file tho. thanks a bunch, i appreciate it

chris


KAIROSinteractive