Print Buying Direct

In flight, preflight, and post flight – part 2 – 6th May 2009

For years, workhouse preflight applications such as FlightCheck Professional and PitStop Professional added, and continue to add, value in the preflight process. Where Adobe Live Preflighting stops or is limited both FlightCheck and Pitstop taker over. For instance, the ‘Sharing the Preflight profile with Acrobat’ point is easily remedied with FlightCheck because is examines both native files formats as well as PDF files. Another example, the ‘Allowing Custom profiles to be shared and downloaded’ point is remedied with Ground Control sets. Ground Controls can easily be set up and shard with other.

Complete control
FlightCheck Professional is an all encompassing preflight technology, developed by the founders and US patent holders of the preflight process, Markzware. This standalone application provides time tested software to both preflight and post flight digital files destined for print. For more than 13 years, the system has embodied an innovative method of checking more than 50 files format. These include Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress and the resulting PDF. This application gives printers and layout artist alike, a quick, easy and standardised way of checking numerous disparate files in and out of a work flow.

Yet another technology is the Enfocus PitStop product. This tool is also highly regarded by printers at the post fight stage and excellent for checking PDFs. Further, it can also edit PDFs, which is often a necessary evil.
The question is: why use Adobes Live Preflight, Markzware’s FlightCheck Professional and Enfocus’ Pitstop together?
The answer is simple: For complete quality control.

To be continued…

See Part one of – The magic circle – print, paper and recycling

Print Buying Direct is the online facility for buying print of The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK

The Printing House are specialists and experts in Prospectus of all kinds – see our dedicated prospectus Website www.schoolprospectus.info – New on our Schools site – have a look at our new turn page technology (also known as digital editions)- have your prospectus or brochure online (digital prospectus or digital brochure) – but turn the pages as if it was paper.

Don’t forget to see our new offer – Budget Black and white leaflets – 10,000 Leaflets designed, printed and delivered for only £199

Best of all – don’t forget that our Banner Stands (pull up banners) are still only £99 plus delivery!

Business Cards (Business Card Printing) – £10 for 100 Full Colour Business Cards.

We’re still running our very popular Lettterheads Campaign. 2000 letterheads for only £125 in full colour, printed onto a quality 100gsm laser guaranteed paper. see our letterheads webpage for more info.

At The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) we are experts at helping you with the production of your newsletter, whether it be for your employees, customers or fellow club members. See our Newsletters web page for help and advice.

Keep an eye out for our new website for The Printing House Ltd, due for relaunch in May.

Our superb Wallet Folders are still on offer – see http://www.printbuyingdirect.co.uk/wallet-folders.html

For all the rationalisation, mergers and acquisitions that have taken place, the demand for print has largely remained in line with GDP (Gross Domestic Product). As GDP has risen, so has the volume of print but how the printing pie has been cut up and the number of mouths getting what could be considered a fair share has perhaps dropped.

The next couple of years many economists are suggesting we may see some of the toughest trading conditions seen since the late 1970s, but economists are invariably wrong and it is fair bet that they will be wrong for attributing tough trading conditions in the printing industry on the economy. Trading conditions are certain to become turbulent; how can there be stability when several manufacturers introduce presses, including long perfectors, into the marketplace capable of changing all their plates in a little over a couple of minutes, carrying out make-readies in 10 minutes or less? And to boot, web-fed digital presses producing 1800 A4s per minute.

There is another element that is certain to bring instability to our industry that has little to do with economic forces. Customer expectations are changing in a rather profound way. One of the most significant effects of the digital age is the influence on customer expectations. No, not the speed at which they expect to get the job, though that is given, it is their quality expectations; printing from the Internet has meant a huge change in perceptions of quality, strength of design and overall appearance.

