overprint/prepress indesign question

[standard]

this is sort of a dumb question (have i asked it before?? i forget)

i want to drop a spot color over a black and white photo (imagine blue note covers) in a 2 color document. it seems like there is a few ways to achieve the look, but i want to make sure i'm doing it the best way.



option #1: drop a colored box over the photo and set the box to "overprint" - but that would of course, put the color over the black ink... but black always prints last, right? so this would not work?

option #2: set the photo to overprint over a regular colored box... except there is no "overprint" option for photos for me (it's greyed out for me.. is that normal or because of the way i saved the file?)

option #3: select the photo and set the fill to it to what you want... which changes the white part of the photo to the color and leaves the black black... this looks good on screen but a recent job i did that way i was not happy with. where the grayscale of the photo and the color butted up it looked sort of yucky... it did not appear to overlap.

option #4: use multiply mode for the top object over the bottom object, which i understood to be a no-no for prepress... or would saving it as an X1/a pdf just flatten it and make it fine?

option #5: tint the graphic in illustrator instead, and drop THAT in the document (but of course, then it's all the same questions in illustrator instead of indesign)

thnx. tom.

[andydiesel]

so you are bootlegging Blue Note covers now?

[dennyschmickle]

Option #2 sounds right. But appears not to be available to you.

[standard]

hmm... i just checked my file... it is just a grayscale PSD.

i clicked on the psd in indesign and overprint fill was greyed out.

but if i fill the psd with the spot color (as i did above.. .option #3)... i just noticed that the overfill box is not grey anymore.... is that the secret? fill it and check overfill? maybe that was my mistake... i did one but not the other.

[Hero Design Studio]

why is it saved as a psd and not a tif? Or am I missing something?

[standard]

no reason. tif doesn't seem to offer any different features/options, does it?

[andydiesel]

why no call the print shop handling the job and ask them how they like to get a file like that?

[Hero Design Studio]

no reason. tif doesn't seem to offer any different features/options, does it?

I just thought that was the standard since a psd is meant to be a working file, not an output file. I dont have any reasons why, I just have always known that to be the way. However, I am no expert.

I do believe the tif gives you more options with selecting a colors, and such, but I don't know that for sure since I have never used a psd file in that way. And I think a tif would be a much smaller file size than a psd.

[standard]

print shop - i don't know who it is yet for this job, so i am trying to find a "best practice" approach

psd/tif - my experience (which isn't too varied, so maybe it's not true across the board) tells me they act pretty much the same. if the psd is flattened, then it's fine. if it's not flattened, it gets flattened when making the final pdf. same w/ AIs vs EPSs.

[Hero Design Studio]

psd/tif - my experience (which isn't too varied, so maybe it's not true across the board) tells me they act pretty much the same. if the psd is flattened, then it's fine. if it's not flattened, it gets flattened when making the final pdf. same w/ AIs vs EPSs.

yeh I was thinking that was the case - but curious since I just never use psds in that way so I have no clue
So yeh, we are all now dumber for listening to me talk about nothing