printing information

Adobe’s Design Achievement awards where presented to students during an awards gala and gallery on August 2, 2007 in the de Young Museum of San Francisco, CA. The categories inculded: Animation, Motion Graphics, Digital Illustration, Digital Photography, Environmental Graphics and Packaging, Interactive and Web Design, Live Action, Print Design Multi-page and Print Design Single page.

Although most of the stuff on there is a little too strange for my taste I think it’s amazing what people can do with Adobe’s software and enough time. Check it out and let me know what you think.

For more informative articles on printing information or to find out what’s going on in the design for print industry checkout http://printinginformation.org

If you are in the printing industry and haven’t been living under a rock then you probably already know all about the fiasco that Adobe caused when they added a button to Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader 8.1 that offers a one click solution to send the printing job to Kinko’s. On the surface it looks like a feature that will add value to the Reader software and help customers get their files off to someone for printing without having to leave their computer. The challenge is that this feature alienates the hundreds of thousands of printers throughout the nation that provide excellent printing services, pricing and turnaround for their customers every day. These smaller copy shops are Adobe’s bread and butter and it appears that they had just bitten the hand that feeds them. Most of the print shops today use the Adobe Creative Suite to design their customers jobs and also utilize the PDF work flow using Postscript Drivers exclusively for their color RIP devices.

The president of IPA Steve Bonoff and several other high ranking officals in the printing industry met with the CEO of Adobe software Bruce Chizen for a face-to-face meeting. Bonoff reiterated that the only solution to the problem is to remove the button from the software.

Chizen made some interesting statements in the meeting. One of those was that Adobe had a contractual relationship with FedEx Kinko’s. Chizen basically pointed out that customers more and more are expecting an easy and seamless workflow in order to keep down their bottom line and improve their time to market. While Bruce Chizen apologized for creating a firestorm with the addition he didn’t say that they would remove the button either. Instead he suggested the best solution would be to create a system that would allow all printers that use Adobe software to benefit.

The IPA definately made the printing worlds voiceas heard to Adobe and Adobe should be providing a solution by August 1st. I will keep you updated on what the outcome of all of this will be as I am very currious to see how this plays out. Obviopusly Adobe is likely making a % off everyone that submits a job via the button and it’s in Adobe’s investors interests that they keep the button intact. In all reality, even if they tell the IPA to jump off a bridge printers will still continue using the Adobe software because they is really no substitution for the quality of software that Adobe supplies. I will continue to use Adobe software until it’s no longer the best for the job at hand.

Let me know what you think about all of this as I’m sure some of you will have a say on the subject.

For more informative articles on printing information or to find out what’s going on in the design for print industry checkout http://printinginformation.org

Different types of printers

Full service online printing. When it comes to printing online there are many options you have and there are lots of things to keep in mind to obtain the best quality.When It comes to full color printing there are many options, some better than others, that will dictate how fast you can get your jobs and what kind of quality you get. Many online printers are just people with a low quality color copier that they use to print out anything from business cards to magazines (the quality on color copiers are low and if they don’t actually say they use offset presses then they are likely using a color copier.) The other choice for full color is a 4 color + coating offset press such as the company Printing Sacramento (www.sacdigital.com.) They use the highest quality presses possible to print their jobs by utilizing the gang-run model. This not only insures that your jobs will be using the best presses in the country but you also save a large amount of money over a local retail printer. I searched for a long time before finding this gem of a printer, Sacramento Printing not only finishes a job quickly they do not charge for shipping like most other printers, and my printing has never looked better! As a designer it’s important to have a relationship with a printer that makes you look good on paper.

Local retail printers. Although I have great luck with Sac Digital for all of my printing, sometimes people find that they need to work with someone face to face. If you don’t mind paying more for the printing and don’t mind having a lower quality print job then this is right up your alley. It’s easier to communicate your ideas with a local printer and that is what keeps them in business. Many times these printers are actually a go-between for the online printers and they take a cut, but they have the benefit of being able to sit down and listen to you about your project as well as show samples of what other people are doing in your situation.

