Building a custom color palette in VS for spot color printing



  • @b77 When I open the exported eps or pdf file in VS this is what it says in the tab
    0_1642629927225_c3a43fab-c335-4210-92c6-02a6def59ba5-BLD 2022-01-19 at 17.04.51.png

    When I open either file in VS again, it does not retain the reg mark color nor the opaque black spot color. and one one, it opened without the reg marks showing at all... I had not tried them in Illustrator. I will do that now



  • @b77 said in Building a custom color palette in VS for spot color printing:

    The .eps.pdf part at the end of the last file is probably just human error when you clicked on the name to change it.

    I am certainly error-prone! However, I never went in and changed the name of the file. It was always "print test2" and I just saved it out first as an eps and then tried again from the same VS source document. I even tried it a second time and got the same name issue



  • Oh… well, this opening in RGB mode needs to be fixed.



  • @b77 well, the good news in all this - when I opened the pdf file in Illustrator, it retained the reg mark color as well as my spot color black!!!!! It did require I expand a clipping mask applied to the whole file. This must be added when the pdf is made. Is there a way to avoid this?

    0_1642630697624_2eb65807-ba73-4156-86a8-b0e220a3479b-image.png

    When I opened the eps file - it retained only the registration color, but not my spot color and @vectoradmin it still is defaulting to what illustrator sets as the artboard like we discussed before. Probably no real way to fix that right?
    0_1642630617396_1be19636-ad3a-463b-8e91-826aeec61d1a-image.png



  • @b77 said in Building a custom color palette in VS for spot color printing:

    Oh… well, this opening in RGB mode needs to be fixed.

    Are you seeing the same thing when you open the two files in VS?



  • @Boldline Yup.



  • @b77 thanks for checking


  • administrators

    @Boldline About custom palettes: these should be saved to some user folder, and then in Preferences -> Folders select the "Color Palette Folders" in the Folder Mode field, and add that user folder.
    Now any palette saved to that folder will show up in the palette menus.

    For a VS palette type use the Binary or Compact formats. For human readable VS palette use the XML or JSON formats.

    The other formats can also be used, if you want to use the palette in those apps.

    In VS spot colors are only allowed in the primary color palette (the one stored in the document). The "Register.." options are used to register a color from the external palette into the primary, when it is applied.

    I add to the backlog a task to have spot colors in external palettes, but these of course then will auto-register into the primary when applied.


  • administrators

    @Boldline I will check these (color) exporting issues.



  • @vectoradmin said in Building a custom color palette in VS for spot color printing:

    For a VS palette type use the Binary or Compact formats. For human readable VS palette use the XML or JSON formats

    I'm new to all of these considerations. I assume you are referring to the overall file type?
    In documentation, the available storage modes are briefly discussed; "This can be Compact, Binary, JSON or XML. The Compact storage mode offers the most compact file in terms of size and speed of saving and opening. The Binary storage mode is next in terms of speed and size, but allows a more future proof format. The XML and JSON storage modes allow access to the internal VectorStyler object hierarchy for 3rd parties and external scripts for processing."

    Could this be expanded upon in the documentation at some point? Is there a reliable source online I could go research? I did some googling but did not find or understand what I was reading. This was not something I was introduced to when I was using Illustrator for example.