Quark Forums

Hello out there :)

I am a real newbie on this. I use Quark Express 7.0 and on top of all it's in Swedish. I do translations for a publishing company and now they are telling me that they want "print ready black text and print ready pantone only PDF files (without any images)".

Is there anyone who an guide me along? Because I absolutely don't know what they are talking about. I can create an ordinary PDF, that's no problem.

I would be ever so greatful if anyone can help me. Please let me know if you need any more information.

All the best...

Meta

 Meta,

You can Suppress the images in the Image Useage dialog box. Spec your PMS Spot colors as you ordinarily would. Export as a PDFx1a (unless they have specified another format). This should give you what you want. Go ahead and update to Quark 7.5 (if you haven't already).

Hi cewack,

I will look for the Useage dialogue (have to figure out what it is called in Swedish), can you tell me which menu it is in?

"Spec your PMS Spot colors as you ordinarily would".... Here we have a problem. There is no ordinarily for me. Everything is extraordinarily...

I do have a Quark manual, do you think that would help?

:) Meta

Meta,
Usage is under the Utilities menu. It will open another dialog box where you select "Pictures" it will then display all images used in the document. From here you can de-select them (effectively stopping the images from printing).

You spec out your spot (and other colors) under the Edit -> Colors. Load the correct color library from the drop down list and choose the colors you need. I would recommend getting a Pantone color guide (if you are indeed using Pantones).

If you're new to XPress, any book would be helpful.

Just for an overview, Pantone = PMS = spot color = spot inks. All the same thing. Basically, instead of printing CMYK, where (for example) a red is created by a mix of the 4 process colors, a Pantone color is a single ink mixed to a specific color. Like, if you need red, you might pick PMS 185.

Why use PMS? It's cheaper to print, for example, a 2-color job (this sounds like what you might have, black plus one PMS color?) than it is to print a full-color CMYK job. It also means your red will always match across different print jobs, since there's a specific ink formula for PMS 185.

 Usage > F13 maybe it's easy this way for you

 As for a 2 color pdf, nothing simpler.

 1. create you colors - you already have black, you have to create another one but it has to be or PANTONE or a pure color - magenta, cyan or yellow. You can use percentages of the chosen colors, eg. you can use 20% black if you like or 40% Pantone, no problem.

2. Build your page and when it's done, hit print.

3. Select printer Adobe PDF, and chose our desired settings.

4. On the "colors" options select Setup: Composite CMYK and Spot. Automaticly the plates you dont use in your page are removed.

5. Hit Printer button and in the Layout popup select PDFOptions and select your output on the Adobe PDF Settings - PDF/X-1a is standart for press. it Print, name your PDF and hit save. You'll be directed again to the print menu. Hit Print again and you're done.

Hope this helps

Thanks for your efforts, I managed to finish this at last