During this workshop we will be looking at Illustrator. The main objective of these workshops is to give us a strong understanding of how to send files off properly to print.
We will be working with colour. CMYK, when all four colour over lap you get and 'absence' of colour. They are PROCESS COLOURS- This means CMYK, the inks will be transparent, this allows the range of colours that are possible to produce.
When printing. Each colour is added individually. They are mixed in a certain way until you get the picture.
We will be looking at how we can use colour in ILLUSTRATOR:
The college has now installed CS6, the first thing to do is optimise illustrator by changing the scratch disk.
Then QUIT Illustrator then OPEN again for your changes work. This means that when you want to open a file from PHOTOSHOP say in Illustrator, you won't have any errors.
Always make sure your colour mode is CMYK. This is the default mode so it should already be checked.
Go to USER INTERFACE in PREFERENCES to change the new art board to the old one.
The best background to have is a light GRAY. This is because it doesn't interfere with colour.
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The advantage of using the swatches pallet against anything else is you get a consistency of colour when working.
Managing my swatch pallet:
At the moment you have PRE SET SWATCHES.
Creating your own is simple : Just drag the colour you want into your swatches and it will remain there but ONLY on that document. Making a new illustrator file will reset your swatches.
OR GO MENU on your pallet, and click in NEW SWATCH.
Make sure the colour mode is still CMYK.
WHAT IS REGISTRATION? : This is used for printers marks. This is VERY useful when going to print.
Viewing your swatches : got to menu and you can decide how you want to have your swatches in terms of SIZE.
An alternative way of setting up your swatches is that you already have some artwork, use the colour picker to apply your colours.
New swatches tend to have a little white triangle in the corner. The difference is all to do with the check box. It indicates that 'Global' is checked when double clicking for swatch menu.
Selecting the Global box mean you create a direct link between the swatch and the colour on the art board
TINTS : Variating percentages of a colour: This will work for standard CMYK. However when selecting a Global colour the information is different.
Select you GLOBAL colour.
Go to colour palette.
Change colour to percentage you want.
Got to menu.
Select CREATE NEW SWATCH.
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New colour Model : SPOT COLOURS
A SPOT COLOUR : a process colour is a mixture, a spot colour is just A COLOUR, its not made up of different colours. Its a ready made colour.
A reason for going with SPOT COLOURS is it's cheaper. Another reason is its CONSISTENT, for example when you mass produce something. Like Heinz Baked Beans, to insure that the colour doesn't change when printing to an industrial level. Each spot colour has A UNIQUE REFERENCE NUMBER.
CONSISTENCY + COST
How do we access spot colours on Illustrator?
This is how we access our spot colours, PANTONE SWATCH LIBARYS
Go down to PANTONE= Solid Coasted or PANTONE= Solid Uncoasted
we are going for Uncoated
The find field is the easy way to find you colours, or say for clients chosen colour. Once you know the reference number it is very easy. You can identify a spot colour by looking at the triangle in the corner, it should have a little circle within the triangle. NEVER change the name of a spot colour as you will loose it but more importantly the printer won't know what colour you want. It needs the reference number in order to print.
A MONOTONE: PRINTED WITH ONE INK.
When screen printing you are using SPOT COLOURS.
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You can if you want save your swatches
Follow this and you can save it to a folder called 'swatches' in your home folder. This means when ever I use Illustrator on what ever computer I will be able to access my swatches. If you then jump to your new Illustrator document, go to an option called USER DEFINED from OPEN SWATCH LIBARY.
I cannot select this as at this very moment I have nothing saved so nothing to open.
If you go to OTHER LIBARY you can find your swatches if you happen to have saved them somewhere different.
Tomorrow we will be looking at the same thing but how we manage PROCESS COLOURS and SPOT COLOURS in Photoshop.
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