prepress tips – Page 2

June 30, 2014

Upgrading to Adobe CC 2014 for Print – The Designer’s Not-Quite-Definitive Guide

The Adobe suite of Creative Cloud programs continues to expand, encompassing far more than the standard prepress desktop publishing tools to which many graphic designers and printers have become accustomed. In addition to our graphic design/print trifecta of InDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator, CC includes over a dozen separate industry-leading programs for website and mobile app development, video and audio editing, and additional perks like Bridge, TypeKit and Behance. The entire bundle – as well as the upkeep of consistent fixes and updates – can seem a daunting beast to contain.

So… after getting settled in with the Adobe cloud-based versions and their new subscription service last year, the introduction of CC 2014 seemed to come around pretty suddenly. With all new stand-alone installations of InDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator – didn’t we just do this? – the rapidity of updates might seem a little unsettling. Luckily, Adobe has made the change this time as painless as possible. While I in no way pretend to be up on all the latest tech improvements and cutting-edge changes in the Creative Cloud suite (the website says there are “hundreds”), I can tell you some of the perks we encountered installing the new programs that take the edge off the change and even got us excited about the new improvements.

First, Acrobat has not changed in the 2014 update. Acrobat is essential for file transfer between graphic designers and printers, so new updates can often impact standard procedures in unexpected ways! In our printshop, we use some very specific third-party plug-ins for Acrobat XI Pro that are essential to our prepress workflow – imposition, preflighting, repurposing, etc. Traditionally, when Acrobat upgrades to an entirely new version, we have to wait a while for all the plug-ins to release compatible updates. That won’t be a problem for you this time around.

To be clear, InDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator CC 2014 are all new versions. You can leave your previous CC and CS versions installed and running, and choose to uninstall them at a later time if you desire. You will, however, have to reinstall any plug-ins to your new 2014 versions in order to access them.

Adobe did a GREAT job in creating a seamless transition experience for InDesign users. Updating to InDesign CC 2014 will automatically migrate your presets and settings from the previous version to your 2014 joint. No jarring initial view that bears little resemblance to the InDesign interface you have grown to love – your workspaces, preferences, and keyboard shortcuts are all automatically transferred. The “What’s New” introductory pop-up window includes access to easy-to-view videos of the 5 major enhancements as well a link to the Adobe website with more information on all 11 of the important changes. The videos will introduce you to:

The aforementioned seamless update to customize your interface just like you had it before. (Even our plug-in for Ajar’s HTML5 export installed – wasn’t expecting that.)
A new EPUB fixed layouts export definition. It does a better job of handling illustrations and photography when exporting to EPUB, as well as creating your Table of Contents and handling interactive video and audio.
An awesome new feature that allows you to move rows and columns in Tables with just a click and drag.
The handy ability to group colors within your swatches palette.
Enhancements to the Search feature: you can now search forward and backward using “Find Previous” as well as “Find Next.”

PhotoShop and Illustrator have some great new features for designers preparing files for print, also. Illustrator’s new attractions are a newly rebuilt pencil tool, the ability to reshape path segments, Live Shapes, Live Corners and integration with Typekit. The “Welcome” screen does a good job of introducing all of the new features. PhotoShop includes new Path and Shape Blur Effects, Typekit, new Smart Guide features, and selection of an area based on what is in focus. Installing the new versions did not automatically import my old workspace and preferences, unfortunately.

Overall, don’t fear the change of an update to CC 2014 – the new perks are worth the effort and the transition for us went hitch-free. With that behind you, you’ll be ready for the next one coming down the line.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

May 12, 2014

Use Layers to Keep Auto Page Numbers on Top in InDesign

A frequent InDesign question from designers for our prepress department concerns how to keep Master Page page numbering on top when design elements on individual pages cover that area. By default, the Master Page items will lie below any other page elements in the document. Our easy solution is achieved with the Layers palette. The InDesign Layers palette works just like it does in PhotoShop or Illustrator, and can easily solve the problem of disappearing page numbering.

Auto Page Numbering is set up on your master pages. Yet, by default, these numbers will be covered up by any page element in your document that crosses over that area. To work around this fact, create a new layer (while still on your Master Pages layout) and give it a name you will understand, such as “Top Master Items” or “Page Numbers.” With this layer highlighted, set up auto page numbering, and any other master items that you want to always be visible above any other elements. Just be sure to keep that layer on TOP, and to work on the OTHER lower layer(s) for all placement of text and graphics as you create your document.

