Sounds like the spot was converted to Process using Ink Manager from the Swatches panel. Are you working with a PDF or the native .indd file?

My bet would be that you have the native file and the .eps isn't respecting the ink manager setting. Re-saving the logo as .ai would be my first step, and exporting a PDF would probably work better than trying to RIP the .indd with the .eps in place.

But does it now appear in the CMYK seps? The way I read your first post the problem was that it was supposed to be converted, but instead it output as spot and you didn't make the spot plate, so if it's outputting now as CMYK everything should be fine.

Let's clear up the workflow.

As I'm currently understanding things you've received a .indd file that has a placed .eps logo that nominally is black and spot red, but that shows no red plate in seps preview, and you export this file to .eps from ID to process in the RIP (VERY old school). Is that correct?

If it is, can you check the swatch definition, please, and tell us if the "spot" red in this file is actually defined as a spot color, or as I suspsect has been redefined (as distinct from converted using Ink Manager) as process.

Is your RIP capable of processing PDF?

If you replcae the .eps logo with the .ai version do you see the red components of the logo showing up as converted on the Magenta and Yellow plates?

filewizard25 wrote:

Basically I thought I could count on the sep. prev. in Indesign to be accurate and it's sounding like it's not really accurate and that I'll have to check each individual file that is linked into Indesign. 

As I understand things .eps data is basically passed through unchanged when you export to eps from ID. I've just done a little test here to confirm this. I made a file in Illy that's jsut a rectangle filled with Pantone 187c and I saved it as both .ai and .eps and placed both in ID.

In ID I redefined the swatch to be Process and the seps preview shows no spot colors. I then exported to .eps and the .ai is process, as expected, but the .ps version of the rectangle has reverted to spot when viewing seps in Illustrator.

If I export to PDF instead of .eps, both versions are correctly converted to CMYK.

Two suggestions. Try the export again, and if you're not comfortable with that don't allow .eps to be placed in the .indd files.

For what it's worth, I've been using ID for production since version 2.0 and in all those years I've never seen a knockout failure. I'm not disputing that you had a problem, but I wonder if it wasn't really user error and the red had been set to overprint (could have been done in ID, or perhaps in the original if imported art) and you failed to notice.

Mike, I think the problem is that the format of the placed logo is .eps and that ID cannot honor the conversion to CMYK when exporting to Postscript (and it doesn't seem to matter if the conversion is done drectly in the swatch definition or in the ink manager in my tests).  This is just a case of a really antiquted workflow breaking down, I think.

You'd be amazed at the number of problems that get cleared up by replacing placed .eps files with native formats. You should encourage your users to convert, if possible.

I think, you should keep in mind that this case is kind of special. Had the designer not converted the spot to process in ID, or had they used a native format, this would never have happened. How often do you see spot colors converted in the work that is submitted? And of those, what percentage do you think are in .eps files?

Knowing the source of the problem, you should probably make a habit of scanning the swatches panel for spot colors and the links panel for .eps files and make sure the two don't intersect.