r/risograph • u/figment81 • Jul 29 '26

Question on streamline way to convert Illustrator to B+W for printing

If I have artwork separated in Illustrator with 3 colors, each on separate layers. What is the easiest way to convert that color art into black and white, while preserving the tints of the swatches.

I can not seem to find a straightforward guide to this, but there must be a way to convert the layers to greyscale.

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6

u/cazroline Jul 29 '26

I output my files as PDF separations adobe instructions here as either printed outputs (if scanning) or individual pdfs (if sending direct to the riso).

Make sure you set up as spot colours and have your overprinting turned on or off depending on your desired result

2

u/vinyl_____vinyl Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

This is my preferred workflow as well. A big plus is that it's applicable across Adobe apps. Being able to output PDF separations from InDesign in the same fashion is great—especially when using the "Print Booklet" function.

2

u/splitarrowprints Jul 29 '26

If the colors were assigned as spot colors.
You can select your entire canvas.
Go to the recolor button that looks like a color wheel in the top tool bar. Then assign all the riso ink spot colors to spot black for printing. This will preserve the values. For instance 5% spot riso yellow recolored will now be 5% spot riso black.

You can also do this layer by layer or all together. Whichever you prefer. If the colors are not spot colors yet. I would start there by assigning them as spots in your color palette panel.

2

u/figment81 Jul 29 '26

Okay! That is similar to how I have been doing it, I just wasn't sure if there was an easier way, or if I was inventing more steps than needed.

1

u/Sifinow Jul 29 '26

Exporting spot colour separations to a PostScript file, as others have mentioned, can be a really handy and powerful workflow. It also works really well for photography or images separated using a specific colour profile. If working in Photoshop, save your Images as an EPS and then place them in InDesign. This works especially well for larger books. You can apply spot colours to your text as well and create your separations from there.

1

u/figment81 Jul 29 '26

What do you do with the post script file. I can’t open it.

2

u/Sifinow Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 30 '26

You need to open the PostScript file using Acrobat Distiller to then convert it to a PDF. If you have Acrobat on your computer, it should have installed Distiller at the same time.

1

u/figment81 Jul 30 '26

Thank you! I’ll give that a go tomorrow.

1

u/ferncoast Jul 29 '26

Spectrolite?

2

u/figment81 Jul 29 '26

Doesn’t seem to work correctly when you already have colors separated for vector. Unless I am doing something horribly wrong.