This is a very simple set-up using Layers. However getting use to managing page numbers this way can help introduce you to the functions of the Layers palette and help you begin considering the more advanced ways it can assist your workflow. Layers can allow you to “version” your document – creating multiple, coexisting editions of your document using different languages, images or copy. For example, if you set up all your text on one layer separate from any other graphic elements, you could then create additional layers of text in Spanish and French. By toggling these layers on and off you have 3 separate language versions within the same document, all using the same imagery and design. When exporting to pdf, be sure to turn on and off the desired layers for that output.

As with most projects, having a clear plan in the beginning can sidestep a lot of annoying roadblocks later. A good idea for beginning a print project in InDesign is to plan out the scope of your design with a few answers first: the size and number of pages, margins and bleed area, facing or non-facing pages, section and page numbering and how you will use Layers to help organize your work. Of course, all of these can be altered or added after the design begins but often you will save time and work by being organized at the start.

Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

January 3, 2014

Bleeding Edge: How to Properly Create Bleed Area for Print

We’ve written at ImageBlog before about how to create proper bleed area for your print files. Missing or insufficient bleed area and crop marks rank in the top three of prepress problems along with color separations and font issues. Interestingly, thanks to improved pdf creation in desktop publishing applications and the more forgiving nature of a digital printing workflow, those latter two problems are increasingly a thing of the past. But not for the old missing bleed area problem!

Bleed is any printed area that extends off the edge of the page. Presses do not print to the very edge of a sheet, so files with bleeding elements must be larger than the desired finished size and printed on larger sizes of paper, then cut down. Knowing that ahead of time, you can easily create files and export pdfs that will trim out exactly as you expect.

You might be surprised, but many folks think their printer can add a workable bleed area to most any file. In reality, some printers will attempt to make a non-bleeding file “work” without telling you the customer, in an effort to save the extra time and hassle. A file can be printed slightly larger than 100%, which will allow a slight trim area. Also, some printers will cut a file slightly smaller than the finished size – a risky move if done without your consent, but one that also will create a finished bleed edge. If the bleed is a solid color, the file can be imposed on top of a bleed area of the same color. All of these work-arounds are less than ideal solutions, and you could be charged more in prepress costs for the fix. Here’s how to create the bleed you need in your layout program.

Remember, the bleed area you define upon originally opening your new document is only the bleed area that appears on your screen as you work on your file. It IS NOT (necessarily) the bleed area that automatically ends up in the pdf file you output for print.

InDesign

InDesign makes this very simple. Set up your new document size, and at this step give yourself as much Bleed Area to work with as you want. Some folks put in 1/8″ because the actual pieces of artwork or color rarely need to extend any further off the page than that small amount. However, when you export your final pdf, go to the Marks and Bleeds Tab, choose only crop marks, then at this step add .5″ of Bleed Area to the pdf file on each of the four sides. Do NOT check the box “Use Document Bleed Settings”.

Marks and Bleed Area — Crop Marks and 1/2 inch Bleed Area

If you do, the final pdf will try to size itself to include the bleed area you put in at document setup. If that is insufficient to hold the crop marks, the pdf will auto-enlarge to accommodate the crop marks and the finished size will be something odd like 8.821 x 9.415 – not so easy to work with when imposition time comes. Keeping the math simple, if you put in .5″ at export as your bleed area, your 8.5″ x 11″ document will create a pdf that is 9.5″ x 12″ wide. Perfect for a bleed.

PhotoShop

If you design entirely in Photoshop, you need to initially create your document LARGER than the finished size. Again, keep the math simple by using .5″ extra on each side: a finished piece at 9″ x 5″ would be a PhotoShop document of 10″ x 6″. You can add the crop marks yourself, or simply tell your printer that the bleed area is there and let them add the correct crop marks for final cutting. The important part is to have the actual bleed area on there!

Illustrator

If you work in Illustrator to create your final print files or pdfs, simply choose File – Save As and then choose pdf/x-1A. Just like in InDesign, go to the Marks and Bleeds tab, turn on crop marks and allow a .5″ bleed on all four sides of the finished pdf file. If you submit a native Illustrator file or eps, you can also add crop marks around an object by choosing Object – Create Trim Marks. Just be sure your Artboard is large enough to accommodate those marks.

