Comments on: Color Swatches That Won’t Delete

By: pete blunt

pete blunt — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:35:45 +0000

Thanks David, checked the ink manager and it was set to CMYK.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:03:27 +0000

@Pete: Perhaps the color isn’t really set up as a spot color in AI? Or perhaps you have colors set to convert to process in InDesign’s ink manager?

By: pete blunt

pete blunt — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:32:17 +0000

What happens if you need to keep the illustration and the spot colour but it will not PDF as a spot, converts to CMYK?

By: Srinivasan

Srinivasan — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:03:36 +0000

Hi all,
It seems simple to solve. Just created an object in Illustrator with the color swatch you want to remove. Place the eps file into the Indesign document and just delete it. Now the swatch gets activated and you can do whatever changes on this. hope this works on all the documents.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:03:14 +0000

I tried the PDF cut-paste-save-delete technique but it didn’t work for me (CS3).

By: Felicia

Felicia — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:43:37 +0000

I decided to brave the INX edit option and so far it’s worked flawlessly… however I made sure to keep dupes in case it bits me in the a-word later

Thanks for the tip Mr. Blatner! I REALLY appreciate it

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:42:02 +0000

Heads up that Klaus’s PDF is 25 MB in case you have a slow connection.

It’s a single page showing the effects of different settings (ppi, dot gain, total ink, etc.) applied to the same high-res image.

Here’s a screen shot:

By: Klaus Nordby

Klaus Nordby — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:27:21 +0000

David, I’ve now looked a bit more at the ColorValet service at Chromix. It seems very promising and professional and useful — but it’s also $300 for a single press profile, and that’s far beyond my reach (my client wouldn’t cough up that, I well know without asking).

I’ve now made my own SepTest as an A3 PDF file, and my printer ran it on his Heidelberg today, while I was “sitting on him.” It gave me heaps of very useful information about both separations, resolutions and sharpenings — as much as I could cram into one A3 sheet. I’ve placed the PDF here, for free download to all who’s interested (about 3.2 people in the whole world, I’d guess):

http://www.klausnordby.com/repository/SepTest.pdf

By: Klaus Nordby

Klaus Nordby — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:46:33 +0000

Thanks, Miss Lass, for an ingenious method! I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds so crazy that it’s almost bound to work.

By: Elizabeth Lass

Elizabeth Lass — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 03:53:33 +0000

Hi, This actually happens to me quite a bit. I found a good trick online quite a while ago, and I’d like to give them credit, but I’m afraid I can’t locate the source. But the trick goes like this:
When a spot cannot be deleted from the swatches palette, and you know for sure it’s not in use by any artwork, create a rectangle and fill it with the offending swatch. Cut the object and paste it into a new doc with no other swatches. Save it as a PDF set to “Press” or “Print” (don’t let the color be converted). Place that PDF into your original doc, then delete it. In my experience, the bad swatch will now be ‘unlocked’ and you can trash it in the palette. IMO, this is faster than saving over to INX, and shouldn’t cause any further problems. {Thanks for the awesome blog and podcast, btw!!}