Outputting Spot colours in Adobe Photoshop

[core_upt]

Hi,

I took on a personal design project that has multiple pieces. I designed everything in Photoshop (CS3) as this is where I felt the most comfortable in using layers, colors, screens, etc. I have everything designed, but have hit a pretty big road block.

I figured selecting a Pantone color from the color picker would leave the color as a spot, not convert it to CMYK. So, after hours of work, I am left with a four color job that is supposed to be printed (offset) in two colors.

Is there an easy way to output as black plus one spot? I've read something about channels, but can't figure out how they work.

Is this easier to accomplish in Illustrator or Indesign? All the pieces are one-or two sided cards, and I planned on sending out high res PDFs to the print, so I figured Photoshop would suffice.

Guess not??? Any advice from the design gurus??

Thanks Beyond!

[VWbloke]

You should have used Illustrator or InDesign.

That said, you could output the file as a Photoshop eps and open it in Illustrator. Once open you can change the colors to spot and re-save the file.

[TurboD]

you can go in photoshop to image>mode>and change the mode
i dont think pantone is a choice, but if it was this would be where you would select it

rule of thumb.

photoshop is for photos and paintings

illustrator is for illustrations and designs

another great thing about illustrator, is when you go to export for print, no matter what you're printing business cards or a banner for the side of a bus, it will always be the right quality, photoshop has a hard time working with more than 2000pixels.

edit, also i wish people would learn to use google, it has many answers.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/ss/spotcolors.htm

if you have a question about any type of software chances are someone has also had this question and it can be found by searching google.