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Actions with Pantone Colors in CS3
Hey there everyone!
Question for you: I’m attempting to create a mask around text in Illustrator CS3 for a piece of text. My process has been
a)copy and paste in back
b)change fill color to x
c)apply stroke of y points
d)change stroke color to x.This worked great with greyscale/CMYK colors, but I am now working with Pantone colors. For whatever reason, it doesn’t look like the action palette will “record” definitions through the loaded Pantone Color Pallete. Any workarounds out there?
Also, on a related notes, is there a way to tell illustrator to move a piece of text to a layer with name “Z?” I know this can be accomplished in photoshop…
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14 Replies
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Could you please post what actions are being recorded after you’ve finished recording?
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I can see your spot colours… -
I’m sorry, I am not quite sure what information is being requested here: would you like the completed actions from start to finish, or would you like the steps that are added to the action palette when I hit record and attempt to build the action?
Also, please excuse the typos in the previous post!
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Both if possible 🙂
That way we can see what is and what is not happening.
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I can see your spot colours… -
Please excuse the delay in responding to this post (so busy!).
Okay, here is what my base action looks like:
Knockout: land
1) Copy
2) Paste in back
3) Set Color
Fill Color – Gray: 5%
4) Set Color
Stroke color – Gray: 5%
5) Set Stroke
Weight 1.5 pt
Cap: Butt Cap
Miter Limit: 4
Join: miter join
Dashed LInes: 0
Alignment: Center
6) Attribute Setting
Fill Overprint: No
7) Attribute Setting
Stroke Overprint: NoThis ends up with a copy of the piece of text that masks out the line work underneath.
The Issue: when recording actions, I can use the color palette to make changes to a piece of text and know that these changes will be picked up (for example, a 5% grayscale fill). With the pantone color, the actions palate will not record this change as a 5% PANTONE fill, but rather as a 5% grayscale fill.
This color palette was opened, btw, using Window->Swatch Libraries->Color Books->Pantone Solid Matte. I was working with Pantone Yellow M as an example, and trying to replace the “5% Gray stroke/fill” portions with a corresponding pantone color.
Does that help?
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I don’t see you selecting a spot colour from your swatches anywhere. Is that what is not being recorded?
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I can see your spot colours… -
That is exactly the issue that I’m having. Do you know how I could bring that about? I’ve tried playing around with it it (as mentioned in my previous post), but no joy…
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Kinda sounds like something is wrong with your copy of illustrator…
However, did you try to put the necessary spot colours in your document’s swatches (instead of picking them directly from the colour book window) before recording the action?
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I can see your spot colours… -
>.< I think that's exactly the problem I am having. I'll investigate this tomorrow, but that might be just the problem. As it currently stands, I'm not sure if the swatch has been added to the document's swatches. More tomorrow morning as it develops.
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Did it work??
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I can see your spot colours… -
Is there a reason why you are not using the Appearance Panel and creating your ‘mask’ as a Graphic Style? This would mean you don’t have to use actions, instead just apply the style to the text. If you want to use this style within other documents, you can simply save the graphic style and it will be accessible from the user defined style library.
If you don’t know about the Appearance panel watch this video from Adobe:
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/csinsider-design/in-panel-appearance-editing
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