New!

Filters and live Effects color adjustment

All the color control tools you come to expect of a professional design package can now be found in Adobe Illustrator® thanks to the Phantasm CS range. Add the ability to adjust colors by Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, Curves, Levels and more. Each tool has a familiar user interface and the major tools allow settings exchange with Adobe Photoshop®.

Each tool adjusts color to a professional level catering for RGB and CMYK documents and handling any spot colors correctly. By applying the color change as a live Effect, it is possible to adjust, combine, re-stack and remove any changes at any stage of the design process. And remember that when using live Effects in Illustrator, creating a new repeatable Style is merely a click away - see the Phantasm CS Styles preview page for examples of what's possible!

Advanced options available on all relevant filters and effects gives professionals the ability to ensure exact print-ready results. Options include "Safe CMYK" ensuring ink levels comply with document color settings, overprint removal, rich to pure black conversions, and more.

New for Phantasm CS Publisher: Swap Channels Filters and live Effects found in Phantasm CS Studio are advanced in Phantasm CS Publisher by allowing process channels to be swapping with spot inks, plus copying of channel data. This opens the door to generating Hi-Fi color print artwork.

Phantasm CS Publisher also extends the Curves and Levels tools by adding the ability to adjust the Bitmap Alpha channel. This was primarily developed to allow for control of standard live Effect Drop Shadows, Outer Glows and Gaussian Blurs. See the Phantasm CS Styles preview page for samples.

Creativity with Duotones and vector Halftones

Update: Duotones and vector Halftone tools are now standard across the whole Phantasm CS range...

Whereas standard color-adjustment tools such Curves and Levels don't fundamentally alter the artwork, simply the colors, the Duotone and Halftone filters and effects reconstruct the artwork to produce wonderful results. Duotones (which also refer to monotone, tritone and quadtone) are most commonly found in Adobe Photoshop®; it is now available natively in Illustrator with the ability to modify all embedded objects including vector, text and images whilst maintaining all vector/bitmap attributes. Allowing a mix of process and spot colors, the resultant artwork is high quality commercial print-ready.

The Halftone filter/effect produces a range of stunning vector-based results, from standard dot types to custom Illustrator Symbols-based creations. Faithful to the original artwork (RGB or CMYK including spot colors), the level of adjustments possible ensures creative freedom. A range of example Halftones may be seen on the Halftone resources page.

Color checking and separations

Phantasm CS Studio and Publisher provides an indispensable color checking toolset; a collection of native tools for anyone who readies artwork for publishing and print. A new Output Preview group of tools, comprising Quick Separations, Overprint Preview and Ink Coverage give immediate feedback on the technical construction of the color in a CMYK document.

Quick Separations uses a familiar interface to allow users to quickly and easily view all inks present in the document, including all process colors (CMYK) and any spot colors. Channels may be viewed in process/spot groups, individually and in any combination the user chooses. The non-destructive process separates all artwork including linked/placed objects.

Overprint Preview gives users very quick reference to which visible objects have overprint set. Any issues which arrise from overprinted objects can typically be fixed using the advanced options available in most filters and effects.

Ink Coverage gives an invaluable and unique overview of the total ink coverage throughout the document. Four user-defined levels then visually alert the user to which areas are likely to cause over-saturation for any given substrate used in the print process.

New for Phantasm CS Publisher: an advanced Ink Coverage tool is now available for high-end workflows providing greater essential TAC (Total Area Coverage) individual ink values. Plus, there is now a one-click method to automatically determine advised ink coverage levels based on the document's color profile.

The full Separations system is a power tool which actually separates all artwork in a document (except linked EPS DCS files - functionality of which can now be found in the native Photoshop format). The resultant new document can then be examined using the Phantasm CS Studio and Publisher Separations palette allowing interactive panning and zooming within the document. The "release" function then permits the separations to be taken apart or even modified without limit. This tool is ideal for not only the conventional print market who may wish to examine any artwork fully, but also textile designers, sign writers and the like who wish to produce fully separated documents which can then be processed further. There are also many creative possibilities for designers who wish to fully experiment with what is possible.

Benefits over the Quick Separation tool (which is now incorporated into Illustrator CS4) include the ability to truly examine all inks including lighter process and spot colors such as Yellow. By performing a full separation, individual channels can be viewed in greyscale for optimum clarity. See exmaples below:

A free script written by Nathaniel V Kelso is also available from the script resources page which allows fully separated PDF files to be generated. This gives the advantage that even those with Acrobat Reader can show and hide each ink used in a document.

Please note: Full Separations of artwork with spot colors is limited using Adobe Illustrator® CS2 due to technical limitations of these versions. This limitation does not apply to Quick Separations.

In-line embedded image editing

Phantasm CS Studio and Publisher provides in-line editing of any embedded image (raster artwork) in an external package such as Adobe Photoshop® and then update any changes directly back within the Illustrator document.

The process is very simple:

1. Select the image to edit
2. Choose Edit -> Edit Image within Illustrator
3. The image will automatically appear in your chosen image editor - edit the image as you desire and save the file, and finally
4. Select Edit -> Update Image within Illustrator once more.

The image embedded within the Illustrator document will then automatically display all changes including color mode changes (including Photoshop multi-ink images), altered resolution and addition/removal of the masking channel.

Supporting all image color modes permitted in Illustrator CS2 and above, including alpha masks, it provides a method to undertake changes in artwork provided by clients. It also allows all artwork to be embedded, safe in the knowledge that modifications are still possible at a later date. As embedded images can be fully color-adjusted using Phantasm CS's tools, it allows even greater productivity from a single design package.

Link embedded images

Unique to Phantasm CS Publisher is a tool to provide the reverse of the "Embed (linked/placed) Images" process natively found in Adobe Illustrator. The Link Embedded Images function operates on one or more selected embedded images, allowing each to be manually or automatically converted into a dynamically linked/placed external Photoshop image file.

The Link Embedded Images window allows users to determine file names and locations, whilst also displaying additional image information such as size, resolution and color mode.

As with in-line embedded image editing (above), Link Embedded Images supports all image color modes permitted in Illustrator CS2 and above, including alpha masks. It allows images which were previously locked into an Illustrator document to be made common across a range of Illustrator, InDesign, etc. documents.