If you work a lot with consumer packaging like I do, it means that you deal with complex colorful graphics printed frequently on foil substrates. In sending out your production design files it is useful to setup your files in a way that indicates colors overprinting the foil substrate. To do so you'll want to mask out certain items so that you can indicate overprints of other items.
Say you have a foil substrate carton that has a face panel that has a logo, an icon and copy that overprint the foil. But you also have some background colors covering the whole panel behind those other items.
First make a rectangular shape covering the whole panel. Then duplicate the shapes of the logo, icon and copy. The copy will need to be vector. With the rectangle as the back most path select it and the other items all at once, then press Command-8 on your keyboard. This will make all selected paths one compound path. This now becomes the path with which you will mask out the areas overprinting the foil. Select your new compound path and all other items that are behind your graphics which will be overprinting the foil.
With all of these items selected press Command-7 on your keyboard. You now have a new masked group.
Now to indicate the overprints, create a layer below the the graphics that has a gray or a foil simulation. This will help in indicating a foil substrate. Make sure to indicate this layer as a 'for position only' layer so that the print vendor does not print it. To visualize the graphics overprinting the foil, select each graphic that will be overprinting and select 'Multiply' in the Transparency panel.
On occassion your compound path may reverse your paths making your positives negative and your negatives positive. In this case select your path and try reversing the direction of your path in the Attributes panel.
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