: How to reverse-engineer final overprint colors? I'm studying an old hand-made print made with water-based ink to create the layered colors. Is there an efficient way to reverse-engineer this into

@Vandalay110

Posted in: #AdobeIllustrator #Overprint #PrintProduction

I'm studying an old hand-made print made with water-based ink to create the layered colors. Is there an efficient way to reverse-engineer this into transparent layers in Illustrator?

Another way of thinking about this: if you have a watercolor painting that only used simple colors, (no complex washes,) how could you tell what pigments were used to make each shade? (Assuming there were plain samples of the pigments painted in the margins.)

I've managed to get somewhat close by sampling the resulting color and calculating the difference between that and the start (paper) color. For example:

Start Result Overprint=
C 19.00% 23.00% 4.00%
M 20.00% 29.00% 9.00%
Y 29.00% 31.00% 2.00%
K 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%


(Calculated using Overprint = Result - Start.)



Is there a more efficient way of calculating this in Illustrator? (Or some other tool?)

(This question is related to my other overprint question.)

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