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This article appeared in Issue 112 of InDesign Magazine.
Claudia,
This is such a good example. I tried to recreate the effect so I could show my students, but I can’t get it to look bad in the .pdf. Overprint preview looks bad in InDesign. I assume it would look like that in the RIP if printed straight from InDesign. I tried all the different color conversions in the Acrobat dialog box, and they all look great! The Pantone solid colors seem to be Lab. It that the reason it is working well in the .pdf? If it looks good in the .pdf can I trust it?
Thanks
Virginia
Sorry your PDFs look good ;-)
Acrobat recognizes overprint attributes automatically and displays correctly. Try this: In Acrobat, launch the Print Production tools and choose Output Preview. At the top of the dialog, UNcheck “Simulate Overprinting,” and you should have a perfectly lousy preview ;-)
The Lab aspect of Pantone swatches is really just sort of an internal reference for InDesign to use as it figures out how to display the color onscreen, and has no bearing on the mechanical behavior of the spot color.
If it looks good in the PDF, you can trust it if the printer honors PostScript overprint. This can be problematic with some digital press front-ends, and the printer may have to convert the content to CMYK. See the post on InDesign Secrets about “Yucky Discolored Box Syndrome” (yes, really: https://bit.ly/2L8FzA3).
Hope this helps!
–Claudia
I find when you’re overlaying PMS over other colours whether CMYK or PMS, your best bet is to run a print test, because the computer will have no idea how it will look.