Comments on: Top ten problems in file prep for print

By: Jorg

Jorg — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:58:26 +0000

Great checklist David. I’m not always aware of these mistakes (especially the bleed) so I’m going to use it before i send anything for print.

By: Bryan Moore

Bryan Moore — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 04:34:04 +0000

Excellent! I appreciate the time and thought put into informing fellow designers. I especially liked the post about pricing and agree that it is hard to judge. As designers, we want to grow and share our creativity without sacrificing time and money. It’s hard not to sell ourselves short and not over price potential projects. Very insightful.

By: David Airey

David Airey — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:10:36 +0000

Thanks for the continued great comments, everyone. I’m pretty snowed under at the minute, so excuse my brief reply. Hoping you’re having a good week so far.

By: Steve Brown

Steve Brown — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 14:08:41 +0000

This is a great list, and could have been so much longer, we are often astounded by the files we recieve from designers, we do not require a great deal from them as we prefer to create separations ourselves, but many designers seem to be operating in a world of their own, making very little effort to help the end user of their files. It is a breath of fresh air to recieve files ready to go with explanatory notes. We also greatly appreciate the use of spot colours in the palette where required.

By: ToeKneeBee

ToeKneeBee — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:51:34 +0000

Dana – How could Publisher be left off the list? Shame on all of us for not picking that up. I like the idea of explaining the different types of presses, too.

By: Dana

Dana — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:52:22 +0000

Two other thoughts.

ONE: I was in newspaper for several years, then moved on to direct marketing where part of my responsibilities were to preflight pieces designed out of house. This post is a dead-on top 10. The one other program not mentioned in no. 9 is Microsoft Publisher. I hate that program with a passion. Sure, its great for Uncle Charlie’s homemade birthday cards or Grandmas recipes, but for commercial printing it results in a big pile of crap. Can anyone say “Pocket Pal”? Publisher can’t export pdf files and when it exports jpegs, it defaults to 150 dpi. That’s bad news for any printer.

TWO: it could be helpful to educate new designers on the different types of presses and how they handle different stocks. Web presses for example, are what most newspapers use and it makes registration an art all its own. (Web presses are fed paper stock on one continuous roll and not individually sheet fed, like the offset press.)

By: Dana

Dana — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:26:28 +0000

I’d like to add to the comment about the differences in Rich Black and Pure Black. It has been my experience that Rich Blacks mixed with all 4 colors, are best on digital presses that don’t require film. 100%K can result in a shady banding. When working in newspaper however, the Rich Blacks can throw the registration for the entire page off center. Newspaper needs Pure Black, which is 100% K, with no other colors. Nothing peeves me more than a good batch of comics out of register! One might also note that most newspapers do not require crop marks or a bleed; or more than 200 dpi. Most papers have their own pagination system and resolution will be downsampled anyway. But please don’t use Rich Black on ads that go on newsprint! This is especially important when reversing type, which isn’t the best idea on newsprint anyway.

By: ToeKneeBee

ToeKneeBee — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:18:41 +0000

Kiren – This is a tough topic to be brief about. :) I work in most of the Creative Suite programs, but I normally end up in InDesign because most of my output is for publications. So, in that workflow, I set my bleed settings for my InDesign document and then generally design graphics in PS and AI to be large enough to accommodate the bleed settings. So, If my finished booklet is going to be a 3 inch square with full bleed, I’d design the cover graphic, for example, at 3 1/2 inches which would give me 1/8 inch bleed all around. Make sure you set proper guides for a “safe zone” for the things you don’t want cropped out.

Now, in Photoshop CS3, if you were doing a graphic that you wanted to send directly to a printer or a print shop for direct output with a bleed, you would still design your graphic large enough to accommodate the bleed, but you could go to File > Print and choose “Output” and there will be a button for BLEED that you can set your settings. Turn on crop marks and this should show you on the print where the trimming will cut into the bleed.

In Illustrator CS3, I believe it is similar to the steps above for Photoshop. If you go to File > Print, there should be something on the left hand side about Marks and Bleeds. I think you can set your values there for showing the bleed/marks for output.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

By: Kiren

Kiren — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:59:29 +0000

Nice post! I’m just finding out about color bleed. Is there an option in Photoshop or Illustrator to correct bleed? I’m just curious if this is the printers problem or my own.

By: Oli

Oli — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 22:07:32 +0000

Whenever I do a piece of work which involves changing an image from RGB to CMYK for print, I usually get the person whos photo it is etc saying “The colours aren’t bright enough” or “what have you done to the image, it colours now look dull” Very hard explaining the print process to them each time, and why we have to change it to CMYK!