General Prepress Tips
In an attempt to help you in preparing your digital files to
be output, we offer these tips:
Include a printed proof with
your job so we know how it is suppose to look. Just because
your document looks great on screen, or printed perfectly on
your inkjet printer, doesn't necessarily mean it will look the
same when output on our high resolution postscript devices.
Color shifts, image drop outs, text reflow, gradient banding,
are just some of the things that can go awry. To minimize the
possibility of getting your job back incorrect, we need a visual
reference to go by.
Remember to include all the files used to
create your documents when submitting a job to us for output.
This includes all image files and fonts. Desktop publishing
applications often use links to graphics you placed in your
document. This means that when you put your company's logo in
the business card layout you spent all night designing, it didn't
necessarily put the actual graphic file into the document. Many
programs (Quark XPress and PageMaker included) use placeholders
to represent the graphic in your document and include instructions
to the application as to the location of the actual file on
your computer.
When you give us your job to output, our software either informs
us your graphic file is missing, or when the file prints, it
does so either with a low-resolution version of the graphic
or an empty space where your graphic should have been.
As important as it is to include all graphic
files used on the disk you give us (or compressed archive file
sent to us digitally through e-mail or the automatic file upload
system on this website), it is equally as important that you
supply us with all the font files used in your document, even
if you think we'll have the same font. While we may have Helvetica
Bold-Italic loaded on our systems just as you, we may not have
the same font format (yours is truetype while ours is postscript)
or the same font version (yours is 1.1 while ours is 1.2a).
Unless you only use standard Helvetica (Mac), Arial (PC) or
Times (Mac) / TimesNewRoman (PC); don't take the chance.
As always, include a print out made from the system you used
to create the document with in order to help us catch problems
like missing fonts and text reflow.
Never give us (or any service bureau) the
only copy of your files. We run many jobs everyday, most that
come in incomplete, late and without labeled media. We do our
best to keep all of your files safe and secure, but accidents
do happen. Make sure to retain at least one copy of all of your
files just in case. Five extra minutes of time backing up can
save hours of frustration.
Always label your removable storage media
with your name and contact information. Sending a service bureau
an unlabeled zip disk is the best way to lose an unlabeled zip
disk.
Know the final specifications of your job
before you take it to your service bureau. This includes whether
the film is to be negative or positive, emulsion up or down,
and what the line screen should be. Your printer, or ad rep
if your final piece is an advertisement in a magazine, should
provide you with this information. Remember, film is expensive
and you only want to have to run your job once. Of course if
we are going to print your job than you don't have to worry
about this.
Understand what a color gamut is and which
one to use when preparing digital files. A color gamut is the
range of colors that a particular device can display or print.
The human eye has a larger color gamut than our computer monitors,
which in turn have a larger gamut than our printers. Keep this
in mind when designing art to print.
Your monitor displays color by means of Red,
Green, and Blue light (hence the acronymn RGB) which are the
primary colors of the receptors in the human eye. Consequently,
monitors display images that are very true to the way we actually
see them. Printers use inks and dyes, most commonly Cyan, Magenta,
Yellow and blacK (CMYK), to simulate the appearance of RGB light.
Due to impurities in the pigments of ink, 4 color (or full colour
as it is sometimes known) printing can not reproduce accurately,
or at all, many of the colors we can see with our eyes or display
on our computers. This often yields muddy blues, ugly greens
and dull reds (ironically the actually primary colors that printing
seeks to recreate).
Thus, use CMYK color mode in your applications
when creating art that is destined for print, and RGB color
mode when your art is to be displayed only on screen (multimedia
presentation or website).
Learn the difference between EPS and TIFF
files and when each is appropriate to use. An EPS file is an
Encapsulated Postscript file format used to transfer Postscript
image information from one program to another. The file is made
up of Postscript programming code and a low-res bitmap preview,
usually a PICT on the MAC and a TIFF on the PC, to allow for
placement within a layout application. Files created in a vector
drawing program such as Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand,
or Corel Draw should be saved in EPS format if they are to be
placed within a desktop publishing program (i.e. Quark XPress,
Adobe PageMaker) to be printed. TIFF, or Tagged Image File Format,
is widely used for exchanging bitmapped images (typically scanned
images and files created in a paint program such as Adobe Photoshop
or Corel Photo-Paint) between applications. Different service
bureaus and prepress operators have their own philosophy and
reasoning about whether to save bitmap images as EPS or TIFF
files. Our rule of thumb is that unless you specify a clipping
path or create a polytonal image (duotone, tritone, etc.) that
requires a transfer function be preserved, ALL bitmap images
should be saved as CMYK TIFF files (resolution not less than
300dpi). The disadvantages of using an EPS (larger files size,
possibility of a postscript error) outweigh any arguable advantages
with today's advanced imagery software.
Specify fonts and their styles (bold, italic)
using their long names in your publishing program's font menu
rather than clicking on the "Bold" or "Italic"
button. When choosing a font from a program's font menu, you
will often see the stylized versions of the font listed along
with the standard style of the font (i.e. Helvetica-Bold, Arial
Bold-Italic, etc.). These are the fonts actually present in
your system. When choosing a font and then clicking the "Bold"
button, the program you are using will create a bolded version
of the font on screen, whether you actually have the font present
on your system or not. It may look right on screen, and actually
print right to your inkjet printer or PCL compatible laser printer,
but when we try to image it on our high end postscript output
devices, the results are unpredictable. At best, we will have
the proper font style loaded on our system and the font will
print properly. Other likely possibilities include: the standard
version of the font printing (Quark XPress' typical response)
or even an offset double-image of the font can print (ala PageMaker).
There is an exception to this rule: when using a truetype font,
some applications will not display the stylized versions of
the font even when present. If you know you have the proper
style truetype font, go ahead and use the "Bold" or
"Italic" style buttons... just make sure you know
you have that style loaded in your system. As always, include
the fonts you used in your document when sending it to us to
output.
Clean up your documents before bringing them
in to your service bureau. This includes removing any unused
spot colors from your color palettes (this applies to mainly
to desktop publishing and illustration applications since image
editing software and word processors deal primarily with RGB
and CMYK colors), deleting any unused fonts, and eliminating
any items outside of your document in the pastboard. These simple
steps make it easier for us to output and less likely for a
postscript error to occur.
Never use the hairline rule option. Named
hairline rules vary by device, and in some instances don't print
at all. A better line weight to define a hairline with is .25
point.
Beware large areas of solid black when designing
files for 4 color printing. Many presses can't handle large
areas of solid black ink, and those that can often produce a
black that is very dull looking in comparison to the rest of
the colors on the page. This is because most colors are a mixture
of colors whose lower density values add up to more than 100%
(maximum amount for any one ink color). The best way to deal
with this is by creating what is known as a process black. That
is a mixture of 100% black with lower densities of two or more
process colors. For example, to match closely the default black
created by Photoshop, make a mixture of Cyan = 65%, Magenta
= 53%, Yellow = 51% and Black = 100%.
May
2007 Newsletter
