Preparing Files for Print

Setting up your files properly for print can save yourself and your printer from getting a headache, and will help your prints come out in a quick and timely manner. I'm sure nothing is more inconvenient for you than having your files stuck in the Proof process because your files were not set up properly.

There are some things to do, though, to make sure that your files will print just as you want them. You may have noticed in some of my earlier posts that I try to stress the importance of images being 300dpi and in CMYK. If you're unsure of the resolution of your image, you can either test print in on your own printer, or you can open it in Photoshop. If at any point you remember sizing UP your image, it will probably be low resolution.

It is also very important to make sure your file is in CMYK. This is also something that I have mentioned in a earlier post, but if your images have Pantones or is in RGB, digital printers (which print in CMYK) will convert those colors to their CMYK equivalent. There are true conversion values, but the printer itself, when converting, takes a guess.

Most of them time we do not have all of them typefaces that you are using, so when we open your files in our programs we lose all your typefaces. There is a couple ways around this: if you are sending a file in it's original format (InDesign, Illustrator, etc) you can send in your typefaces as well (Refer back to Sharing InDesign Files on packaging images and fonts). This is extremely helpful for both parties, because then we have the ability to change information in your file without you having to worry about fixing it yourself and then resending it. Remember, most of the time we are still able to open and edit PDFs. The second way, in Illustrator and InDesign, is to outline the fonts. In order to do that, simply highlight all of your text, and in the menu bar go to Text and select Create Outlines. If you set your type in Photoshop, well, just hope for the best.
Make sure your margins are correct (Refer to Margins and Bleeds)! The preferred margin size is a fourth of an inch (.25) away from the edge of the page, but absolutely NO LESS than an eighth of an inch (.125). This is especially helpful when pages inevitably shift while going through the printer and when it is necessary to give booklets a face trim.

If your file has bleeds (which means the color goes all the way to the edge) be sure to export your file WITH the bleed settings. When you click Save As, the Export Adobe PDF window will pop up, and under Bleed and Slug, make sure you select the Use Document Bleed Settings box.

This will make it so when we print and cut down your piece there will be no white lines around the edge. It is not necessary to have the crop and bleed marks in your file, but at the same time it doesn't hurt. You can find those in the same area as the bleed settings, but under the Marks section.

If your file does NOT have bleeds, then that step is not necessary, and simply exporting to PDF will do just fine. But still be sure to double check that everything else that was mentioned is correct.

Opacity vs Tints

I know this is probably one of those basic "well, I know that!" things, but I had to learn this one the hard way here at MMP and it is something that everyone should be sure to know... especially if you are designing for press.

I think the opacity settings threw me off originally because I started designing in Photoshop, and I had no idea where or even if the Tint setting was available. Once I moved into other design programs I took my habitual use of Opacity with me and ignored the Tint setting option all together.

The above image is an example of a press print when the opacity of a color turned down. The section on the left has the opacity turned down to 40% and the section on the right has the opacity turned down to 20%. Notice how the dots in the image get smaller and further apart as the opacity or tint  is turned down.

Opacity is the translucence of a color or layer. It can be 100% opaque meaning that it is full color and you can not see anything behind it, 99-1% opaque which makes it to where you can still see the front color as well as the color behind it, or 0% opaque meaning the color is completely translucent.

When the opacity of a color is turned down, if there is a color behind the color you are adjusting, that back color can affect the hue of your front color. In the first image above, both shapes are at 100% opacity and tint. In the second image, the blue square's opacity has been turned down to 50% making the yellow square behind it visible through the blue, as well as changing where the squares overlap to green.

Opacity in Photoshop, can be found in the Layers panel above all of the layers. If your Layers panel is not shown in your sidebar, go to 'Windows' at the top of your program window and select 'Layers' to activate it in your sidebar.

Don't get confused between the Opacity and the Fill options in this panel. There is a small but major difference between the two. Opacity takes the opacity down on EVERYTHING on that layer (including layer styles), whereas adjusting the Fill only affects the pixels in the layer but leaves the layer styles as is.

Opacity in Illustrator can be found in the Transparency panel. If your transparency panel is not active in your sidebar, simply go to 'Window' at the top of your program window and select 'Transparency', and it will appear in your sidebar.

Opacity in InDesign is in your Control Panel located at the top of your program window. If you do not see it, simply go to 'Window' and select 'Controls' to activate the control panel.

Tint is a field of color made out of dots that creates any available shade lighter than your original color. No matter how much you change the tint, the opacity of the hue never changes.