ImageSmith is proud to be a printer in an exciting era of digital communication. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

July 30, 2013

Quick Photoshop Tip: Seperate Layer Effects Onto Their Own Layer for Editing

Simple tips are often the most useful. In Photoshop, I’ve found this one to be very handy for editing Layer Effects in the Layers palette. Finding it is not the most accessible or intuitive – so hopefully this can be helpful.

Layers in a Photoshop file allow us to manipulate and edit different parts of the image individually, using transparency, masks, blends and filters to alter and manage how the finished photo will appear. The Layer Style palette allows you to add different effects to that specific layer: drop shadow, bevel and emboss, Outer Glow, Gradient Overlays, etc. But often, designers find a need to edit the Layer Effects seperately, beyond the controls within the Layer Style window. I often find a need to adjust the drop shadow independently of the layer to which it is married, reshaping it in order to give the desired perspective.

Photoshop of course provides a way to do this, but it isn’t a simple function listed under the Layer Style drop-down palette: from the top menu bar, choose Layer – Layer Style – Create Layer. Notice in your Layers palette that the effect has now moved onto it’s own layer and can be manipulated individually from its Master layer. Photoshop also conveniently names the new layer after the effect you applied. Some effects, such as Bevel, require multiple layers to be created in order to maintain the effect. You can then edit as needed. In this sample we distorted the drop shadow down into a shape that appears to be a more realistic cast shadow from a standing zebra.

Photoshop is constantly changing, but Adobe provides great tutorials online to help you learn new tips and techniques. Also, stay abreast of latest news and inspiration from industry insiders at the photoshop.com blog.

Printers understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmental responsible printing. They should also be able to work with you to solve any difficult prepress issues with your files. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

May 17, 2013

Gradient Banding in Wide Format Printing: Can You Prevent It?

A quick check online convinces me that a lot of folk – designers, artists and printers – are frustrated with gradients that print with banding, or clearly dileneated “steps” of color visible in both digital and offset printing and which can be even more dramatic in wide format output. The bottom line is that those sweet gradient tools in your design software do not come with warning labels to prepare you for the resulting output in print. Gradients will normally (but not always) look good onscreen, but the technology to print them with similar ease falls short. The current best solution is to apply PhotoShop effects to minimize or hide the banding. The drawback is just like a great medication with a not-so-great side effect, this can produce unwanted results: colors can shift and the image may print “grainier” than originally planned.

A radial gradient should ideally look smooth, like a sunburst. The sample below, however, shows how it generally prints like the Looney Tunes logo.

There is no fix for the banding problem when saving your Illustrator files. We’ve often searched for that magic button, with no luck. Below are a few photos from a recent experiment where a stubborn orange-to-yellow gradient in a client’s wide format pop-up display printed with visible, distracting banding regardless of file type, compression or other options used. Saving the file as eps, pdf, opening in PhotoShop, increasing resolution, optimizing with PitStop…. no luck. Each resulted in the same diagonal “steps” in color.

The reason these efforts fail lies in mathematics and the physics of print, and I will admit to having only a shady understanding of these technical causes. For the scope of this post, let’s just point out that there are only so many “shades” or steps between one color and the next that are renderable in print. Your goal is to make a smooth transition from one color to the next, and the CS software makes that very easy in the design phase. However, the factors at play when you try to print your creation are the size or amount of space over which that transition occurs on the printed piece, the colors you have chosen to blend, and the resolution of the printer. Mathematically, at some point the printer has to go from one “step” to the next – and often the result to the human eye are bands or lines at which those changes occur. If you have chosen colors that are close together, you have even fewer “steps” between them with which to work. While PhotoShop, Illustrator and InDesign generally render smooth gradients onscreen, the science behind image rasterization and both offset and digital printing is not so forgiving to the viewer.

The fix for our wide format print in this case was to take the gradient portion of the job into Photoshop (it was originally created in Illustrator, we think!) Step one: we applied a Gausian Blur. The amount? Well that completely depends on the image. I just decide visually, bearing in mind whether or not the image I am working on is viewed at full-size onscreen or will be enlarged when printed out. A small grain visible now will be twice as large if printed at 200%. Next we created a layer with the mode set to Overlay and checked the box “Fill with Overlay-neutral color (50% gray).” To this layer we added Noise. Again – I decide visually how much noise to use (that’s an odd statement if you think about it!). Unfortunately, it is a guessing game, but with experience you will know best how much “graininess” or added texture will be acceptable without being enough to distract or compromise the output image.

