I feel like i'm on prepress crazy pills

[standard]

OK... I am making a document for a client in Indesign 2. It is black plus a spot color (pantone uncoated). there is a grayscale TIF in there, too, which will be printed on the black ink plate. I made a X1A PDF and sent it to the printer. They said it was CMYK and wanted to charge the client more to print it 4 color.

I look at the file's metadata and see that, yeah, okay, it lists five plates. C, M, Y, K, pantone spot. But isn't it simple for these guys to simply toss out/don't use C, M, and Y if I tell them to ignore them? Is it not obvious to them that there is nothing on those plates except for (possibly) registration marks?

I swear I've done this plenty of times before and it's never been a problem, but now these guys are making me feel like a retard.

So my questions:

* Am I setting the PDF up incorrectly or what?
* Is there a way to remove the CMY in the ink manager? (I know I can turn them off by printing to PDF and making seps... should I just do that, o would it open up a new can of worms w/ trapping, etc?)

I feel like I'm right (or at least "okay") but these people keep going back to the client instead of me and are kind of making me look like a chump. Which, possibly, I am. I dunno. eh?

[MrBlonde7]

Prescription pills are no laughing matter, Thom.

[standard]

not helping

[Charles T. Duck]

PDFX1A will push the color space to CMYK. Industry standard, no pun.

Is trapping a big issue? PrePress folk (or the press operator) should be earning their keep by doing this regardless of format.

I would make another PDF with only the plates necessary for the job. Don't ask for too much thinking from the the operators. They're all high on pills.

You're a chump too.

[standard]

so instead of sending them a 'regular' pdf and letting them make seps, you're saying i should make the seps for em?

Trapping isn't a big issue here, i don't think. I just meant that I didn't want to start making decisions about the file set-up that they might not be able to undo or change... I make no claims to being the sharpest Sharpie in the box when it comes to this stuff.

[phoondaddy]

"I'm on Anti-Prepressants." - Tam

[Charles T. Duck]

I would eliminate any extraneous plates. Use the "Press" setting in Acrobat.

They could only print/sep what you direct them to (k/Spot). If they were competent. If.

Spell it out.

[The Fresh Prints]

"I'm on Anti-Prepressants." - Tam

nice. i am going to have to use that around here.