Unlike opacity, when the tint of a color is changed any color behind the color you are adjusting will not affect the front color. In the first image above, both shapes are at 100% opacity and tint. In the second image, the blue square's tint has been turned down. As you can see, unlike in the opacity example, no matter what you change the tint to you can not see the color behind it.

Tint in InDesign is in the Swatches palette on the panel on the right side of your program window. Just like finding any other available panels, go to 'Window' and select 'Swatches' to activate.

Tint in Illustrator can only work and be found if you have an item selected that is a Pantone color. If you have a Pantone selected, click on 'Colors' in your sidebar and you can change the tint.

Changing the tint is also an option in Photoshop, but only through the Duotone mode.

You might think it's strange that Illustrator only allows you to change the tint if you are using Pantones, but if you think about it it really makes more sense than trying to change the tint of a CMYK color. When you have a Pantone, if you need a lighter or darker shade you would have to search for a completely new Pantone swatch [refer back to Digital Printers vs DI Printers], thus making press jobs more complicated as well as expensive. Whereas, if you are working with CMYK all you have to do is move the color selector to a lighter or darker shade.

Knowing the difference between the two and knowing how to change them can save you from nasty color changes and printing blunders.

Color Theory & Color Profiles

RGB & CMYK

This post is going to be similar to the previous post 'Pantones vs Process Colors' in the functionality of process colors (CMYK) for print. But instead of comparing Pantones and Process Colors, I'm going to get a little into color fundamentals as well as cover the different RGB & CMYK Color Profiles. You might have noticed at some point that when you print something out it looks different on paper than it does on your computer screen. This is because of the different media color profiles.

RGB (Red Green & Blue) are Additive Colors, meaning when a red light, a green light, and a blue light are added together it makes white light. This is strictly for digital (web). Kind of strange since we're used to red and blue making purple and green and red making brown, right? Well, the computer screen you are looking at right now is actually made up of tiny red, green, and blue lights. The white areas are where each of the lights are turned on, the black area is where they are turned off, and all the colors in between are the lights with varying ons, offs, and intensities. If you get out a magnifying glass or a loupe and look at your computer screen you can actually see the tiny rectangular lights.

CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow & Black) are Subtractive Colors, meaning when you take all the colors away you have your white paper. This is (if you recall) strictly for printing. When you add all the colors together you get black, when you take them away you get white (or the color of your paper), and all the colors in between are different combinations of CMYK. [Remember: There is no white ink. White is just the color of the paper that the image is printed on. If you are printing on ivory paper, all the white areas will appear ivory.]

The full color gamut for vision, RGB, Pantones, and CMYK.

There are a lot of different things to consider when it comes to color, because not all colors are/will be the same. All color is subjective. Our eyes technically see in RGB, and how we perceive color may be different than how your neighbor perceives color. Just like monitors: the color profile in your computer may be different than your neighbor’s, therefore the color that you see on your screen will be different than theirs. So it should be no surprise if something is a completely different shade of purple on your screen than on theirs.

An easy way to imagine how we see color is to imagine beams of light flying all around you... when the light hits an object, such as a leaf, all the colored light is soaked in but the green light bounces off, thus making the leaf appear green. Take a black car tire: the car tire soaks in all the color light and nothing bounces off, making the tire appear black. Remember, the absence of light is black (like a dark room).

We can see every visible color in the color gamut (with the exception of color blindness). The total amount of colors, i.e. all the colors possible within a given color space, is referred to as the gamut. RGB has the highest. We already know Pantone inks allow you access to colors CMYK cannot produce – as they are “outside” the CMYK gamut, whereas CMYK has the smallest gamut (the most limited range). Don’t let the RGB gamut and our visual RGB gamut confuse you: if you look at the image above, the ‘Visible Color Gamut’ is all the colors that we can see with our eyes, whereas the ‘RGB Color Gamut’ is all the colors that are visible on your computer, TV, or phone screen.

Color is also relative, especially in print. When printing on white paper, yellows will come out yellow and blues will come out blue. Whereas, if you try to print on colored paper, for example: brown paper, the color of your paper will show through your ink causing the color to change. Especially if it is a dark paper! This is a big issue with digital printers. Offset press is a little different, since the ink sits on top of the paper and is a little thicker than normal ink, the paper color can still affect the ink color, but not as much as with a digital printer.

Color is also affected by coated and uncoated papers. If you recall my example about the green light bouncing off the leaf making the leaf appear green, this is almost the same concept. Except this time, the difference between coated and uncoated paper is HOW the light bounces off. The same color can be printed on both coated and uncoated, but when the light hits the coated paper the light that bouncing off will all bounce in the same direction. Whereas the light bouncing off the uncoated paper will bounce in all different directions, giving the illusion of a different shade. But in actuality, it is the same color.