The result here was a minor shift in colors and a slight visible texture or graininess that wasn’t there before. But both served to hide the banding problem! Both were acceptable results as the overall appearance of the gradient was smooth and pleasing.

Tips to prevent or minimize banding in gradients are easy to find online, but often your individual design is built in such a way that many of the tips seem unworkable. Like ours, the most common banding-buster tips require you create (or recreate) your gradient in PhotoShop as we did above, and then add noise to the image. However, you might have other elements in your design such as type, vectors or other effects applied in either Illustrator or InDesign which prevent you from moving the entire file into PhotoShop. If the file has been received from another person or client, then you might not have access to the individual pieces of the file and would be stuck trying to put the entire document into PhotoShop as an image in order to play around with possible filters. Apparently there is no “one size fits all” fix for this frustrating problem. Designers should be aware that gradients present difficulties and often require cooperation with your printer ahead of time to avoid unpleasing results.

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

February 1, 2013

WARNING: When spot colors are used with transparency…

The above warning is an important one! If you have used a spot or PMS color in your InDesign, Quark or Illustrator layout and then applied some type of transparency effect — drop shadows, blending modes, feathering, etc — then this warning is telling you that your file will NOT print correctly. Ignoring it can derail your print project bound for offset or digital output. You can avoid this complication with a little understanding of color definitions and conversion.

With the release of InDesign 2.0 back in 2001, Adobe integrated transparency effects directly into its layout program. New tools allowed us to apply editable transparency effects to text, graphics, and images, the result being a greatly enhanced set of design tools. PDF 1.4 debuted in Acrobat 5 at this time as the first version of PDF that supported transparency. The only catch was that most printer’s RIPs at the time were not ready to handle the transparency effects. Havoc ensued. Times have changed since then and Postscript level 3 processors and pdf workflows effectively manage the flattening of transparent files at the correct time to produce accurate output. But the conflict between spot or PMS colors and transparency lives on.

If your InDesign or Illustrator color palette is using nothing but CMYK colors, you can use transparency with no problems. If you bring in, for example, your logo or a piece of art with a predefined PMS or spot color into your layout, then you have imported that color into your palette. In turn, if you apply that to color text or graphics and use a transparency effect on them, a high resolution output from offset or digital printing will result in the object printing as a blank or with an unintended color. To further confuse the matter, the job may print fine off a desktop printer or create a pdf file that appears fine on screen. However, if you ignore the warning (seen above) that Adobe gives you when you try to save the file, your print provider will most likely NOT be able to convert the spot color to process and retain the correct transparency effect. You must convert the spot color to process in your native file and re-export to pdf.

Before being “flattened”, transparency is considered “live” and exists as an optical effect onscreen and in video. It must be flattened in order to print. At this stage, the tranparent region is broken up into smaller non-transparent sections that can then be translated by the RIP (raster image processor) into a printable image. It is, however, a complex process and trouble spots arise from the use of spot colors as discussed above, where text or vector objects overlap pixel-based objects, and possibly with the overlapping of RGB and CMYK images. You can read Adobe’s Designers Guide for Transparency and Print at this link for further reference.

So How Do I Fix My Files?

We’ve updated this blogpost with some tips on best practices and how to avoid the cost, delay and disappointment of files that print in an unacceptable way. Read it here!

Rely on your printer for advice and direction with any questions you have when designing files that use transparency. They should be able to provide you with the time and money saving technical advice, and work with you on file preparation and submission. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer. The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Shop our full ImageSmith catalog online here. We can work with you to find the best option to suit your needs. Please note, prices in online catalog do not include decoration, but call us for a quote at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

January 4, 2013

InDesign Quick Tip: Remove Unwanted or Unused Colors from the Swatches Palette

This is the first in a series of quick, explanatory posts about easy tricks in InDesign that could save time and the expense of prepress charges. First the tip… then some explanation if you want to read further.

To check for and remove unwanted color swatches in your file: click the upper right corner of the Swatches palette, and choose Select All Unused, then click the trash can to delete. If you have swatches left that you do not want in your file, some element within your document is using that color. Click on that swatch and try to delete it as well. If you have no embedded or linked files in your document that brought in that swatch, you will be prompted to change the color (which is being used somewhere in your document) to one of the remaining colors in your palette and problem solved! If the swatch is not able to be trashed, it has arrived in your palette from a “placed” item. You will have to go into that linked logo, artwork or photo in it’s native application to redefine the color to the one you need in your job. Once relinked, that swatch will be freed up to be deleted from your palette.

