Cutting Edge Design This Ain't Your Father's Duotone

(Continued on next page)




			A Walking Tour Through DCS Bitmap Design By Deborah J. Cook

			For years, you've heard the mantra that unless you've prepared EPS duotones, bitmaps will only separate to CMYK plates. Duotones are fine when what you need is a duotone. But when your design requires spot inks in discrete areas, you've had to design in vector only, or play the match game of creating CMYK bitmaps and telling your client to imagine cyan is really Pantone 336 and Magenta is actually Pantone 136. And remember that last time you really wanted a Blue 072 drop shadow? Well, it's time to look at DCS.

			A variation of EPS, the DCS (Desktop Color Separation) file format was created by Quark as a method to produce color separations of entire documents and publications, including images. Version 1.0 of the DCS format is limited to CMYK only and consists of five PostScript files: a main file and four separation files for each of cyan, magenta, yellow and black image data. The main file contains the screen version and the directions where to find the other four files. The design and/or page layout program reads those directions in the main file and assigns the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black files to their corresponding separation files during output to a PostScript device. Although DCS 1.0 required that the separation files actually be separate, with DCS 2.0 there is an option to combine these files into one. DCS 2.0 also includes the ability to specify plate colors (such as spot colors) in addition to or in place of the standard CMYK colors.

			So, now you know what a DCS file is but, you ask, "How does that help me?" Let's revisit that other spot color bitmap you are probably already familiar with: Duotones. A duotone is a grayscale image which has been enhanced with additional colors. If you choose spot colors for those additional colors, that information is written into the EPS file and the PostScript file will separate to spot plates. However, because grayscale images have only one channel, all of that enhanced color information is shared across that one channel and will result in a printed image that looks similar to a black and white photo as seen through a colored lens. This is a nice effect, but sometimes this result is simply not desired. The difference between DCS files and EPS duotones is that DCS files can contain multiple channels.

			To put all of this information to practical use, we'll take a look at the fictitious Ziger Shoe Company. Ziger is branching out into the athletic shoe market, hoping to attract teenagers and young adults to their new line. Mr. Ziger picked "Ziger Paws" as the brand name these shoes will be sold under and the only requirement Mr. Ziger has for this new identity is that the colors used be both bright and consistent wherever they are used. Bright could be satisfied with Hexachrome colors, but when you add strict color consistency into the mix, spot colors are the obvious choice. Spot inks in full-color advertising materials may be more expensive, but Mr. Ziger is more concerned with accuracy than cost. (I heard a rumor that he's worth billions, so who am I to argue!)

			I chose orange, blue, and black for the identity palette. Orange works with the play on "tiger," blue because it is complementary to orange, and black for flexibility. (For help in choosing color palettes for your own designs, a good starting place is the new Color Harmonies feature in Draw 8's Palette Editor dialog. Figure 3.) Because Orange 021 and Blue 072 are two of the more common Pantone inks, it's likely that these colors will be in stock at various printers, which will hopefully eliminate some of the costs associated with special orders and storage of custom inks. Mr. Ziger may be a billionaire, but that's no reason to squander money foolishly! For pieces to be run as four-color with additional spot color plates, black can always be specified as process, thereby saving a bit more money in Mr. Z's checking account. Note: Because this article and accompanying images have been prepared for 4-color process printing and Internet display, the spot colors can only be simulated.



		Figure 3


	Although I had a concept in mind, I began the design process by sketching on actual paper (oooo) with an actual pencil (ahhhh) to come up with some raw ideas for letter styles and placement of the various elements that would make up the whole logo.

I then transferred this process to CorelDraw to try out some of my "finalists" since at this point in my designing, I can experiment at a faster pace in CorelDraw. Figure 5.

Even though I liked the more contemporary typefaces and the text designs I created, I chose a more "traditional" typeface because I felt some conservatism would convey a solid, reliable product. But I also knew that in order to appeal to the young market being targeted, I would have to somehow liven up the overall staidness of the design. One step in this direction was to convince Mr. Ziger to slightly alter the original spelling. Figure 6. Then, piece by piece, I brought the entire design into Photo-Paint for those special effects that Photo-Paint does so well. Figure 7.


	Figure 5




		Figure 6




	Figure 7


		I knew this design was destined for DCS, which means channels, which in turn means grayscale, and so I made a black and white copy of the logo in preparation of transferring it to Photo-Paint. Figure 8. (See the sidebar which explains why this is an important step when working with channels.) In Photo-Paint, I created a new RGB image with the same physical dimensions as my CorelDraw design and at a resolution appropriate for the final output (for print, usually 1.4 to 2 times the linescreen). When using the clipboard to transfer objects from Draw to Photo-Paint, it's important to create a new image with your specifications first; otherwise your only menu choice will be to create new images from the clipboard which means the objects will come into Photo-Paint at 72 dpi.


	Figure 8


		As a final step in preparing this design for bitmap editing, I also made masks from each of the objects (layers) and saved them as named channels. Figure 9. It's usually a good idea to take a few minutes for this extra step because you never know when you'll want to go back to an object in its original state. As you'll see later, this was a smart move on my part even if I do say so myself! Now, with all of the pieces of my Draw design as both separate objects and masks in Photo-Paint, it was time to have some filter effects fun.

	In addition to the paw print and using the color orange, I wanted to add to the tiger theme with subtle stripes. Luckily a few months previous I created a script for just this effect. I wanted to run the effect on two objects which would eventually print to different spot plates, but I wanted the effect to be continuous across the two objects. So, I selected and then combined these two objects together (Alt+O+O+T) and ran the script, choosing a mid-level gray as the final output color (since we're still thinking in Grayscale terms here). Figure 10. But now I needed to "de-combine" these objects again so that I could eventually send them off to their own ink plates.




		Figure 9