Be aware that the printers you use are probably using custom colour profiles tailored to their output devices. This is going to differ from the colour profile embedded in your image. It is wise to use a standard colour profile like ‘Euroscale Press’ if you are based in Europe as they will be able to convert the profile to their own easily. Using custom profiles made by yourself is asking for trouble as they don’t have a reference point to being with! Techies love messing around with colour profiles, but believe me – you are much better off using a standard profile that comes with Photoshop that is appropriate to where you and your printers are based. Once again, talk to your printers about this if you are at-all unsure!

It is not always possible to request a proof or ‘wet proof’ from the printers on small jobs due to cost implications – but don’t try and save the money and not have a proof if you can afford it! That way you can check colour and output without having to pay for a reprint if things go wrong! You can also show this to the client and get them to approve it.

Always provide the printers with a high quality proof print of your artwork along with your digital files – either from an inkjet or laser printer. That way they know what you are trying to achive and this can save a lot of trouble down the line. Inkjets in particular can have a wider colour gamut than lytho print, so be aware that some of the colours may not be as vibrant. This is also effected by the paper used, coated paper gives brighter colour reproduction than uncoated paper stock. Your printer should be able to advise you on this.

Don’t supply your printers with the original 500 meg layered Photoshop document, they only want flattened artwork. Save your image as a TIFF with LZW compression. It could save you potential additional print setup costs as they will have to flatten the file (and potentially miss out that all-important layer!)

Always use CMYK colour for normal full colour print, not RGB or indexed colour. There are certain cases that you may use RGB colour for digital output but once again, ask your printer. If you are at-all unsure, stick to CMYK. Stay clear of special colour channels (those that use Pantone inks) unless this is built into the print budget and is absolutely necessary – introducing these will add additional costs to the job.

Ask your printer what resolution, or DPI they wish the file to be setup at. For anything A3 sized or smaller 300dpi should be fine – bigger images can be saved at lower DPI in most cases.

Text can be a big problem in image files, particularly if it is very small. Text should be set in another application like InDesign or Quark for perfect quality output – just remember to either include the fonts if you are on a Mac or turn your type into outlines if you are on a PC. Macs don’t get on too well with PC fonts and professional printers will have big problems with them. If you turn your type into vector outlines you won’t have to worry about this – just remember to save an editable file for you to keep so you can amend the text at your end!

Finally, remove all alpha channels and paths from the flattened file – these will will only confuse the printer, and particularly in the case of alpha channels increase the file size.

Keep it simple and you shouldn’t have too much to worry about!

No related posts.

There was a time many years ago when printers and repro houses didn’t like dealing with LZW compressed images for various reasons, including RIPs not being able to deal with this format of TIFF and extended ripping time whilst the image was decompressed. However, I’m glad to confirm that its only the most antiquated of printers that turn their noses up at LZW compressed files these days. One quick phonecall to the printers can confirm this.

Using LZW compression can save you time archiving work, save hard drive space and make collected jobs smaller to send out to printers – so stop using uncompressed TIFFs and start using LZW compression today!

Oh, and one final word on TIFFs, don’t use it to save layered files. The filesize is very large, they take ages to save and most printers will have trouble handling layered TIFF files, so don’t use this feature – that’s what Adobe gave us the Photoshop file format for – it is efficient and keeps everything editable that should be when you re-open the file.

No related posts.

Also be sure to enlarge your Curves dialogue box by clicking on the little icon bottom right of the Curves dialogue box. This makes it much easier to precisely alter the curve as it makes it bigger.

No related posts.

Converting your file to CMYK can produce some strange colour shifts, especially in very bright saturated colours or when exact colour accuracy is important. You should originate your file in CMYK from the start if you want to avoid issues. It is the safest option for any Photoshop Ninja working on a file destined for professional print.

Colour correction should be particularly avoided in RGB, as you can blast the colours right out of the colour gamut when converted to CMYK, producing even worse quality images than converting to CMYK from the start and loosing valuable colour information.

No related posts.

There is a lot of debate amongst print artworkers over what gives a perfect black, some preferring a cyan mix, but personally I prefer magenta, I feel it warms up the black making it look richer – so I recommend the CMYK mix of 0/60/0/100. Obviously, if you prefer cyan, just switch the my 60% value from magenta to cyan.

Also, have you ever noticed that Photoshop’s default black is a rich CMYK mix of black of (Apple+D reset colour swatches). I don’t know why Adobe don’t put this in as a preference, I guess they will get round to it eventually! This is a big one to watch – especially when importing images from Photoshop into InDesign or other DTP applications. If your matching up what you think is a black area of an image from Photoshop onto a pure Black (0/0/0/0) rectangle in say InDesign, your gonna have a nasty shock when it goes to print! This can, of course be used very creative subtle effects when used right… But when used wrong it can be disastrous!

When using commercial print, care should be taken if you have ‘reversed out’ white text in these areas, especially if set in very small point sizes. Any misregistration of the printing plates will fill in the text – this goes for any multichannel colour backgrounds.

This rich black should also not be used for small ‘body copy’ type text, the pure black mix of 0/0/0/100 should always be used, especially on white backgrounds. Again, any slight misregistration of the plates will ‘double print’ your text giving it a nasty fuzzy look!

No related posts.