Top Ten Manual of Things to Know about Print A guide on how to prepare you work when desinging for print.
Contents Format Colour Modes Colour Ways Coverting to CMYK Print Processes Pantone Stock File Formats Finishing Costing
Format There are the standard ISO paper sizes shown in the chart below. Standard paper sizes are A size, over size A sizes are SRA paper sizes. The A series paper sizes are defined in ISO 216 by the following requirements: The length divided by the width is 1.4142 The A0 size has an area of 1 square metre. Each subsequent size A(n) is defined as A(n-1) cut in half parallel to its shorter sides. The standard length and width of each size is rounded to the nearest millimetre. North America use Imperial paper sizes not ISO, its important to remember this if you are ever doing work for clients abroad, make sure you know what paper format you need to work to. The American Letter size is the equivalent to A4 paper size.
Colour Modes There are two types of color models, those that are subtractive and those that are additive.The the two most common colour modes used for computer graphics are the RGB model (Red-Green-Blue) for computer display and the CMYK model (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-blacK) for printing. Colors in the RGB model are much brighter than the colors in the CMYK model, the visbale spectrum of colours is alot greated on screen in RGB mode than what can be printed with CMYK. The chart on the right shows the visable spectrum for the different colour modes.
CMYK
CMYK is a subtractive colour mode, its used for print based design and uses ink to display colour. It is made up from cyan, magenta, yellow which create black.
RGB
RGB is a addative colour mode, it is used for screen based design and uses light to display colour. It is made of red, green and blue which create white.
Colour Ways
Duotone When a continuous tone image is printed in 2 or more spot colours – this term is also generally used when describing tri and quadtones.
CMYK CMYK printing method is also known as “process” color. All of the colors in the printable portion of the color spectrum can be achieved by overlapping “tints” of cyan, magenta, yellow and black
Monotone Like greyscale but with a coloured ink, ie: one colour and percentage tints of that colour, plus the colour of the material it’s printed on.
Greyscale Black and white continuous tone and any shade of grey, such as a black and white photograph.
Coverting To CMYK
Before you send your work to print you have to make sure its in the correct colour mode. It is easy to do you just need to make sure you do it, ot your work will not come out how you wanted it to if you use RGB. To convert your images into CMYK you simply go to IMAGE -> MODE -> CMYK COLOUR. It will make sure your work is in the CMYK gamut before prinitng.
Print Processes Lithography is an “offset” printing technique. Ink is not applied directly from the printing plate. Ink is applied to the printing plate to form the “image” (such as text or artwork to be printed) and then transferred or “offset to a rubber “blanket”. The image on the blanket is then transferred to the substrate to produce the printed product. On sheet-fed presses, the substrate is fed into the press one sheet at a time substrate, or web, which is later cut to size. There is a total of 3 types of offset printing: non-heatset at a very high speed. Web fed presses print on sheetfed, heatset, and non-heatset web offset. Gravure printing is used for long run, high quality printing. It uses a depressed or sunken surface for the image. The image areas consist of honey comb shaped cells or wells that are etched or engraved into a copper cylinder. The unetched areas of the cylinder represent the non-image or unprinted areas. The cylinder rotates in a bath of ink
As the cylinder turns, the excess ink is wiped off the cylinder by a flexible steel doctor blade. The ink remaining in the recessed cells forms the image by direct transfer to the substrate as it passes between the plate cylinder and the impression cylinder.
Flexography is the process used to print packaging materials. Flexography is used to print corrugated containers, folding cartons, multiwall sacks, paper sacks, plastic bags, milk and beverage cartons, disposable cups and containers, labels, adhesive tapes, envelopes, newspapers, and wrappers (candy and food). In the typical flexo printing sequence, the substrate is fed into the press from a roll. The image is printed as substrate is Screen printing can be used to print on a wide variety of substrates. Some common products from the screen printing industry include posters, labels, decals, signage, and all types of textiles and electronic circuit boards. The advantage of screenprinting over other print processes is that the press can print on substrates of any shape, thickness and size. A significant characteristic of screen printing is that a greater thickness of the ink can be applied
pulled through a series of stations. Each print unit is printing a single color. As with Gravure and Lithographic printing, the various tones and shading are achieved by overlaying the 4 basic shades of ink. These are magenta, cyan, yellow and black. Magenta being the red tones and cyan being the blue.’
to the substrate than is possible with other printing techniques.Because of the simplicity of the application process, a wider range of inks and dyes are available for use in screen printing.
