InDesign Prepress Questions

[standard]

situation: I am prepping a 2-color document. black + a pantone.

two questions:

1. If I want to have white text on a pantone colored square, is there any difference between me picking the color of that text to be "paper" or "white" in the swatch palette? My guess is that I should choose paper, because if i chose white, i would have to set it to overprint, and somehow that seems goofy to me, as I would be overprinting a "color" that isn't actually "there".

2. I have a placed PDF in the indesign document that is black and a *different* pantone color than the one I'm going to be using. on the export>output>ink manager, i selected the undesired color and made it an "ink alias" for the correct pantone. this LOOKS right on the output PDF, but I want someone to assure me that it's the CORRECT way to do it. (or if that is something that maybe I don't need to do and let the printhouse take care of it?)

thank you community members. dare i say friends?

[matthewthirteen]

1. White and Paper should be pretty much the same thing, but don't set it to overprint. I've been screwed before because someone has turned 1 white logo out of 10 to overprint so it doesn't show up and wasn't caught.

2. I would think it's fine if there's no screen or wierdness going on in the swatch, but usually to be on the safe side i try to make things consistent down the board.

Hope that helps.

[Unitus]

why not change the color in the pdf to avoid any problems?

[Unitus]

and yes, white or paper will do the same thing. both will knock-out of the spot color.

[standard]

why not change the color in the pdf to avoid any problems?

I could do that, but I am delivering this as a pseudo-"template" for the client (it's a college thing - interns taking over). So I was looking into this color-replacement thing within InDesign so changing colors in the future is as close to a "one-click" solution as possible (they change the pantone spot color for each issue of this newsletter thing).

thanks for paper/white answers.

[caliche]

can you open the PDF in Illustrator, change to the correct color and save it down as an AI or PDF. Shouldn't take but a second.

[Charles T. Duck]

InDesign has a Separations palette that works really nice to check that everything separates correctly. And change that PDF to .ai .

[caliche]

Yeah. You should be fine Tom. I just still preflight stuff and make sure everything is built in the most straightforward way possible so something goofy doesn't happen.

[matthewthirteen]

InDesign has a Separations palette that works really nice to check that everything separates correctly. And change that PDF to .ai .

Seconded. The seperations box is the equal of seeing your file in a printers rip...one of the best additions ever.

[caliche]

I have a similar related question. A lot of times I will have to pick up files or old ads to update or rework them. In some cases, the person who worked on the file before has assigned a lot of spot colors that aren't even being used or a spot color needs to change in the document. It seems like about 60% of the time I can't delete the spot colors in the swatches palette, even if they aren't being used. I had one printer kick back a job because their rip was somehow picking up a pantone swatch that wasn't being used and I checked EVERYTHING. (Ended up being handled through the ink manager.) Anyone know how to make a swatch delete if you aren't using it when it doesn't want to go?

I also was thinking about Tom's job. If the students will be changing the color and then pulling it into the same document,will they have a similar issue?