Glossy paper vs Matte paper

Because RGB is strictly for web and CMYK is strictly for print, there are a couple ways to set up your files with the correct color profiles. Otherwise, if you design in RGB and change it to CMYK, the colors will actually change from what they were originally. So to make sure that this doesn’t happen, it’s always a good idea to double check and make sure that your color profile is correct for the media you are designing for.

You might recall this if you read the ‘Image Resolution’ post, but in the New Document window it gives you the option to change your document profile. If you click the drop down you can choose to design for print, web, mobile and devices, and so on. Obviously if you select Print it will set up your profile for CMYK at 300dpi, and if you select web it will set your profile up for RGB at 72dpi. You also have the option to manually change your setting under Advanced at the bottom. The window will expand a little and it gives you the option to manually change your color mode, raster effects and preview mode.

In Photoshop’s New Document window, it is a little different. If you click on the drop down for Color Mode you can select which color mode you want to work in, and then you need to change your resolution for your image [72dpi for web and 300dpi for print]. Unlike Illustrator, though, you have to set up your color mode and resolution manually.

*Fun Fact: There are more shades of GREEN than any other color,
and YELLOW rooms actually make babies cry more than any other color.*

Sharing InDesign Files

Links, Packaging, & Back-Saving in InDesign

There are a couple different things to consider when getting ready to share your files with your Printer or Designer: packaging, links, and back-saving a file to be compatible with an earlier version of InDesign. (We at MMP-MarketMailPrint set up and do most of our work in InDesign CS5, so this post will be InDesign specific.)

Links are images that are linked to your InDesign document from outside the document itself. When placing a photo into a document, go to 'File' and 'Place', and select your photo. The catch, though, is once the outside image is moved, renamed, or deleted, the link is broken and your high resolution picture is now low resolution. Notice the difference in the images below. The business card on the left has all of its images properly linked. Whereas, the business card on the right has lost its links for the image and font, therefore resulting in a low resolution image and the replacement of the name's font to something generic.

(Left) Business Card with proper links. (Right) Business Card with missing links.

This is where InDesign's nifty little packaging trick comes in handy.

Packaging, in InDesign, is when your document and all the links and fonts it may hold are gathered, copied, and conveniently put into one easy-to-access folder. This makes it easy for someone to zip and send a file to their Printer or Designer with all the necessary bits and pieces.

Before packaging, always make sure to Preflight your document. At the very bottom of your InDesign window, there is a small area that tells you if you have any missing links or not.

Preflight Menu dropdown.

 If you click on the small arrow, it will bring up your Preflight Menu. Click on 'Preflight Panel', and your Preflight panel will pop up. This is a quick and easy way to see if you have any missing links or if you are all ready to package.

In order to package your files, and go to 'File' and 'Package', and the Package window will pop up. Go through the different panels on the side making sure that no links or fonts are broken.

Package window, showing Found links and Missing links.

In each panel's window, it will tell you that a certain number of links or fonts were found and a certain number of links or fonts are missing. If it says something is 'Missing', then a link has been broken and will be replaced by (as mentioned earlier) a low res picture or a generic font.

InDesign lets you find and reattached your lost links and fonts in this window. I, however, would suggest Canceling out of the Package window, relinking from your document, then repackaging, unless you are confident enough in what you are doing. You want to be careful you have all the correct photos.

In order to relink your photos, open the Links panel on the right side of your window (or if it's not open, simply go to 'Window' and select 'Links').

Link panel with a missing link alert, and showing the location of the 'relink' button.

 All your photos will be listed, and if any of them have the stop sign symbol with the question mark then YOUR LINK HAS BEEN BROKEN! Simply click the 'Relink' button at the bottom of your list and find your appropriate file, and voila! 

Once you've made sure you have NO missing links, click 'Package', and the 'Printing Instructions' window will pop up. It is not necessary to fill out this window unless directed by your printer, so press 'Continue'. Lastly, name your folder and click 'Package' to save it to a location. Now, if you go and find your file, your document and all of its links and fonts will be nicely bundled into one tidy and convenient location.

As mentioned before, we at Austin MMP currently use Adobe InDesign CS5, and every once in a while we run into a customer who has a file from the newer version (CS5.5). InDesign often has trouble reading files from different versions, and since not everyone shares the same application, InDesign has another nifty trick where a newer version can save to be compatible with the previous version.

