PUB98: About Color Separations and Microsoft Publisher (178582)

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Color separation is the process of printing a single multicolored page as a series of black and white sheets. There is one black and white sheet for each color of ink you use. These black and white sheets are used to create printing plates for a printing press. After each printing plate impresses the paper with its own ink color, you have a reproduction of the original multicolored page.

There are two ways to color-separate an image: the spot-color separation method and the process-color (or four-color) separation method.

Process-color separation breaks a single multicolored page into four black and white sheets. One sheet is used to create the cyan ink plate, a second is used for the magenta ink plate, a third is used for the yellow ink plate, and a fourth is used for the black ink plate. This method is best used for pages that contain color photographs or other continuous-tone artwork. One of the important features of process-color separation is that an object can appear on more than one color plate. For example, if you have a green circle, that circle appears on both the cyan and yellow ink plates. The green in the final output is created by printing cyan ink on top of yellow ink. You can create any color you want by mixing various combinations of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks.

Spot-color separation breaks a single multicolored page into as many black and white sheets as are necessary. One sheet is used to create the black ink plate, and the additional sheets are used to create the plates for the other colors of ink. These additional colors can be any color you want. This method is typically more economical than process-color separations and is best used for flyers, tickets, business cards, and letterhead. One of the most important features of spot-color separation is that each object on your page appears on only one plate. For example, if you have a circle that you want to print in green, it appears only on the green ink plate.

No version of Microsoft Publisher produces process-color-separated output directly. If you want to use a process-color printing process with Microsoft Publisher, you must create a PostScript print file and give that file to a commercial printing service that has pre-press software that supports process-color separations.

Publisher can produce spot-color-separated output. Use the following steps to set up your publication to print spot-color separations:

1. On the File menu, Prepare File for Printing Service, click Set Up Publication.
   
   This starts a wizard that leads you through setting up your publication. To actually create output, click Print To Outside Printer on the File menu.

Using Corel Draw

Although Microsoft Publisher cannot create color separation directly, you can use CorelDRAW! versions 3.0 and higher to obtain color separations. To do this, you need the following:

• Microsoft Publisher
• CorelDraw! 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, or 6.0

These software packages must be on your system and enough system resources must be available to cut and paste between the two applications.

Using CorelDRAW! to Create Color Separations

1. Open your publication in Publisher.
2. On the Edit menu, click Select All.
3. On the Edit menu, click Copy.
4. On the Edit menu, click Exit.
5. Start CorelDRAW!.
6. On the Edit menu, click Paste.
7. On the File menu, click Print Setup, and select the printer to which you are printing.
8. Click OK.
9. On the File menu, click Print.
10. Choose Options and select Print As Separations (selecting the Separations button will allow you to fine-tune how the color separations will print).
11. Click OK twice.
12. CorelDRAW! now prints one page per color (CMYK).

For more information about using CorelDRAW! or how to obtain color separations, please see the "CorelDRAW! User's Guide."

The CorelDRAW! is manufactured a vendor independent of Microsoft; we make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding this product's performance or reliability.