Ink remapping; determining which color separations to print; which to simulate with CMYK; and what angles to print them at; happens in the Ink Remapping step.
Here is a workflow configured to pause after collecting the ink separation data so that a user can decide what to do.
When you have job paused at the Ink Remapping step, you can get to the color editor one of two ways.
1. Right-click the job; the contextual menu appears. Choose Edit Spot Colors...
2. Select the job and then click the Ink Remapping button in the menu bar
Either way the Edit Spot Colors dialog box appears.
Here is a job containing 9 colors.
But we intend to print it as a 6 color job. We also want to control the screen angles of the spot color channels.
Controlling screen angles is done in the Angle column. Either choose a CMYK angle to print a color with, or choose Custom and type in whatever angle you wish.
If you want to convert the Custom Yellow to CMYK then just check the box Use Process Colors. It will print as CMYK build. It shows a CMYK rectangle next to the color ID to further illustrate this.
Now let's merge the color Red with the color Pantone 199 C by dragging it and dropping it.
Next, let's merge Blue and Pantone Blue 072 C.
Now we have a 6 color job. Why is it now 6 and not 9? The yellow is converted to CMYK, the Blue is merged with Pantone Blue, and the Red is merged with Pantone 199. So we'll get CMYK+PMS 072+PMS 199.
But wait. I'm afraid the build of that Custom Yellow might be contaminated with other inks. If we want be certain to only print it with Yellow, we can make one more change and drag it directly to a single process color.
If you wish, you can collapse the merged colors to only see the printable separations listed.
And there you have it. A 6 color job with angles set for each spot color.
Here is some finer detail on the UI and it's options:
Ink Remapping has an option on the pause so that, if there are no spot colors, you don't pause. That way, if your prepress department generally doesn't need to intervene on CMYK separations, you can cruise on past to the next step. Check "Auto Release if no Spot Colors" and jobs with no spot color separations will not pause.
There are two buttons at the top.
This button is "Undo"
This button is for digital printers that are converting all spot to CMYK and the CMYK recipe needs to be changed.
The button brings up this dialog box.
This feature is covered in it's own document and is not covered further here.
This concludes the Ink Remapping guide.