We see a lot of files with color conflicts come through the art department on their way from design to print. Many seemingly perfect files run into roadblocks at the prepress stage because of colorspace issues: unwanted spot colors, RGB to CMYK color shifts and so on. For the record, this is not a “beginner’s” stumbling block! The fact that files show up with serious color definition issues from seasoned and degreed designers as often as from busy small business owners just trying to save on desktop design expenses tells me that the color palette can be a tricky pitfall. But it need not be difficult if you know the final intent of your file and the color definitions that process will require. (If you are creating a file that will be repurposed for many uses, it is probably best to stay within the CMYK gamut with all elements of the file.)

The Swatches Palette Basics:

As a starting point, you will need a clear understanding of the RGB and CMYK color gamuts – if you need to, check out this link. Window–Color–Swatches will pull up your palette, and by default it is set to the CMYK gamut of colors. The first four in the list cannot be removed from the palette. They are:

None: a means of removing an assigned color from an object
Paper: a nonprinting preview of your page used to simulate the color of paper you will be printing on (usually set, by default, to white)
Black: pure 100% black with no other colors added (see other definitions and uses for black – there are many! – here)
Registration: defined as 100% cyan, 100%% magenta, 100% yellow and 100% black. It will show up on every separation when the file is output and is used to color necessary printing or guide marks such as crop marks, file information, registration bullets, etc..

Think of the other colors you see in this initial palette as a beginning sample of colors you can start playing with. They are all predefined as CMYK. Double-click any of them to tweak or completely redefine the color. You can define new colors by clicking the upper right corner of the palette and choosing from the drop down menu. From here, you can access the Pantone spot color libraries as well. Just remember, keep an eye on this palette as you work and maintain control over any colors that “show up” as you place linked objects into your document.

Spot Color vs. Process Color vs. RGB color

The icons next to your colors will go a long way in visually helping to keep control of the colors defined in your final files. The column on the right shows whether the swatch is defined as CMYK , RGB or even LAB. The column to the left of this will present a circle if the color is a spot color. Will you be printing with spot color inks? Offset in 4-color process? Digitally? Being aware of this as you work and place photos, logos, or other graphic elements into your InDesign file will allow you to see if what you are creating will separate correctly, if needed, at the print stage. While you can define and control the colors of any objects or type created within InDesign, once you place elements created in other applications into your document – such as eps or ai files from Illustrator or jpg and tif files from PhotoShop (or even the dreaded gif files stolen from a website!) – they may bring in predefined colors with them that you cannot override from the InDesign color palette.

If your intent is digital or CMYK process printing, often your printer can redefine spot colors from your pdf at the prepress stage. However, you may be charged extra for this file manipulation. If your intent is a two-color or spot color printing job, then having elements defined as CMYK, RGB, or with extraneous spot colors will render your file unprintable as desired. “Separating” the digital file into the correct plates to carry the spot inks your job requires will produce multiple unneeded plates. While your printer MAY be able to redefine or correctly designate these colors at this stage, chances are they will be calling you to either request the original root files (including all the fonts, links, etc.) or asking you to correct the color conflicts and resubmit your job all over again.

Rely on your printer for advice and direction with any questions you have in designing your marketing materials. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, technical advice, and innovative ideas for print, signage, apparel and integrated marketing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Shop our full ImageSmith catalog online here. We can work with you to find the best option to suit your needs. Please note, prices in online catalog do not include decoration, but call us for a quote at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

December 7, 2012

Explore Emerald in 2013 – Pantone’s New Color of the Year

The Color of the Year for 2013: Emerald.

Each December, Pantone® makes their selection. As the Pantone Matching System is used across all creative industries as a color standard, the annual selection has come to be influential for many designers and is chosen with careful consideration to the marketplace and overall consumer culture of the day.

Pantone says their choice for the new year is “a vivid verdant green” that “enchances our sense of well-being further by inspiring insight as well as promoting balance and harmony.” That’s a big job for one color! They note that green is “the most abundant hue in nature, the human eye sees more green than any other color in the sprectrum.”

