Simple Spot Color Separations for Screen Printing?

Question

Ok, I'm an Illustrator noob, but I've worked in screen printing. I made a design which is composed of an expanded Live Trace, a couple of rectangles with fills and strokes, and some text within said rectangles/boxes. It's a simple design and we have three spot colors, black, red, and yellow.So my idea is (was) to flatten all layers, select each color, and move them to their own newly created layers, one color each layer. Print each layer black and, voilá, color seps. I used the layer command Flatten Artwork, then selected a black object then Select -> Same -> Fill Color. Then created a new Layer, and slid the black on up. When I did the next color, which also happens to be the rectangle fill color, the text was now beneath the box. In other words, all objects (and text) were still on different layers, even though I thought I'd flattened the artwork. Nothing underneath my boxes or text was knocked out.Can you flatten both art and text in Illustrator? If so, how?Can you output (print) each layer separately, or must you create a new file for each? I saw no provision for printing individual layers in the Print Dialog box.I'm using CS5 on Mac OS. Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

There are so many way to attack this question

so first do you know about layers?

windows> tools> layers

once In the layer menu box click on the top right with the 3 lines> select new layer name each layer and pick a different color box ( add as many as you need)

now click on the first object you want to separate ( let’s call it red). Once it is selected you will see a color box in (layer 1)

while selected take your arrow top and drag from layer one to layer two (red layer)

repeat for each color you wanted to separate.

the fasted way to explain this is save each color on a new layer and name each layer.

once that is done you can either hidden the layer and show one at a time and print

or you can make a board for each color.so if it is 4 colors

go to art board on your tool bar and make 3 more boards by dragging and copying the boards by doing this you know the art is in the same place on each page.

then for the first board hide all the color layer and show the rest of the layer. Do that for each color on each page.

that is the summery if you have more questions feel free to book me.