Comments on: Find Where That Color’s Used

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:18:54 +0000

I’d be happy to, and you could too … the more the better:

By: Matt Schonfeld

Matt Schonfeld — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:45:06 +0000

Anne-Marie, I appreciate your reply regarding my “problem”. You wrote exactly what I thought about - this feature should be implemented into preflight/separations preview. Maybe you might want to submit it to Adobe and maybe other readers of this excellent web site will welcome such a feature as well.

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:20:04 +0000

Matt, sorry it’s not working for you, but I can’t replicate the problem over here on CS3 5.0.3. When I turn off All Spots to Process, the spot colors re-appear in my Separations Preview panel, and I can hunt them down.

You may need to rebuild your preferences or possibly test a different document (or export the one you’re working on to INX and then reopen it, to eliminate spot color-related glitches).

I didn’t have your situation in mind when I wrote the post. To me, if you turn on All Spots to Process, then you’re saying “I know there are spot colors here, but I don’t care where, because I’m turning them all to their process equivalents.” That’s also why Seps Preview won’t show them … won’t show RGB either … because it gives you a preview of how the file will separate into color plates at that moment in time.

Still, I think you’ve brought up an excellent feature request, that the the current state (on/off) of “All Spots to Process” should be displayed in both the Preflight dialog box and the Separations Preview panel. And in Separations Preview, it would be great to have a checkbox for it right there in the panel, instead of having to dig into Ink Manager to turn it off/on.

By: Matt Schonfeld

Matt Schonfeld — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:47:13 +0000

Thats a great tip, but unfortunately it does not work in my case. I am using CS3, 5.03. When I tried your advise for the first time, I did not find any spot colors in my document but it was shown in pre-flight. I turned off “convert all spot to process” in ink manager. Here we go. In separations preview “turned off” I could view all colors, including spot. Now the nasty thing. When I tried to turn the separations view “on”, it immediately reverted back to off. Result: CS3 won’t allow me to view separations preview as long as I have not “convert all spot to precess” marked in ink manager. But after that there’s no more Spot to view but I need to find them. Any clues on that? Thanks

By: Marc Jones

Marc Jones — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:44:51 +0000

Superb! As per the above, my working life has changed! Many thanks!

By: Pat Arlt

Pat Arlt — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:36:06 +0000

This is a huge time saver. I have a project i design regularly where I can only use 1 spot color and 1 process. This will save loads of time on projects.

Thanks a load.

By: InDesignSecrets » Blog Archive » InDesignSecrets Podcast 085

InDesignSecrets » Blog Archive » InDesignSecrets Podcast 085 — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:48:50 +0000

[...] mentioned in this podcast: InDesign Magazine free trial issue Find Where That Color is Used (Anne-Marie’s post) Two things you missed, but will happen again: –The Creative [...]

By: Henrik

Henrik — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:22:33 +0000

Sweeeeet, this helped me so much! Thank you Anne-Marie

By: Warren

Warren — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:21:54 +0000

Absolutely fabulous tip. Thank you so much!

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:48:49 +0000

g: This sometimes still happens. Seems to be some kind of minor corruption. Generally, if you export as INX (indesign interchange) and then open that INX, the spot color “lets go” and can be deleted.