Not only do Palettes save you time, but they allow you to combine certain functions and actions into Automated Tasks, speeding up your workflow. When you use this Palette over the whole document it can be a great way to kick start the separation of woodgrains and textures. When used within a selection, it can be a good way to make tonal separations of a motif. Download here.

The steps performed in the Separate CMY Palette

Starting with a scanned RGB image, this Palette sets a CMYK Table to get 300% layer coverage, and to use no black in the separation. It then separates the file through this table while renaming the layers so that they act like spot layers, and are no longer part of a CMYK Image. Finally, the Palette assigns typical production CMY colours to each layer. 

How to develop the initial separation achieved using the Separate CMY Palette

After running the Palette, you may wish to adjust the colours of the spot layers and adjust the Gamma. You can also use Combine to Layer to fine tune the overprint between the layers.