How to Apply Spot Color and Spot UV Channels in Photoshop

April 18, 2010| Godserv Designs

16 thoughts on “How to Apply Spot Color and Spot UV Channels in Photoshop”

  1. Mike

    Great tutorial. I’m having a very strange problem. After placing my image containing the spot, my spots show up properly in the seps window as extra plates. However, after I save the InDesign file, turning off the spot plate doesn’t turn off the spot color area in the image. Going crazy. Ever encounter this dilemma?
    Thank you!

    1. Godserv Post author

      Make sure there are no layers in the .PSD file with the color – in CMYK or RGB. The layer below the Spot color should be White.

  2. speakresh

    I am highly pleased to see this! and I have benefitted a lot from your posts as well. I will like to learn how you created the simulated UV coating in photoshop. it is nice and would love to use it for presentation purposes and other purposes

    1. Godserv Post author

      Hi speakresh, we just added the photoshop style created for this project. See the link above below the “Simulated Image”. You can apply the style to any shape or text – best to have an image with good contrast below the shape. Hope that helps. God bless you.

  3. Belvedere

    Okay, I have a couple of dumb questions (I’m a TOTAL BEGINNER at this spot UV stuff/masks/channels as well…)

    1. Do I need to use that red pantone if the place where i will print the cards asks for black for uv coating and white for no uv coating? Or will the red become sorta invisible (so to speak) when the printer reads it?

    2. If I start this document as CMYK instead of RGB, I suppose I can skip the InDesign step?

    Thank you so much for publishing this tutorial, I would still be totally in the dark if it wasn’t for you! 🙂

    1. Godserv Post author

      !. Yes, you can use the red pantone color using the method in the tuts – you actually can use any pantone color. The printer will print a 5th plate using the red pantone color channel along with the CMYK plates.

      2. You don’t need the Indesign section – I only used that to show the 5 separations you will get for the file – CMYK + the Pantone color (5 Colors = 5 plates)

  4. Anthony

    Very helpful, great tutorial, and awesome design! but here’s a challenge I’m running into. For example, let’s say I wanted to spot uv the leg as well as the letter “D” in “gods” , the way I was taught was to use the select > color range > take a sample of area and go from there. The issue is the “D” is the same color as the other white letters so I can not isolate it. Any help is appreciated.

    Thanks!

    1. Godserv Post author

      HI Anthony, great question. You could select the “D” first with the magic wand or by any other means, then Save the selection (Select > Save Selection). Clear the selection and then select the leg > then load the “D” selection you saved earlier while holding the shift key. This will add the “D” selection to the “Leg” selection – Now you have one Mask to work with.

      You can also select the “D” then hold shift while you select the leg. This will add the “leg” selection to the “D” selection.

      If you are having problem selecting the “D” with the magic wand because all the text is white – do this: –

      After selecting the magic wand – the tool will change to show the options for the magic wand – make sure the “Contiguous” button is selected – allowing you to select only the “D” and not all areas that are white.

      Hope that solved the problem.

      1. Anthony

        Very helpful and it did, thank you very much! Bookmarking/subscribing to check out all your other stuff!

    1. Godserv

      Hi Greg,
      You must start a new document or have a document open already.
      To start a new document from your menu Go > File > New > Document
      after this just GO > File Place. This will bring up a Navigation box which you can use to find your Photoshop file.

      If that does not work – your installation may be buggy. Let me know.

  5. Abadi

    Thank you for the tutorial. It’s just GREAT! Now I can make my own business cards with UV !!!

  6. loswl

    Thanks for this Godserv, I have a couple projects I will be using this on, love how you used in-Design to see the color separation….very nice!

  7. Nadedge

    Very Cool tut, always wanted to know how they applied UV to a photo, seen it done in some high end catalogs, thanks so much for sharing this 🙂

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