I’m beginning to notice that all the Pantone Color of the Year choices seem to fit together nicely in a single palette of colors. While it is a very pleasant, organic palette I just might use on a project soon, I’d really like to see a choice from way out of left field for 2014….. something dark or unexpected to inspire some variety.

We’ve written in this blog before about “color psychology” which interprets perceptions of green as balanced, organic, rejuvenating and renewing. The association of the color with the gemstone adds an element of luxury and sophistication to the hue, but also a feeling of hardness or durability. Does PMS 3278C do it for you? Visit the Pantone website to download the color palettes for Adobe applications and begin to make emerald. the star of your next marketing campaign.

Rely on your printer for advice and direction in creating and distributing your newsletters, by mail or online. They should be able to provide you with everything from encouragement all the way to the complete design, layout, copywriting, production, multi-purposing and distribution of your periodic marketing outreach. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

September 25, 2012

Get On Your Mark: Crop Marks, Bleed Marks, Registration Marks Explained

Our prepress department sees a lot of files from a lot of sources. One of the most common confusions over a fairly simple issue concerns the inclusion of crop and bleed marks and defining the bleed and slug areas of a digital print file. While it’s usually an easy fix, you can save yourself time – and additional prepress charges – by working with a clear understanding of what those little marks mean, which to use and how important their position and function can be.

When you produce a pdf file from your page layout or design program such as InDesign in the Adobe Creative Suite, you will see options on how to control the bleed area and marks on your final file. If your file is to be used on a webpage or other digital output, you generally want the file to include no marks or bleed area, naturally. But for printing, either digital or offset, if any graphic elements extend to the edge of the finished piece, you must design them to continue off the “page” and then include an extra border area to accommodate some trim. Presses and digital printers cannot truly print all the way to the edge of a finished sheet reliably over a run; the piece must be printed on larger paper and then trimmed down for a good finished product. Understanding the following terms will make it clear which boxes you need to tic on the “Marks and Bleeds” window when creating your pdf.

Crop Marks: are small lines offset from the edge of the finished piece that instruct where to cut or trim the final page to a finished size. These will not appear on the finished piece. You definitely need to click these on. There will be some default settings that decide how these marks look… their stroke weight and offset distance. As a general rule, do not change these defaults unless you know a specific reason to do so. Adding crop marks at this stage WILL INCREASE the dimension of your pdf – ie, you have to have extra real estate on which to place the marks. It is helpful to stay aware of the final dimensions of your pdf.

Bleed Marks: They look just like crop marks, but instead of defining the finished cut size, they define the alloted bleed area of the document. The bleed area these marks define is itself part of the printed area. Note that just like adding crop marks, they increase the dimension of your eventual pdf even further, as it now must accommodate both the bleed area and the offset bleed marks. With each set of marks you add, the dimension of the pdf increases.

Registration Marks (and Color Bars): These sit outside the printed area and are used to correlate the different colors or plates used in offset lithography. Every type of printing uses a different, or many different, versions of the registration mark. This alone is a good reason not to add it on yourself when making the pdf. My advice is to not include these marks or color bars unless your print provider prefers that you do. Your service provider will add onto their press sheet the type of mark they need in the location they need it.

Bleed Area: the space you define outside the finished edge to hold the printed bleed. When you first set up your document, you can define the bleed area, but again when making the pdf you have the chance to either use or override that original definition. Many printers require at least 1/8 of an inch (.125″) minimum of ink coverage for a suitable bleed, however the defined bleed area itself can be wider. We always ask for 1/2 inch bleed area (not necessarily ink coverage, but area – meaning you do not have to fill this entire .5″ with color or images, these can stop at the 1/8″ minimum). The reason is this will accommodate the necessary bleed, the standard crop marks AND make the pdf size be a nice, easy-to-manipulate number. This can be a great time-saver. For example, a design that has an 8.5″ x 11″ finished size with .5″ bleed on all sides will create a pdf that is 9.5″ x 12″; where if you just let Acrobat put on crop marks and don’t specify a bleed area, it will render a file that is 9.08″ x 11.58″ – just enough to hold the crop marks, and to make your math difficult if you want to impose onto a larger size sheet for printing! Even worse, when creating a small size pdf such as an individual business card, and you add registration marks and page information, the resulting pdf will not only be an irregular size, it will also be off-center as it tries to make extra room at the bottom for the page info. Keep the math simple – add .5″ as a bleed area. It will hold all marks, information, and the bleed with room to spare.

