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- [Voiceover] In this

movie, I'll introduce you



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to the Separations Preview panel,



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which allows you to see how

your various process color inks



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are gonna interact with each other.



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Now I should say before we go any further



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that this panel is

specifically applicable to



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commercial reproduction, so

it has nothing to do with



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outputting your job to a local

printer such as an inkjet



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or laser printer in your home or office.



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Rather, it's all about

preparing your job so you can



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send it out to a commercial print house.



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But, it's just as applicable

whether you're printing



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directly from Illustrator

or if you place your artwork



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into a paints layout

program such as InDesign.



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Alright, so the first thing

I'll do is go up to the



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Window menu and choose Separations Preview



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in order to bring up the

Separations Preview panel.



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Now, initially it might appear blank,



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and that's because in my

case, this is an RGB document.



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If you want to be able

to see your separations,



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you're gonna need to

convert the document to CMYK



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by going up to the File menu,

choosing Document Color Mode,



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and then choosing CMYK Color.



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Now, where this document is concerned,



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we have a lot of very vibrant colors,



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which are gonna become much

more muted when we convert



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the document into CMYK,



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and that is just the way that it goes.



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RGB tends to be a more

lively color space than CMYK.



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But notice now, that we've

converted the document,



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that I can see the

various process color inks



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here inside the Separations Preview panel.



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But, you may also notice that

all of my options are dimmed,



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and that's because in order

to see what's really going on,



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you need to turn on the

Overprint Preview checkbox.



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Now, Overprinting, by the way,



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in case you've never heard of it before,



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is all about the inks

interacting with each other.



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So, in other words,



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the cyan ink is printed

on top of the magenta ink,



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which is printed on top

of yellow, and so forth,



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and because each one of

the inks is translucent,



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even black, by the way, is

ultimately a translucent ink,



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by overprinting these

inks on top of each other



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you get this splendid

degree of interaction.



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Alright, I'm gonna zoom

in just a little bit here



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by pressing Control Plus

or Command Plus on a Mac,



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and now what you can do is

you can turn your various inks



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on and off.



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Now this is not going to affect

the print job, by the way,



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it's just going to allow

you to see how the colors



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are going to interact.



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And so the first thing I'm

gonna do is Alt or Option click



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on the eye in front of black.



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So the idea is this,



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I'll go ahead and Alt

or Option click again,



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if I just click on the eyeball,



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then I'll turn that specific

ink off, in this case black,



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and then if I click again

in that blank region,



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then I'll turn the ink back on.



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Whereas, if I go ahead and Alt

or Option click on an eyeball



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then I leave that ink on,



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and I turn all the other inks off.



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So, now we can see

exactly what's gonna print



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on the black plate.



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And so, if we were to print

using exclusively black,



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this is the effect that we'd get.



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If we add yellow, as you can see,



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by clicking in front of

the yellow ink right there,



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then we get an interaction

of the black and yellow inks



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working together.



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And so, just for the

sake of demonstration,



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I'll go ahead and turn off yellow now,



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and I'll turn on magenta, so

that we can see the interaction



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of the magenta and black inks,



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and by the way, things

tend to make more sense



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when the black ink is turned on,



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because notice if I turn it off,



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we get this very garish effect,



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and even if I turn on the

cyan and yellow inks now,



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we can see that a lot

is missing right here,



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and that's because the

black ink really helps



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to lend in the shadows,



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and it also contributes

the luminance info.



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That is to say it helps

distinguish between the light areas



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and the dark areas.



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And so, notice as soon as I turn black on,



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we end up darkening the

art work dramatically.



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Now, at this point you might figure,



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well this is pretty interesting.



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It allows you to get a

sense for how the various



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Process Color inks,



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that is cyan, magenta, yellow, and black,



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are gonna interact with each other



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when you commercially

reproduce the document,



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but it's also useful for

evaluating spot colors



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and for troubleshooting a document,



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as we'll see in the following movies.