Comments on: Printing & Prepress Basics

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:21:35 +0000

This is really useful, thank you

By: Coral C

Coral C — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:23:41 +0000

This is a swatch in InDesign and Illustrator, too. Registration must never be used for anything but printer’s marks. It’s 100% of every color. If you use the registration swatch for the background on like a 70# text… get ready for puddles of ink and a rippled paper effect that will make people think you left your prints out in the rain. That amount of saturation on the paper will take hours (if not days) to dry. That’s another big mistake I see while preflighting inexperienced designers’ files.

By: Coral C

Coral C — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:18:01 +0000

Yeah, PDFs are good if the designer knows what they’re doing. But I get a lot of customers submitting “camera-ready” art that’s FAR from camera-ready. About 90% of the time, I have to make adjustments in the customer’s file and a PDF is a little too finalized for this. I always prefer EPS and TIF from my customers that need a little help with the finishing touches. Pit Stop can help a lot, but it won’t fix the file if the customer has their type right on the trim line.

By: Coral C

Coral C — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:56:08 +0000

I’m with you, I don’t like for customers to include crop marks because, depending on how they do it, makes it harder to center. But I have a vendor that asks me to include crops.

But I also recommend ALWAYS calling the printer, if possible, before even beginning the design. I have a huge customer that provides their PDFs with transparencies and spots (when it’s going process). I always tell them to convert to CMYK and flatten the transparencies and they refuse because “their other printer will take them that way”. The CMYK is not much of a problem. But their transparencies don’t get processed through our rip properly–even if we flatten for them. We have a lot of problems with their files that sometimes takes hours to fix and a lot of work-arounds. If they would just supply the files the way we ask (since we’re using our equipment and not the “other” printer’s equipment) then things would go more smooth.

By: Coral C

Coral C — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:25:54 +0000

Yeah, I will accept around 230dpi at the lowest without seeing much difference in quality. Though, it depends on the photo as well.

By: Coral C

Coral C — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:23:29 +0000

I’d like to elaborate on that black section: NEVER make your type more than 1-color black, unless it’s a large, bold heading. Anything under 14pt should always be black-only. And as far as the Photoshop default black; I’ve yet to work for a press that will accept those values, especially if it’s going through inline UV. The highest values I will ever allow for a rich black is C:40 M:20 Y:20 K:100. But most presses just use a blue kicker C:20 K:100. Personally, I like the 40,20,20,100 combo. Very nice, elegant, rich black.

And I also wanted to mention something about resolution. As another person said, resolution is a HUGE problem when preflighting. It happens more often than not. But one big mistake I see people do frequently is simply “change” the resolution of a file from 72 to 300. This is not how it’s done. The resolution must be high to begin with. If you’re going to change it from 72 to 300, it has to be done proportionately and this will most likely make you’re image, dimensionally, smaller than you’d prefer. If you stretch it back to the size you want, it will probably look worse than it did before. I usually explain that resolution is like looking at your TV screen really close. The closer you are, the better you can see those RGB pixels. As you get further away, you can’t notice them at all. This is because there are more pixels within your vision’s “inch”. So it may look all fuzzy and pixelated when you have your eyeball up against the screen, as you back up, the picture becomes clearer, but it also becomes much smaller as you distance yourself. The best thing to do is always buy large, high res stock art (you might just be doing a website, but they may want posters next and just haven’t told you). And if you’re using photos from a camera, make sure you always use the largest, finest setting possible. You can make low res from high res, but you can’t make high res from low res.

Of course, if you have low res artwork, digital printing is a better option if you must print low res. But don’t let the “digital” in the title fool you into thinking it’s better quality printing than offset. It’s just a cheap, quick fix.

By: Coral C

Coral C — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:04:58 +0000

I’ve been doing graphic design since 1997 and prepress since 2001. My experience with CMYK on screen is that there is a bit of variation–you’ll get this going from computer to computer anyway. The thing with CMYK is that there’s usually a color variation on press as well (especially if you’re printer is slapping your artwork on a gangrun). So, the color on your nice, calibrated screen can still be “off” when printed depending on how heavy the pressman runs each color. The most efficient way I’ve been able to guess my color outcome is to become EXTREMELY familiar with the values. Don’t go by what your screen shows, go by the values and how they worked for you in the past. Know what C:0 M:100 Y:100 K:10 looks like after it’s printed. Know that C:100 M:100 Y:0 K:0 will not come out the nice electric blue you see on screen (it will be more purple). Know that when you’re trying to make a blue (no matter the shade) that C and M should always have a 20% difference between them to prevent purple from printing. Those CMYK values are almost as good as Pantone colors if you know how they blend with each other and have tried and true colors you like that have been PROFESSIONALLY printed before

By: felix

felix — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:56:03 +0000

cool Text, very useful for a newbie like me

By: margaret

margaret — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:51:46 +0000

or how about just the issues inherent with people not having the colours on their monitors correctly calibrated?
My first couple years out of design school I worked pre-press for a small CD/DVD manufacturer. I expected the errors from the many amateurs we received work from, but was utterly surprised by the amount of errors received from credible design agencies!

I am very thankful though for my experience in pre-press as I KNOW it has made me a better designer, and saves my company $.

By: Brijesh

Brijesh — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:44:01 +0000

yes this is very informative for the people who are new to the trade and want to have a basic idea about the pre press trade