Host based separations from Illustrator?

[N.Robinson]

Hi guys, I'm new here and I've been trying to find the answer to this for a while, so I'm sorry if it's a stupid question.

Previously I've only designed stuff for one color shirts, however I've just done a poster that I need to send to be printed in 3 colors.

The file had been made correctly in Illustrator with 3 spot colors, but I've been asked to supply separations. I thought to get separations I need to produce a pdf of host based separations from the print menu, as described here:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Illu...bc5f-64c7.html

The issue is that you can no longer do this with OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard), as described here:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/509/cpsid_50981.html

Have I missed something completely stupid? Can I not just supply the printer with a PDF-X that they can generate in RIP separations from?

Thanks for your help!

[B-DROID]

Yeah, you missed it in the second to last sentence on the second link. You want to print to a Post Script file rather than pdf. The .PS file can then be run through distiller or opened with preview as a multipage document.

[N.Robinson]

Thanks for the reply! I've solved the problem now. Printing to PS rather than pdf wasn't quite the issue (although worth noting).

The issue was that Snow Leopard doesn't allow Acrobat to install the Adobe PDF printer. Without this, the only PPD available was "Device Independent," which wouldn't allow me to select Separations in the output—the output options were greyed out.

The solution was to download/install the Acrobat 9 PPD, from here: Error "The Save as PDF options in the Printer dialog are not supported" | Create PDF | InDesign, Illustrator | Mac OS 10.6 or later
And yes, this link was found on the page I previously posted, so I did slightly overlook this!
It seems ridiculous that Apple would remove Adobe's Print to PDF if they can't offer the same functions!