Get the best film output for your design work

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 today's digital workflow everywhere, 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 possible problem in the next process. file. 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, the problems caused by lack of experience, the new generation of publishers who just use Windows image software are generally 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 makes the output of the center of the 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, the experience of web design has changed the expectations of many prepress production staff 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: is still the number one error, each pre-press production staff comments on the designer is the most font error. 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 changes to the font. 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 font placed in the EPS format file is 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 transmitted 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 often arises that the font used by the designer in the file is a TrueType word, but the Type1 font is transmitted, or the used font is a word, but the transmitted word 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, and these font output centers are generally available. Therefore, there are few errors in the output of such files. However, for PCs, a wide variety of font packages are used, and it is not possible for all output centers to be purchased for replacement. Therefore, there are many errors in the output of these types of files, and special attention must be paid to the design of fonts. 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. The best way to avoid font problems 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 output center's biggest trouble 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 documents. 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 is to first draw and then output it as an EPS file. Then 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. There are some problems when exporting with QuarkXPress, because XPress can easily rotate, mirror, and invert the image. Because Xpress can easily rotate, mirror, and invert the image, the production staff often In Photoshop, the image is not processed in this area. Instead, all these tasks are handed over to Xpress software. This means that RIP must also handle the process accordingly. Inverted, rotated, and mirrored images have a large amount of work for RIP and cause serious crashes. Therefore, if the image is to be rotated, mirrored, inverted, etc., it is best to do these tasks in Photoshop and then put it into place. You must delete unnecessary paths created in Photoshop when the file is finalized. Because if you leave unnecessary paths in the image, RIP is awkward. With the popularity of web pages, the output center has encountered more and more problems when processing pictures. Many customers often put files in the 72dpi GIF format RGB index images they downloaded from the Internet. This type of image looks good on the screen, and inkjet printing is also good, but these images often do not separate. Even if they were converted to CMYK TIFF images, the resolution was not enough. If you reduce the image to improve the resolution, the quality of the output may not be acceptable. Although reducing the size of the image can help increase the resolution, it can affect the color and sharpness of the image. On the other hand, some customers have improved image segmentation in Photoshop. This is forced to increase the pixels of the image. These pixels are not present in the original image. Interpolated pixels are only at the cost of reducing the contrast of the image. . The only way to guarantee a high-quality image is to scan or acquire the image in the final output size and resolution.

Fourth, different color types cannot be mixed, and another problem that causes headaches in the output center is that the designer violates the rules when defining colors in files and placed images: mixing spot colors, CMYK, and RGB colors in the same image or file . For example, they use spot colors and RGB colors to create Illstrator graphics, then place this picture into QuarkXPress, and define four-color separations. Even if the designer defines colors consistently, the problem still occurs when the same colors have different names. For example, Illustrator and XPress have slightly different naming conventions for Pantone spot colors. So the designer puts Illustrator's picture into XPress. When using the same Pantone color to create another object, once separated, it will be expressed in two different colors. Similarly, CorelDraw sometimes separates whites as spot colors (usually in gradients). The solution is to rename or redefine colors. In the first case, change the Pantone color name in XPress; in the second case, use CorelDraw's Paper color instead of white.

V. 12 Output Preparation Points: The following are 12 output preparation points, which will help designers prepare output files and output them smoothly. ,1. Set the file so that the page size of the electronic file matches the page size of the print. ,2. Unless the font is very complicated or finely detailed, turn any text in the EPS file into a path before you enter it into the layout software. , 3. Scan or get images as large as possible at the final output size and the appropriate resolution (larger ones are not necessarily good). , 4. Rotate, mirror, or invert the image in the software that created the image, rather than in the typesetting software. ,5. Remove extra paths and channels before storing the last picture to simplify the file. ,6. If the image is to be color-separated, the color is defined using the CMYK mode, and if it is not, it is defined as a spot color. , 7. Store pictures in uncompressed TIFF or EPS format. ,8. Print test separations on a laser printer to ensure that you don't have extra separations or unwanted spot colors. ,9. Use QuarkXPress Collect for Output or Adobe PageMaker's Prepare for Service Bureau widget to ensure that you know which fonts are included and send the fonts along with your files to the output center. ,10. Leave traps and layouts to the output center unless you have previously discussed and reached a tacit agreement. , 11. When sending documents to the output center, clearly indicate on the disk which file is required, and include a proof sheet marked with a cut and a bleeding mark, preferably printed (100%) in the final output size. , 12. Once you get a copy of the sample from the output center, check to find out what went wrong.

Sixth, the correct resolution, to ensure that your photos, scanned images and other lattice images have the appropriate resolution, which is necessary to ensure the quality of the output file