The Whitley Printing Company

Designing for Print

Art Preparation

The digital age has allowed tremendous flexibility and savings in creating what used to be called “camera-ready artwork.” (Today, cameras are rarely used!) With this convenience comes additional responsibility for the designer to ensure the files the printer receives are suitable to begin the prepress process. The following guidelines and file set-up procedures will limit the likelihood of problems, resulting in fewer delays and/or additional charges.

Software

Almost all commercial printers can support the latest versions of the most popular desktop publishing software titles (QuarkXPress, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) on Macintosh or Windows platforms.

Most printers have limited support for programs such as MS Publisher, MS Word and MS Excel. These and other non-desktop publishing file types can incur additional charges to process. When creating jobs in these programs it’s best to submit PDF documents to your printer.

Whitley strongly encourages desktop publishing software’s use.

Creating Graduated Tints and Blends

The use of vignettes, blends, or graduated tints can cause several problems with your file. Many times the transition from one-color tint to the next can cause “banding.” This is usually because the percentage change in tint value is either too great or too small for the distance the vignette must span.

The best way to create blends is with the “blend” tool in Adobe Photoshop and by using the noise filter. (Use this filter sparingly, usually with a factor of 2–3.) Never specify a color to make a transition to 0 percent or 100 percent. The screen gradation can start to “fall off” somewhere in the 1–3 percent or 98 percent dot range on the printing plate and will result in a sharp-edged appearance in the final printed piece.

Frames, Rules and Borders

Do not use straight rules to create frames because it’s extremely difficult to align individual rules precisely

Avoid creating rules using “hairline” thickness. They will appear visible when output on a laser printer, since the laser is not capable of printing such a fine rule. But a high-resolution output device will reproduce the hairline as-is: an extremely-fine line and barely visible. Use .25pt or greater as a thickness for fine rules.

Avoid creating color rules or frames that are less than one point thick, as they will be too thin to hold register on press. When coloring rules with screen tints, be sure at least one of the colors used has a minimum of 70 percent value to avoid un-readability due to any slight press variation.

Be sure that images either fill or are slightly larger than the frame to avoid white hairlines between the photo and the frame.

Colors

In your digital files, create and assign colors in the manner in which they will print. Four-color process items should be set to use CMYK colors. If your project is using a “spot” color, be sure to designate it as such.

Use a “rich black” color to avoid a “washed out” appearance whenever large fonts, graphics, boxes, or backgrounds are to print as black. Use the values of 100 percent black, 30 percent cyan, 30 percent magenta and 30 percent yellow to create “rich black”.

Any specified color must not exceed a Total Tonal Value of 320. That is, the percentage of tint of each color (C+M+Y+K) when added, must not exceed 320 percent.

Imported Graphics and Images

You must include all graphics and images when submitting your files.

When text is used in an illustration program (Illustrator or Freehand), the fonts are quite often not included with the file. To avoid this:

• In Illustrator, convert fonts to outlines.
• In Freehand, convert fonts to paths.

The conversion will eliminate missing font errors for the graphic, but the text will be un-editable. Be sure to keep an original copy with the fonts for future edits.

Do not rename images after importing them into your page layout.

Images

High-resolution images are required. Use this rule-of-thumb for four-color and grayscale images: 300 dpi at the size placed. Never scale an image more than 120 percent in your page layout program. The image quality will deteriorate noticeably. Reducing an image won’t affect its quality.

Moire´ distortion can occur in images with fine lines that make up a subject, for instance, a pin-stripe suit or plaid upholstery. This can sometimes be avoided by reducing the image in Photoshop and not in the page layout application. This may also be eliminated by printing with a High-Definition (Staccato) screening technology.

All four-color images must be in CMYK mode—NO RGB or INDEX color.

Black and white images must be saved in GRAYSCALE mode. Line art images must be in BITMAP mode.

Remove all extra channels before saving.

All Photoshop images should be 300 dpi at 100 percent and bitmaps 1200 dpi. Save Photoshop images as TIFF, EPS or CT. Duotones should be in duotone mode. Save Photoshop images with spot channels as DCS2 with “single file with color composite” selected. Clipping path flatness must be 2 or less.

JPEG and GIF files are heavily compressed and are not meant for high-resolution printing.