This is called back-saving. All you do is go to 'File' and 'Export', as if you were exporting normally, but before you press save click the drop down menu for 'Save as Type', and select 'InDesign Markup (IDML)'.

Where to find the 'InDesign Markup (IDML)' selection in the Export window.

This will save your file to be compatible with NOT ONLY CS5 but CS4, also! Remember, though, that this is still a normal InDesign file, and needs to be packaged and sent together.

Margins & Bleeds

What are Margins and Bleeds and how do I set up and export my files with them?

A couple things about printing and design that not a lot of people know or sometimes understand is margins and bleeds. As a Graphic Designer, I've spent years developing this useful habit, so I don't (nor any other person working in a print shop) expect everybody to know what they are and how to set up their files with them.

A margin is the area in between your text/artwork and the edge of the page. In the example below, the black lines are the edge of the page (where the business card will be cut) and the red line is the designated margin space. It is suggested to leave at least an eighth (.125) to a quarter (.25) inch of space from the edge of the page (depending on the size of your piece). This business card has an eighth of an inch margin space, because it is fairly small.

Margins (red line) on a business card (3.5in x 2in)

All the text and artwork is inside the margin space, so if this business card were to be printed it would not lose any important information after it was cut down. Good margin spacing is highly suggested because even if something is being printed on a big expensive printer, the pages do move ever-so slightly (some more than others). In the image below, this stack of trimmed paper shows how the papers shift as they go through the printer. It is not drastic enough to be extremely noticeable in the end, but it moves just enough to easily lose a chunk of text if you are too close to the cutting area.

A block of paper showing the movement of the paper when it goes through the printer.

Also, often times when a piece of paper is going through a printer, the printer needs an area to grab onto to pull the it through the machine. Therefore, if an image is supposed to print on the area where the printer has a hold of it, it will obviously not print.

A bleed, on the other hand, is the part of the artwork or background that goes beyond the cutting area so when the piece is trimmed down to it's finished size there are no white borders around the edge. The reason for bleeds is that it is extremely difficult to print color all the way to the edge of the page, so in order to achieve a full bleed a document is set up on a larger sheet of paper and trimmed down. For example, if a standard 8.5 x 11in flyer is set up for bleeds, it will be printed on an 11 x 17in piece of paper and trimmed down to it's finished 8.5 x 11in size so the color can go to the edge of the flyer.

In the example below, this business card is set up with a full bleed. The black lines are where the business card would be cut, and the red line is the edge of the bleed. Much like margin spacing, it is suggested to give the bleed an eighth (.125) of an inch to account for the movement of the paper. Because the blue color bleeds across the edge of the business card, there will be no white borders!

Bleeds (red line) on a business card (3.5in x 2in)

It is fairly simple to set up a document for bleeds. In Adobe InDesign and Illustrator, when creating a new document it gives you the option in the initial 'New Document' window (In InDesign, it is under 'More Options'). Just type in your desired bleed width in each of the four boxes.

The InDesign 'New Document' window, where to find the bleed and margin settings. (Note: Not all 'New Document' windows are the same, this image shows a general location of the settings and what to look for.)

In programs that do not give you the option to set up bleeds (like Photoshop) the easiest way to account for the bleed is to set up your document with an eighth of an inch extra on each side. For example, if the 8.5 x 11in flyer needs bleeds, set it up as 8.75 x 11.25in. Don't forget that each side will get an eigth of an inch, making the document a quarter of the inch bigger all together.

A lot of times it is simple to make up for a document not having bleeds when printing, but if your file is set up right it makes it easier for printers to set up and print your job quickly.

Just remember to stay away from the edge of the page. 

Now that you've gone through ALL this trouble setting up your document with proper bleeds, InDesign doesn't automatically export your document with your bleeds. So in order to export your document with your bleed setting AND crop marks simply go to File and Export. A window will pop up, type in your desired File Name and by 'Save As Type' click the drop down menu and select 'Adobe PDF (Print)'. Make sure 'Adobe PDF (Interactive)' is not selected. Click 'Export' and a new window (Export Adobe PDF) will pop up, this is where you will adjust your settings for crop marks and bleeds

The InDesign 'Export Adobe PDF' window, where to set up for bleed settings and crop marks

In the panel on the left, select 'Marks and Bleeds'. In this window, make sure to click the check boxes for 'Crop Marks', 'Bleed Marks', and 'Use Document Bleed Settings', this expands your document to show the bleed as well as give the necessary lines to show where it will be trimmed. After you have selected the proper check boxes, click 'Export' to finish exporting your document as a .pdf file.

Never hesitate to talk to your Printer or Designer, and ask questions. We're here to help!