Slug Area: Slug area is EVERYTHING outside the finished edge – this includes the defined bleed area and beyond. Crop marks and bleed area both live within the Slug area. You can define a larger slug area that will include the registration marks, color bars, and any other information you might want the printer to see, but that will be cut off from the finished piece. If you do not define a slug area, Acrobat will simply add on the space needed to hold the marks and instructions you have already specified, or it will use the bleed area you defined as your slug area.

Rely on your printer for advice and direction when creating your files. They should be able to provide you with everything from encouragement along the way to complete design, layout, copywriting, production, multi-purposing and distribution of your marketing outreach. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.

August 20, 2012

Saving Your Print Project – Seven PrePress Pitfalls, One Simple Fix

THE HAND-OFF: the moment of truth in a smooth, successful marketing project comes when you transfer your digital files to your print service provider. Below are seven of the most common roadblocks that are sure to frustrate you and defeat your deadline.

FAIL #1: Giving the printer EVERYTHING. A good rule of thumb is to not give your printer any file that you do not want printed! It is tempting to try to save time in back and forth file transmissions and endless emails to just hand over every related file for a project. Often customers will drop off a disk or jump drive with all their marketing materials on it. At the design stage, this can be a good resource to have, but if your design is finalized for a specific project, you just astronomically increased your chances of getting the wrong thing printed!

FAIL #2: Missing fonts, missing links. Not gathering all the necessary digital files to print your job is really the heart of all file submission problems: missing fonts, image links, profiles – they all stop your project dead in it’s tracks. Probably the most common is missing image links. A printer will not be able to output high resolution images from an “unlinked” page layout. If they request the specific images, be aware that placing a picture onto a page in a Word document (this applies for InDesign, Quark, or any other page layout program as well) is NOT sending the actual image file. You will need to find the original file itself to send. Missing fonts will also derail your project – fonts work on the computer where your files were created because they are installed on that machine. Ship the file to another computer and the fonts will substitute to ones with which you will NOT be happy. Most layout programs now, thankfully, have a feature that allows you to package all necessary files into one bundle for printing. Also, creating print-ready pdf files will allow you to avoid all the link and font issues as the pdf can be a self-contained file suitable for print.

FAIL #3: Mixing process, RGB and spot color definitions in the same file. Color management can be a complicated process, but in general you should be aware of the “colorspace” your layout is created in and it’s intended output. Using spot or PMS colors in a design will require them to be converted at some point if you plan to print in CMYK. You can design in an RGB workspace, but be aware that colors will shift when the conversion takes place to offset or digital printing. A common mistake is also using spot or PMS colors in a file that contains transparency – ie, uses drop shadows, gradients, photo effects that incorporate transparent layers. Most programs will warn you to look out for “unexpected results.” They aren’t lying!

FAIL #4: When a different file type is requested than the one used, just change the file extension name by retyping it. Yes, this happens often! It seems like such a simple fix, but predictably, it changes nothing. A pixel-based tif or jpg file cannot automatically become a smooth, resizeable vector file just by typing a suffix onto the filename.

FAIL #5: When a vector file is needed, just drop your pixel-based image onto a page in Illustrator and save as .eps. This is similar to just changing the file extension in the name. When a vector file is required – usually for spot color separation or to be resized for smooth output at a large scale – a file type that is pixel-based will not become a vector file by simply placing it into a program that is vector-based.

FAIL #6: Supply your logo or an image by right (or option) clicking on a website and saving to your desktop …or tell a printer just to go the website for the art they need. As a rule, the resolution of any art on a website will be too low for good print quality. Just count on it.

FAIL #7: Neglect to specify a PMS color match for a specific color output that must be exact. Remember, blue is never just blue.

So, all of those are common mistakes to avoid during file submission. The good news is there is one simple fix – talk to your printer! Call them on the phone and ask for guidance in preparing and transferring your files. They will be eager to walk you through any questions or problems you encounter. The advice is free, and will most likely save you additional pre-press charges that you can incur if they have to fix or adjust your files for digital or offset output. If you are dealing with an online printer and cannot get an actual person on the phone you have discovered one of the reasons they are able to offer lower prices: low standards for customer service.

Communication is the answer – it will save you time and money. If your service provider can’t provide the needed answers or doesn’t have time to chat with you, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.