Illustrator lets you add a little bit of dimensionality to shapes by using some 3D methods.
Now, it isn't really a 3D program, but it adds the illusion of depth.
So, this is a job that's going to print in black and Pantone 021 orange.
I'm going to select this flower, and see what happens when I use the Extrude & Bevel.
When I preview, well, doesn't look bad. It's, maybe it's a little too far, maybe
I'll make this a little bit more shallow. Oh, a little trick if you don't know it,
if you want to increase or decrease the value in a field, and you don't feel like
typing or in this case that little slider's not very exact, you can use your
Arrow keys. So, I just clicked in that field, if I
hit my Down Arrow, see it reduces the value, hit my Up Arrow, it goes up.
And if you're in a hurry, Shift makes it go faster.
So, that's probably about right. One little depth, don't want to get
carried away. notice this little caution here though.
It says, spot colors will be convereted to process.
Well that's not going to work, this is a two color job.
All hope is not lost though. When you click More Options.
There it is, Preserve Spot Colors. Now why that's not out in the open, I
don't know, but this works. When I choose Preserve Spot Colors, wow,
great, now it looks even worse. There's a little trick to this though,
don't give up hope, it really is going to do the right thing, and it tries to
confirm that for you here. Spot colors will be shaded with black
overprint, and look it even tells you what to do.
Turn on Overprint Preview to view. How helpful is that?
So, although it looks like it's going to print in grayscale, lets do what it says.
Go to View choose Overprint Preview and low and behold, it's going to be alright.
So, why is this? Well it's because Illustrator's using a
little bit of trickery in order to ensure that this will image correctly.
So, it's sort of cheating, it's putting the dimensionality out of just black, so
you're getting sort of a black overlay over it.
And as part of its normal sort of lazy display, it doesn't show you the overprint.
But at least it's polite enough to tell you in that dialog that you need to turn
on Overprint Preview, and as I say Overprint Preview is a great forensic
tool when you're using spot colors. It's a great way to get a better view on
screen of the color. And in this case, it's a great way to
assure yourself that this is actually going to image the way that you hope.
So, don't forget Overprint Preview, it's kind of your friend, when you're dealing
with spot colors.