Spot colors, new spot channel, 2-colored printing

Question

I am illustrating a picture book in Photoshop, but the publisher wants to make it 2 colored (she said use green (Pantone), black and white).

I have never before illustrate with Pantone color or 2-colored (digital) for printing, and I am a little bit confused.

White and black — can I use them from the Color picker (Foreground color) and green to be a Pantone of my choice, or it will be a mess in the printing process?

I made a new spot channel to insert the green I like, does that mean that the illustration is being illustrating with the Pantone color (green)?

I am wondering that because when I double-click on the layer which I have colored with green (Pantone), the Color Overlay shows me only gray color.

Thanks in advance
Alexia

Answer 1

^{Merely converted comments to an answer...}

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This question may be helpful, as well as this answer for another question...

Using spot colors in Photoshop is not as simple as merely picking a Pantone color from the color picker while you work. There's mandatory structure to spot colors if they are to be reproduced (printed) as spot colors.

Using a Pantone color in something such as a Layer Style will not separate properly for a commercial press. That's simply not how spot colors work with Photoshop. Spot colors require their own color channel and all editing is performed on that channel not on any layer.

And don't think of white as a "color" because It's not. Your 2 colors would be black and green. White merely means "no ink is printed here".

Review the two links I posted above and your best bet is to probably create a one color (black and white) illustration and merely think about where you want green. Then you can scan/import the illustration into Photoshop and add the green via a spot color channel. This would probably be the least troublesome method for someone not familiar with spot colors and Photoshop.

An easy way to thing of this is to imagine you are printing the same piece of paper twice... the first print has all the black on it. The second print has all the green. So they need to be separated so they can be printed one at a time.