"5. Just select the one that is already there and add the yellow stroke set to overprint to it."
oh, duh... i think i was thinking back to trapping in Quark? but, yeah, i flubbed that one...

"6. If you need the color in your design to be consistent through out different printing methods, then you best bet is to make it using Pantone spot colors because that gives everyone a common standard to go by for color.

The problem with B, giving your printer CYMK values, is that your printer will have to mix the ink specially to match that color if he is going to print it in some method other than CYMK. Particularly if they are doing something like Silk-screening T-shirt or signage. In those cases, you get better results if you can use a single spot color than a process mix. Printers already have ink formulas already to match most Pantone colors. Thus using Pantone spot you will be saving time and waste on your print job instead of trying to mix the right ink color.

Giving a color print out would seem the right thing to do but colors look different on different materials. The color on a glossy color print out is going to look different than the same color on a t-shirt. Again how much do you want to trust the pressman to eyeball the correct color match? Most of them can do it but it takes time and on a press, time is money. Nearly all of them know how to match Pantone colors for the most part. Thus using them to start with, you are saving time and money."

ok, this one i'm gonna have to disagree with you on a couple of points --

firstly, all these things should be worked out well before it gets to the press stage, and i wouldn't give the press house files for a different printing method than what i was expecting to receive from them. secondly, you can't always print Spot, even if you're just using two colors, because of time, or cost, or ganging on press, or a whole slew of other things. so to be "consistent through out different printing methods" INCLUDING process printing, you really should have spot-equivalent numbers for the spot colors that you use.

and then i don't understand what you're saying about mixing inks -- if the printer is using in some method other than CMYK then i would know about it before hand and would setup my files accordingly. what other system might that be, anyway? how much TOYO processing do you do? ;-)

ink formulas!? i don't know if i'd trust a lot of printers now days to mix their own ink... buy the right PMS color in the first place.

the color print-out thing: our printers won't even run a job if they don't have signed-off color proofs. they all color-match by eye, and the Print Producer that's signing-off on the press-check is doing it by eye. ...and i'm talking about 10-million impression Web-printing kind of stuff.


"7. EPS file are better for seperations because most RIP software isn't built to handle PDF files yet. If you send PDF files then pre-Press will have to convert them to EPS to output to film. Also not all PDF files are created equal. The different levels of quality you can save your PDF at means different ways you can send a file that won't work. "

tis true about not all PDF files being created equally, but i think maybe you're a bit biased in your view because of the type of work you're doing? for the agency i work at, we're working under the assumption that EPS is a dead format. all vector work is done as AI files, and we don't build layouts in Illustrator, only in InDesign. our PreMedia RIPs from native files and processes them to press-ready PDFs that are profiled to the press the job is being run on. they make proofs from the same files; they account for differences in substrates in-RIP. last week they ran a job where they processed over 700 pages in 15 minutes. all that happens because of PDFs.