Saving a PDF with Separations turned off

[harveycreative]

I have been sent a 5 colour PDF by my customer but need to save it with just the Spot plate visible for use as a template in In Design. I know how to turn the Separations off (in this case the CMYK plates) to leave just the spot plate but I can't seem to save this as a new version. Any ideas?

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

The only way to get separations that I am aware of is to print to a PostScript printer and then on the print dialog, click the "Advanced" button and then select to print "Separations":

Keep in mind hat the separation pages will all be in grayscale, so you will not see the actual color that is being used.

[harveycreative]

Thanks for this but my Colour drop down that you have highlighted is grey out. Probably because I don't have any PPD's installed. I thought that there might be a way of Pre-flighting it so that it removes the CMYK plates?

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

The color selection will be grayed out if you do not have a PostScript printer selected. On Windows, you should be able to print to the "Adobe PDF" printer - select that before you click on "Advanced". On a Mac, you will have to install a PostScript dummy printer that prints to a file.

If you have Adobe Acrobat DC Pro, you can map the four process color plates to the special spot color "None". Take a look at the single fixups, you should find one called 'Map specified process color into spot color "Light Brown"' - you can duplicate that and then modify it so that it now maps to "None". This fixup will ask you for a process color, but you could create four of these for CMYK and then create a new preflight profile that converts all four plates to None in one operation. This color mapping feature was introduced in Acrobat DC Pro, and it's not available in older versions of Acrobat Pro.

[harveycreative]

Great advice thanks!

Next problem, I have installed the dummy printer but get Saving a PDF file when printing is not supported. Instead, choose File > Save. Do I need to re-install AA DC?

I had a crack at customising the Preflight you suggested but made my brain hurt so gave up on that option. But thanks!

[Karl Heinz Kremer]

Are you on a Mac? How did you install the PostScript printer? I don't think there is a need to re-install Acrobat.

I created a single Fixup profile that you can download and import into Acrobat DC Pro:

http://khkonsulting.com/files/AUC/MapProcessColorsToNone.kfp

[harveycreative]

Yes. I'm on a Mac. I installed it using the instructions own this link...

Set up a default printer in the Print Center | Mac OS X

Wow thanks! I'll give this a go. I'm thinking that I may also just be able to "Edit PDF" and delete the items that I don't need?

I'll be offline for a couple of days now but thanks so much for your time!      I'll let you kn ow bow I go with your link.

[Karl Heinz Kremer · Accepted solution]

This is an old link, and I don't know if this still works with recent versions of Mac OS X. I usually go a different route by using the CUPS configuration directly, but that's a bit too complex for a reply here. If you need further help, let me know.