Duotone with Adobe Illustrator

Illustrator uses vectors. There's nothing to duotone. An object is either a solid color, or a gradient. Duotone applies only to raster images that are comprised of only 2 inks.

Yes it is, and you are on the right track.  You need to import an EPS image with ony the duotone colours that you require, which you then used as your pallet.

Then you have to expert to EPS with the same colour pallet for your separations.

This has been a staple of the pre-press industry for years. I'm not sure the exact process in Illustrator (I use have used other products), but I'll download the demo and report in a day or so if that OK?

Cheers

Currently I am trying to use Photoshop to create the duotone as you suggested. I have correctly specified the two pantones in the duotones control panel  giving them references that match the pantone references from the swatches in illustrator.

When you try to save a duotone image in photoshop you can only save as photoshop eps.

When trying to open this file in illustrator it says the two aren't compatible. Strange since you thnik there would be compatablity between adobe products.

It could be to do with Illustrator stuggling to create the colour pallett re kemp_a second line.

I can't believe such an industry standard program would struggle with this! re kemp_a last line

If anyone can give me a proceedure which works between photoshop and illustrator for doing this I will put the points up to
500 before accepting. Slight con though - it might not exist!

Kemp a put me onto the idea of downloading the new CS version of illustrator. Under the help file it says something along the lines of:

what's new in illustrator?

Tighter intergration between Photoshop CS and Illustrator including cross support for duotone and tritone PDF.

So there is the answer - Photoshop generated EPS duotone images were not placeable in Illustrator 9

I am not sure whether there is another graphics package out there which generate duotone images as EPS which are imporatable to illustrator 9.
I think I might be looking down the barrell of an upgrade!

I will leave this question open for a few days to see if anyone can suggest a package and split the points 70/30 if they can. Otherwise all to Kemp_A for putting me onto the idea.
 

Sounds like your getting there, I mostly used Corel products while colleagues used Adobe.

CorelDraw has no difficulty in using a DuoTone, but it must be in EPS format Illustrator would require the same.

The reason for the EPS format is that it is essentially two overlayed black & white bitmaps being mapped to a pantone colour for your separations and print run.

You'll want to play with TriTone's next! :)

Make sure the pantone colours are letter for letter the same. Match the Photoshop name to the Illustrator name rather than the other way around. If your printer is printing only the special colours from this file you can name the colours cyan and magenta - your printer will still output only two plates with the correct dot values.
Another workaround is create an illustrator file for each  colour - so your saving two individual colour files from photoshop (again the colour names don't matter). Duplicate the picture window and import the two files with the same xy and percentage values.

In response to Kemp A Proceedure it is not possible to "place" a EPS in Illustrator 9. It is simply not in the options. You would have to open a file saved as EPS in illustrator straight. As mentioned previously if this EPS was created in Photoshop the two weren't compatible untill Studio CS came.

Interesting information about the print settings etc.

Re: using another program to import an EPS to illustrator with dutone information I have tried moving the file through Freehand 10 first with no success so I think that Illustrator 9 just had a basic incapacity to deal with Duotone Images.

I have yet to try the RobMurota technique and will post results v. shortly then wrap up the question.

 

Perhaps another alternative is to place the Illustrator file into Photoshop, which you already know can create the separated Duotone EPS output, again making sure that the names of the colours are identical.

I'm able to place a Photoshop 7 duotone eps in Illustrator 9 and print color seps of each of the two colours. Greyscale - duotone - on creation end. Save as EPS (in my case Mac Preview) binary, transfer function on,  include transfer funcction. Place in Illustrator. Proof of execution is when the duotone colours appear in your colour palette. The colours seperate out in our postscript level laser printer on create seperations.

Thank you for all the comments and paitience with this query I am sure there are solutions here that everybody can use.

I offered to up the points and split them if somebody could give me a proceedure. No proceedure has been supplied between Adobe photoshop 6 and Illustrator 9.

I have therfore allocated the points to kemp_a for his persistance and putting me onto the CS Trial idea.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I made a duotone in Photoshop, saved it as an EPS file and then opened a blank document in Illustrator 9 and chose the File/place command and placed it in the document. No problems whatsoever. In fact, we receive many files setup this way all the time. I work in a prepress department at a large commercial printer. No problem outputting to film or plates either.