In this lesson, you are going to learn how to add Spot Color Content to a Photoshop file, you are not limited to just CMYK, you can add spot colors, you can add elements like gloss vanishes. For example, you might want to print an image that just can't quite be accomplished in CMYK, maybe you want to add some vibrancy or increase the color of it and you might want to add the spot varnish to add a little drama and make it sort of pop-off the page.

Go to your Project Files folder, go into your Chapter 01 folder and open up the file named Lips 2, it's a PSD file. Pretty red lips, but we like for them to be even redder. We have the budget for a spot color in this job and also for a spot gloss varnish. Remember that anytime you add spot colors or creative effects like spot varnishes it does add to the cost of the job, but it does make for a much nicer appearance.

We are going to look into the Channels Panel to get started. This is a CMYK image. So at the top of the Channels Panel, you see CMYK and this is called a Composite, it just means it's all the colors that compose this image. But we can look at the individual channels and look at something that corresponds to the individual printing plate. The Cyan, I am now looking at the Magenta and the Yellow and the Black.

When you print color images, they are printed in combinations of CMYK, but we want to add one more color, and to do that we are going to create a special channel. Now you may have made masks in the past in Photoshop and stored them in Alpha Channels. Those are channels that go beyond the Color Channels in Photoshop. But this is a special channel. To the right side of the Channels Palette, go to the Palette Menu and choose New Spot Channel.

You are going to pick a color by clicking on this little color block here. You won't be picking out of the color-picker because you want to pick out of a Swatch Book. On the right, click on the Color Libraries button and it gives you a list of all the available digital swatch books. If you click the pull-down, you will see the list of swatch books that are available to you, pretty daunting list I know, but you are probably familiar with the Pantone Swatch books.

In this case, we are going to pick from the Pantone solid-coated book and all that means is coated paper. Keep in mind that the Pantone inks are the same whether you print them on coated or uncoated or matte stock, it's really all about the paper, not about the ink.

In this case, we have been told that we are going to use PANTONE Red 032. I am going to scroll up to the top of this list by dragging these little bracket sliders because I happened to know that the PANTONE Red 032 is right at the top of the file.

Click on the correct color, PANTONE Red 032 and then click OK. Don't worry about the little Color blocks appearance now, don't worry about Solidity 0, just make sure that you have the correct name in the Name field, PANTONE Red 032 C and click OK.

Up till now, you don't have a whole lot to show for your efforts, you have a blank empty channel. But what we are going to do is look at the existing content in other channels and pick the most promising color, duplicate it, and add that content to that empty channel. And remember that this channel corresponds to the printing plate that's going to print the ink, PANTONE Red 032.

If you click on the name, Cyan not the eyeball next to it and then turn off the eyeballs by just kind of scooting your mouse down on the eyeballs on the other channels, you can look at the Cyan Channel by itself. Click on the name Magenta, and then the name Yellow, and the name Black.

The Magenta Channel is going to give us the best head-start. We really want the Spot Color Content to correspond to the CMYK Content underneath. It's not really going to cover up that Red and Yellow that's already in the image, it's going to enhance it, so we really want it to be sort of a repetition of the image content in the Magenta Channel. So we really wanted to enhance the red that we see in the image.

We are going to use the Magenta Channel as a starting point. So with the Magenta Channel selected in the Channels Panel, go up to Select > All, it's right up under Select, you might miss it. You get the traditional marching ants around the edge of the image and you know that you have everything selected. Then we want to copy this to the Clipboard, so you could choose Edit > Copy or Ctrl+C on Windows, Command+C on the Mac. You don't see anything happen. But now all those pixels are stored on the Clipboard. Click on the name, PANTONE Red in the Channels Panel, we don't have anything there yet, but now we will paste that image content in.

Go to Edit and choose Paste, or you can use Ctrl+V on Windows or Command+V on the Mac, and now what you picked up out of the Magenta Channel is pasted into your new PANTONE Red Channel, but we need to tune it up a little bit.

First thing, de-select, go up to Select and Deselect or you could use Ctrl+D on Windows or Command+D on the Mac. Your marching ants go away.

And remember where we see black in this channel is where ink is going to be printed on paper in that spot color. We certainly don't want red in the teeth. So we need to clean out the interior of the lips to clean white. You can do this several different ways, you can use your painting tools, you can use your Lasso or other selection tools in order to isolate it and fill it with white. I am going to use my Lasso Tool.

And keep in mind that you don't have to be deadly accurate with this. You are going to have CMYK versions of the red lips right there in the neighborhood. So if the spot color doesn't have to absolutely correspond pixel-per-pixel, it's going to probably be the last ink down. So if there are any little pieces peeking out, you are probably never going to see it. No reason to be sloppy, but this way, you don't feel quite so nervous.

Once you have the tooth area selected, take a look at your foreground and background colors at the bottom of your Tool Panel. Right, now my foreground color is white, my background color is black. I need to fill this area with white. I am going to go up to Edit and Fill. Now this is the long way around, I will tell you a short way as well. When I choose Edit > Fill, I could chose Foreground Color or Background Color, but here is a good thing to know, Black 50%, Gray, and White are always available here for you, no matter what your foreground and background colors are. I am going to choose White and click OK.

Nice keyboard shortcut to know is that Delete applies your background color. Alt+Delete on Windows or Option+Delete on the Mac applies your foreground color, and that will save you a trick up to that Edit Menu. Deselect, it's always a good habit, so that you don't do something you don't mean to do.

Now, if you will turn on eyeball by the name CMYK and that's a Composite Channel. In a CMYK image, the Composite Channel is the channel that's named CMYK up here. It just tells you the colors that compose this image. If this were an RGB image, we'd see RGB up here. So you have the individual channel Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, which you can target. But when you select the name CYMK, you are talking to all the colors of the image. So that's a difference between the eyeball next to a channel name which means that you are controlling the visibility of that channel or of this composite CMYK channel, and selecting the name which targets the channel for you to paint in it or delete things or modify content into the channel.

I am going to click on CMYK so that we are now addressing that channel, and you notice that there is no highlight in the name of the PANTONE Red Channel, it's there or it is not working with it right now. We want to save this image in an appropriate format for use in InDesign. We are lucky because InDesign is willing to take native.psd, native Photoshop file. So you don't have to save this as an EPS. If you saved it as a TIF, you would lose your Spot Channel information. So all you have to do is save it as a native.psd and Photoshop knows what to do with the Spot Color. So we are going to save it now with the Spot Color and then I am g