Pantone
The accuracy of color is critical in design. Because what you see on your monitor is never what will appear on a printed sheet, designers need a standardized color key. It can be very frustrating to see the logo you worked hard to create look deep blue on the client’s letterhead, blue-greenish on his business card, and light blue on his very expensive envelopes. A way to prevent this is by using a standardized color matching system, such as the Pantone Matching System. Though Pantona is not the only color standardization system, it is the most widely used and the one that most printers understand. Aside from being able to have consistency, Pantona Colors allow you to use colors that cannot be mixed in CMYK. C = coated U = uncoated M = matte Pantone is avalible in all adobe software, so you can communicate with printers and make sure they have the right Pantone referance number so your work gets printed in the right colours.
Stock Opacity- Opacity refers to how much you can see through the paper. If printing a magazine or book with a lot of text, you will want to choose paper with a high level of opacity. Otherwise, the reader may be bothered by printed material showing through from the other side of the page. Thickness - This refers to how thick a page is. But don’t be fooled. Sometimes, paper that doesn't weigh very much can still be very thick. Books and magazines printed on thick pages appear to have more pages than they actually do. Postcards are a good example of a print job that requires thick paper. Keep in mind that thicker paper is more expensive. Brightness- This is how much light is reflected off the paper. Coated stocks reflect much more light than uncoated stocks do. Though some brightness is preferable, be sure to choose a paper option that will not reflect too much light and thus prevent the reader from seeing what's on the page. Strength- This refers to is the durability of the paper. The paper bags at the grocery store are very strong as they need to be able to hold a full load of items without tearing. Most professional print jobs don’t require very strong paper.
Preflight Before you send your work to the printers it’s vital you check all your artwork and settings are correct so it can all be printed correctly. You need to check all your fonts and images are sent along with your artwork. You can do that by pacjaging all the files that are in your work together and send it all the the printer.
Its also important to check things that the preflight mode won’t spot, for example you must check your spelling and grammar, that your document is sset to the correct size that you want. The bleed, printers and crop marks are correct and in the correct places and set to the right size and that the images are all set to 300dpi.
Finishing Embossing is done by applying heat and pressure with male and female dies, usually made of copper or brass, that fit together and squeeze the fibers of the material .Debossing is similar to embossing, but recesses rather than raising it. Most types of paper can be embossed, and size is not normally a consideration. Embossing without ink, so that the image is raised but not colored, is called blind embossing. Embossing involves a separate stage in the production process, after any varnishing and laminating.
Spot Varnish is applied to chosen spots (areas), of a printed piece. This has the affect of highlighting and drawing attention to that part of the design, but it also provides the additional visual stimulus of having varied textures on a single printed surface.
Die cutting is the process of cutting/stamping out a shape from a design as seen here on the right. This is what a die cutter looks like,
Foil stamping, , is the application of pigment or metallic foil, often gold or silver , but can also be various patterns or what is known as pastel foil which is a flat opaque color or white special film-backed material, to paper where a heated die is stamped onto the foil, making it adhere to the surface leaving the design of the die on the paper. Foil stamping can be combined with embossing to create a more striking 3D image.
Costing Costing is an important part of any job, it is important to have an idea how much your job will cost before you begin, especially if you are working for a client so you can inform them of costs before you start designing for them. It’s good to get a quote from 2 or 3 different printers so you have some options and can work out which is best for the job you want to print and which is best value for money.
Francesca Pecqueur