Profile for BlameTheSuburbs - Can Someone Explain How to Prep a File for Print in Illustrator

BlameTheSuburbs aka Saman Bemel-Benrud is a 22.78 year old boy, has been a member since October 5, 2005, has scored 15724 submissions, giving an average score of 1.76.

URL: http://mfmapparel.etsy.com

Jul 30 '09 by BlameTheSuburbs

12 Comments

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Can Someone Explain How to Prep a File for Print in Illustrator

Note: half my post got deleted and I later tried to rewrite it.

I've been designing shirts for a while, but I never did any of the pre-press stuff myself. I always just sent my working file to the printers and let them take care of the rest. I need to do it myself right now, and can't seem to get color separations to work right. Anyone want to fill me in on the details? I know I have to go to print, then change the setting to output to Post Script. I just haven't been getting good results.

Biggest question:
What if I use lots of shapes that are the intended background color for the design, and I want them to be "cut out" of the final file to send to the printer. Can I do that?

Any explanation or links to an in-depth explanation would be great. I haven't been able to find anything thorough enough on the internet.

jayrawz on Jul 30 '09 at 8:11pm

how do you mean "cut out"?..

it sounds like you just want to use pathfinder

BlameTheSuburbs on Jul 30 '09 at 8:13pm

Basically the same concept as pathfinder. Except automated across a whole document for a specific color when file is output for print.

I'm sort of inexperienced with illustrator so maybe I'm missing something, I do most of my work in inkscape. Illustrator seems to have much better tools for print preparation.

jayrawz on Jul 30 '09 at 8:17pm

hmmm.. like you mean for seperating the colors in diff layers?

BlameTheSuburbs on Jul 30 '09 at 8:26pm

Right. I want to be able to separate the colors into different layers and also remove the background color. Illustrator should be able to do this stuff and output it to a file automatically, I just can't get it work right.

jayrawz on Jul 30 '09 at 8:30pm

well the only way i can think of is..

divide

fill color

then it will select all of that color.. and you can put it on a diff layer.. then repeat for the other colors

jayrawz on Jul 30 '09 at 8:30pm

oops

well the only way i can think of is..

select all - pathfinder-divide

then select an object... go to "select"-same-fill color

then it will select all of that color.. and you can put it on a diff layer.. then repeat for the other colors