How many colours does my design use for printing?

Open the Inks counter. Vectornation by Zaweba counts how many colours a design uses for printing and shows the number, so you know how many plates, screens or ink passes the job needs before you send it. You can then use the Separations preview to see each ink on its own.

The question comes up most in screen printing, embroidery, vinyl and spot colour work, where each extra colour adds a screen, a thread change or a sheet of material. It also matters for two and three colour offset jobs, where a stray fourth colour can turn into a surprise on the quote.

Why the number grows without you noticing

Designs pick up colours by accident. A shape copied from an older file brings its own slightly different red. A gradient that looks like one colour fading out is really a run of many tints, or two inks blending. An imported logo might be built in process colour when the rest of the job is spot. A drop shadow adds black where there was none.

None of that shows up when you look at the artwork, which is why a counter is useful. It turns a vague feeling that the design has about three colours into a firm number.

Using the Inks counter

Open the counter with your design ready and read the total. If it is higher than you expected, use the Separations preview (Window > Print and output) to show the inks one at a time and find the object that is using each one. Separations preview also shows coverage and the highest total ink.

Work through the extras. Two near-identical reds can usually become one. A gradient can often become a flat colour or a tint of an ink you already have. An imported logo can be recoloured to your spot swatches.

Snapping to your ink set

If you are working to a set of spot inks, load your own colour books into Vectornation. It reads .ase, .acb, .aco and .gpl books and can snap colours to the nearest colour in the book. That pulls a slightly off shade onto a real ink, which cuts the count and makes the job match what the printer actually has on the shelf. No Pantone data is shipped with the app, so use books you already own or ones your supplier gives you.

Global swatches help keep it down in future. Set your inks up as global or spot swatches at the start of a job, use only those, and changes to a swatch flow through every object that uses it.

Image trace and the colour count

If your artwork came from a traced picture, image trace is a common source of extra colours. Vectornation's image trace can snap colours to your spot colours as it traces, which keeps the result to a set of inks you choose rather than dozens of shades.

Before the job goes out

With the count where you want it, print a set of separations or export a PDF for the printer. A quick Preflight run checks the drawing for other common problems at the same time, and the Proof sheet with a sign-off box lets the client agree the final colours in writing.

Vectornation by Zaweba is free software for Windows, works offline and needs no account.