Much of today’s print is related to supplying information; brochures, reports, products leaflets, general information and this is delivered usually via an office printer using 11 and 12 point sans serif type printed on white 90gsm laser type paper. The result is more than adequate, with colour where appropriate printed at 600 and 1200dpi. What we are seeing is a fundamental change in our expectations of what is appropriate. Just as wearing a tie in important meetings can seem outmoded and stuffy- print is facing a similar change, with what is ‘fit for purpose’ the new driving force. Certainly collar and tie printing will always have its place, but the situation will arise more often where a superbly produced 16 page brochure in six colours with multiple matt and spot UV overprints will look aggressive and inappropriate. You have been warned.

For more information on Press Technology or printing in general please don’t hesitate to contact us at The Printing House (Print Buying Direct)

Although many designers still work manually, most illustrations, photographs and graphics are created and edited using digital tools. Software such as Photoshop or Illustrator, digital capture with a scanner or digital camera, all allow us to create and manipulate graphics digitally. However, there are many ways of publishing graphics so digital images need to be prepared in different ways. The requirements for resolution and overall image quality can differ quite substantially, and images are processed again when plates are made, or when screening is applied to data for output on a digital press. Depending on the image content, operators have to consider what dot shape to use for the screen dots, and whether to use stochastic screening in order to avoid moiré.

Density

For reproduction in a digital workflow, photographic originals, colour negatives and transparencies, have to be digitised using a high end scanner, either drum or flatbed. Desktop flatbed scanners are really only suitable for scanning reflective photos, where the results are not likely to suffer the rigours of subsequent for print. When screening transparencies, it’s important to use a scanner with sufficient resolution to achieve fine detailed and sharp images. Transparencies have a higher density than reflective images.

Digital images

Scanners used to be important for digital image processing, but they are now largely redundant because of the increase use of digital cameras. High-end digital cameras now have enough resolution and image quality to capture images that can be used in a professional prepress workflow. With resolutions of 10MP (mega pixels) or more in the image sensor, even midrange digital cameras produce good enough images for many publishing scenarios. High-end professional’s digital cameras offer even higher image quality, and even surpass what can be achieved when scanning transparencies on a drum scanner. When processing digital photos the challenge is to maintain both shadow details and highlights when processing the raw data from the camera. This ensures that the colour and grey balance are correct and although the camera’s built in software does a decent job for most situations; advanced image processing is often needed to achieve high and consistent image quality. This is especially true for print output. One of the most popular image editing software packages is, of course, Adobe Photoshop, but it takes a long time to learn and master the more advanced functions.

Five major considerations

If every single image has to be analysed and processed manually there are five main areas to consider.

1. decide if the original image has enough resolution for the publishing process to be used, so that all details will appear sharp and correctly rendered.
2. it’s important that the image is rendered with smooth tone transitions, both in the shadow details, in the midtones, and in the highlights.
3. There should be no tendency to banding or loss of fine details.
4. Good overall contrast is key to ensuring that the image has depth, and the colours should be accurate and as bright as possible, rendered with the correct hue.
5. Last but not least; the grey balance needs to be checked. If an image has a colour cast in what should be neutral grey areas (or light and near white areas), the whole image will look strange.

RGB to CMYK

Digital cameras and scanners capture images in RGB, so before converting images into the CMYK colour space for printing, they need to be optimised. On a calibrated monitor a balance in the RGB values, for example a setting of 127 red, 127 green and 127 blue, should produce a mid-grey neutral tone on the monitor, and so in the image.

Compression

Image processing involves many variables. One of the trickiest for many operators is knowing when and how to apply compression: too much compromises image quality, too little means unnecessarily fat files that can slow down production. A popular technology for reducing image file size is JPEG, but although it’s popular, JPEG is actually a lossy compression technology, so JPEG compressed images will always lose some data, and therefore, quality. Advanced digital photographers prefer to use TIFF on their original photos, because it also can compress images but it is not as lossy as JPEG.

For more information on image processing or printing in general please don’t hesitate to contact us at The Printing House (Print Buying Direct)

Adobe’s Portable Document Format, was never designed for high-end graphics art production. Back in the early nineties, when it was first introduced, it was intended for cross platform office document sharing. But the graphic arts industry embraced PDF as a means of transporting content files from point to point, and PDF’s role as the foundation for print media workflows was rapidly confirmed throughout the industry. We should bare this in mind when considering PDF as the preferred file format for print production. There are good reasons for using PDF, but not all PDF files are suitable for output for quality printing.

