Checking inks with Separations preview in Vectornation

On a printing press, a design is not one picture but several, one per ink. Cyan, magenta, yellow and black each go on their own plate, and any spot colours or special finishes get plates of their own. Separations preview, in Window > Print and output in Vectornation by Zaweba, lets you look at those plates on screen before anything is printed.

Viewing any mix of inks

The preview shows any mix of inks. Turn plates on and off to see what each one carries. View just the black plate and you can check that body text is pure black rather than built from all four inks, which prints less sharply. View a spot colour on its own and you can confirm it is used only where you meant. Turn off one ink and see whether the design still holds together, which is a quick way to spot an element accidentally made in the wrong colour.

Coverage and highest total ink

Separations preview also shows coverage and the highest total ink. Coverage tells you how much ink is going down. The highest total ink is the largest combined amount of all inks in any one spot of the design. Presses and papers have limits on how much ink they can take. Go over them and the ink can take too long to dry, smudge, or show through the paper. Printers often give a maximum total ink figure for a job; this is where you check your design keeps under it.

Rich, deep blacks and dark photographs are the usual culprits. A black built from heavy amounts of all four inks looks great on screen but may exceed the limit. Adjusting it to a lighter mix usually looks just as dark in print.

Problems it catches

Plenty of print mistakes show up clearly in separations. A colour you meant as a spot ink that has been converted to process colour, or the reverse. Registration colour used for artwork by mistake, which prints on every plate. Small text built from several inks, which can look fuzzy if the plates are even slightly out of line. A finish such as foil or spot UV that has crept onto the wrong layer. White objects set to overprint, which disappear in print. Each of these is easy to miss in the normal view and obvious on the plates.

Where it fits in the print workflow

Separations preview works alongside the rest of the print tools. Load the job's spot colour book and watch the Inks counter while you design. Use colour proofing with the printer's profile to judge colours. Check overprints with the overprint preview. Then look through the separations for coverage and stray inks, run preflight, and export a PDF/X-4 file with bleed and printer's marks.

Tips for using it well

Check separations at the end of every print job, even simple ones, because late changes are where stray inks creep in. Zoom in on small type and fine lines while viewing single plates. Ask your printer for their total ink limit before you start, not after. And when something looks wrong on a plate, use the Layers panel to find and fix the object rather than patching it in the PDF.

A few minutes in Separations preview can prevent the most expensive kind of mistake: one that is only discovered after the plates are made and the paper is printed.