The best way to film output (on)

Although desktop publishing technology has undergone earth-shaking changes and brought more and more advantages to the processing of graphic and textual information, the output work of the output center has also been continuously improved, but some things have not changed: that is, the customer brings output. The file always has problems such as "the lack of fonts in the file", "image resolution error", "order error page settings" and so on.

Problems like this often occur at the output center, using the wrong font in the page, or the image disappearing, or the file can't be printed at all, which not only wastes time but also wastes money. Faced with these problems, what our prepress production staff should do.

In digital processes everywhere today, prepress staff must take on the work done by electronic color separation personnel in the past, or they must at least understand the electronic color separation work, so as to prevent the creation of a document that may have problems in the next process. . If the prepress creator knows what to watch out for, then preventing output errors will become easier. In order to make the print production staff no longer make the same mistakes, and to find out how to avoid mistakes, I think the following aspects are worth noting.

First, problems caused by lack of experience

New generation publishers of image software that has just used Windows are often inexperienced. The problem with Windows files for newbies is far greater than the Mac problem. However, prepress production staff and output centers still have to compete with these familiar issues because novices will experience the mistakes that old employees have already experienced.

Another change that made the output of the center day sad is the increasing use of color inkjet printers. Prior to inkjet printers, many designers mistakenly relied on black and white laser printers to verify the final output; after the color printer was applied, the confusion became more serious. Because many customers only admit their own proofs, even some people rejected Matchprint proofs, because the colors can not match the proofs they brought. Because inkjet printers can print color gamuts wider than four-color prints, color inkjets often look more vibrant or saturated than final prints.

Similarly, web design experience has changed the expectations of many prepress creators for print. Like inkjet printers, computer monitors are less sensitive to differences in resolution and can display more colors than offset printing. One prepress producer saw various images on the webpage and they wanted to apply these images to print. The result is the placement of a GIF image that the customer wants to reuse in their brochure. After the file of such a web page image is exported to the film, the print result is conceivable.

Second, the font: still the number one error reason

Each prepress creator's most commentary on the designer's mistake is the font. Since the advent of electronic publishing, designers have forgotten to deliver the necessary fonts. But the mistake is far more than losing the font: designers often send wrong fonts, or changed fonts, or incompatible fonts due to version differences.

For example, some advertisers occasionally use Macromedia Fontographer software to make font changes. Although they send new, modified fonts, ATMs often cannot recognize it as a valid font file. At this time you need to do font replacement, sometimes only for other fonts. For advertisers, the modified font is mostly a headline word, so in the illustration software, the headline word should be set. It is better to convert the font into a path at design time, and then put the word into the spring and autumn typesetting software. Become a vector file, the font file is no longer needed.

This method also solves another frequent problem: the fonts placed in the EPS format file are lost. Because it is easy to forget the font of the text in the placed image when placing the image into the layout software, especially when other people create the image. If you turn the font into a path, you can ensure that the document is printed correctly. Of course, converting to a path can slightly distort complex fonts. Of course, in order to avoid this phenomenon, your only choice is to choose to include fonts.

Even if the designer sent the font, some people still make mistakes. For example, users of Mac machines often send screen display fonts instead of printer fonts. Once the file is opened, the computer often does not report font errors; after the results are printed, the font is dot-matrix rather than smooth.

In the Windows-based desktop publishing system, the problem that often arises is that the font used by the designer in the file is a TrueType word, but the Type1 font is transmitted, or the font used is a word, but what is transmitted is TrueType fonts. On the monitor, the fonts look the same, but the text is reversed because TrueType and Type1 fonts use different kerning and font width tables.

For designers using a Mac machine, fonts from Adobe or other major vendors are mainly used. These font output centers are generally available. Therefore, there are few errors in the output of these types of files. However, for the C computer, there are various types of font packages used, and the output center cannot be completely purchased. Therefore, there are many errors in the output of these types of files. Pay special attention to the font problem.

When designing a file, some people download all the fonts in the file instead of just downloading the fonts that are needed to print the file. Such a file also has some problems in the output. For example, when CorelDraw software is installed, the program installs hundreds of fonts in the font directory. When the font menu is displayed, it becomes difficult to match the fonts on the disk with the font names.

To avoid font problems, the best solution is to use PageMaker's Prepare for Service Bureau or QuakXPress's Collect for Output widget. PageMaker's widget will collect the fonts used in the file and tell which of these fonts are TrueType words and which are Type 1 words. The XPress plugin will create a font table for the fonts used in the file.

Third, the headache picture

Following the font problem, the biggest problem with the output center is the picture. It has been estimated that the output center will make more or less corrections to the pictures in all the files sent before the output file, which has become the norm in the center.

The most obvious problem is that customers often do not include pictures in files. The customer can put the linked picture in the typesetting software, but when sent to the output center, he forgets to send the picture placed in the file to the output center together. Therefore, when the output, it is not reported that the picture is wrong, that is to get a Low resolution pictures. Sometimes customers do not link pictures at all. For example, documents produced by financial companies, the pictures in these files are often copied from Microsoft PowerPoint or Excel to a file, when the layout file contains only one WMF file. When the picture is processed in the output, it is not the line width error, which is the color cast.

So, recreate the illustration in Adobe Illustrator or some other suitable illustration software. Do not put it into Illustrator by grabbing or cutting and scraping. The best way to do this is to hook it first and then export it as an EPS file. Put into Illustrator.

The WMF file is not the only file format that cannot be interpreted by Postscript RIP. In addition, LZW compressed TIFF format files, especially when the format of the image in the publishing software has been indented, RIP interpretation problems. Because RIP must first decompress the image and rescale the image at the new size, the file will always be printed or not printed at all. Therefore, images must be stored in uncompressed CMYK TIFF or EPS format.