PDF has become a de facto standard for graphic arts workflows because of its convenience, ubiquity and flexibility. The alternative to using PDF files as the basis for print production is to use either native files, meaning documents saved in the internal file format for the layout software, such as InDesign, Quark Xpress or perhaps Illustrator. We could also export the page content as postscript. But neither approach is ideal and there are benefits and drawbacks with both.

Application files

The problem with sending native files from a designer to a printer or prepress department is that the receiver needs to have the same software installed on their computer in order to be able to open the file. And that software needs to be the exact same version, and ideally running on the same type of computer platform, with the same version of the operating system. As if this want irritating and costly enough, all fonts and possible hyphenation and language modules need also to be in place and of the exact same version, as on the designer’s workstation.

Most layout software doesn’t embed images inside the page document, which is yet another source of possible errors. Instead they have pointers to the high resolution versions of images, which are generally stored somewhere else. This could be on the computer used to originate the file, or on an image server. Working with native files requires all of these variables to be taken into account, for the files to flow through production without mishap. Missing images or missing fonts, or both, are among the most frequent errors in prepress troubleshooting. These are all reason to work with PDF, where all file components from images to colours can be contained within a single file. It’s clear that PDF has mostly replaced Postscript as the preferred page description language. PDF files are easier to work with and less cumbersome to handle in print production than native layout document files from InDesign or Quark X Press. Preparing documents for print will perhaps never be childsplay, but using PDF files in general, preflighted and well prepared PDF/X files in particular, is the path to better, more secure file processing.

For more information on providing us with PDF files please don’t hesitate to contact us at The Printing House (Print Buying Direct)

Transparency features in graphics applications allow users to create elements with drop shadows, overlays, blends and feathering. Because transparency effects can be complex, be sure to consult us for best results. But the following notes should point you in the right direction for getting your artwork ready for print.

TRANSPARENCY IN ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR

• Select [File: Document Color Mode] and choose [CMYK Color].

• Set the [Effect: Document Raster Effects Settings] Color Model to [CMYK] and the Resolution to [High (300 ppi)]. Any effects that require rasterization will use the value specified here.
• Use the Transparency palette and [Effect] stylize menu to control transparency effects. Note that [Filters] can produce unpredictable results.
• The [File: Document Setup: Transparency: Preset] should also be set to [High Resolution].
• The Flattener Preview palette [Window: Flattener Preview] can identify areas that have transparency applied or are effected by other objects.
• Be sure to enable [View: Overprint Preview] for the most accurate display of what the fi nal design will look like.

TRANSPARENCY IN INDESIGN

• Select the [Edit: Transparency Blend Space] to [Document CMYK].
• Use the Transparency palette to control transparency effects.
• The Flattener Preview palette [Window: Output: Flattener Preview] can identify areas that have transparency applied or are effected by other objects.
• Be sure to enable [View: Overprint Preview] for the most accurate display of what the fi nal design will look like.

PRINTING WITH TRANSPARENCY

• In the printing or exporting windows always select [High Resolution] for the Transparency Flattener.
• Printers often define flattening settings or flatten artwork themselves. Consult your us to determine if your work should be submitted flattened or with live transparency. Note that transparency effects will always flatten when printing to PostScript or EPS, or if they are exported using the Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3) format. Transparency effects will remain “live” only if exported using the Acrobat PDF 1.4, 1.5 or 1.6 formats.

CAUTIONS

• Use spot colors in transparency effects with discretion. When spot colors contact CMYK objects with transparency, the best practice is to make sure they are on the top of the stacking order.
• Avoid transparency designs that contain both RGB and CMYK content.
• QuarkXPress 6.5 does not have built-in support for transparency.

If in any doubt call us on 0870 950 8444 or contact us through either of our websites – Print Buying Direct or The Printing House Ltd, Crewe, Cheshire, UK