The choice you make is up to you and what your needs are will determine what direction you eventually go with. Also don’t be afraid to try lots of printers, it took me over a year to find a high quality, cheap and very responsive printer. I have used most of the online printers like Vista Print and Printing for less but they never matched the quality and the expertise that I got from Sac Digital. If you haven’t tried them yet I would suggest using them at least once. I normally deal with Rick, call them at (916) 873-2399.

For more informative articles on printing information or to find out what’s going on in the design for print industry checkout http://printinginformation.org

I recently explored some of the new aspects of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 over the already popular CS2 and I was amazed. With Adobe letting CS2 users upgrade their Photoshop to the CS3 beta version I had a chance to check out some of the new layout enhancements that they have added. But once I saw the new InDesign I realized they did much more this time around although I’m curious if the new version of Acrobat will render outlined l’s correctly or if they will remain double the width until Acrobat 15. There are many reasons to love the new CS3 and I will cover a few of them below.

First off, the collapsible boxes on the right hand side of the screen that automatically resize based on content. Photoshop knows that the info box doesn’t need to be as large as the layers box, and in the new version it automatically adjusts the box based on what’s inside it, brilliant. Also you can have all of the boxes disapear once you move the mouse away from the right side of the screen, leaving you with a crystal clean workspace. The boxes reappear once you mouse over the right side of the screen. I always had trouble trying to obtain a happy medium between uncluttered and useful and Adobe cleared that one up in one shot. No more having to close boxes to access the right scroll bar!

Second feature(s) are found specifically in InDesign (my favorite program.) InDesign has always been a mix of all of the adobe products rolled into one, but has always been missing enough that you still have to switch back and forth between Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. You would be designing a page and would need to switch to Photoshop for a fancy heading (unless you slap drop shadows on everything and call it good,) layout the type in InDesign and edit any vector graphics on the page in Illustrator. During the course of designing your page you would have to switch back and forth constantly until your finally finished. Each time you switch programs you are wasting time and hefty amount of memory by having the whole creative suite running concurrently. With CS3 you will not have to do as much switching. As a new feature in InDesign CS3 you will now be able to apply many of the same layer effects that were previously only found in Photoshop (Emboss, outer and inner glow, etc.) This will same me lots of time as I view Photoshop as a “fix-all” program that allows you to do anything but not always the best way. You see this all the time when a designer uses Photoshop exclusively and doesn’t even know what the rest of the creative suite is for. I keep myself from relying on just one program as they all have their purpose. Photoshop is for editing photos and creating effects that you can’t reproduce in any other program. Indesign is for layout and with the built-in features like bleeds and pagination it’s a must for printing.

These 2 features alone will same me time and make the design process a more peaceful one. If you have had a chance to use some of the new features in CS3 or have something to ad please feel free to comment.

For more informative articles on printing information or to find out what’s going on in the design for print industry checkout http://printinginformation.org

Lots of graphics programs provide the opportunity to work in an RGB (Red, Green, Blue) or CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) color space. To understand each set of colors we need to understand how they are used and why they are used.

RGB Color Spaces
When working with RGB you are literally working with light. Recalling from school when you shine white light through a prism you get different color spectrum’s. The most basic colors are Red, Green and Blue. The colors are measured my intensity on a scale of 0-255 for all three colors (255³ or 16 million colors). If you have no color (R=0, G=0, B=0) you get black, if you have 100% of all three colors (R=255, G=255, B=255) you get white.

CMYK Color Spaces
When working with CMYK you are working with pigment and that is why it’s used for printing. Pretty much all color printers (inkjets, laser printers, dye-sub printers, and even full color offset and web presses) use CMYK. Some printers come with more than one shade of Cyan and/Magenta in order to achieve more color combinations but they are all basically CMYK printers. All CMYK colors are based on the paper being printed on being white. CMYK is measured in percentages from 0% to 100% for all 4 colors. If you have no color (C=0%, M=0%, Y=0%, K=0%) you are left with white (the blank paper.) To make Black you can either use 100% Black and 0% of all the other colors (know as standard black) or you can use a combination of all the colors to give you a darker black known as Rich Black. The most common ratio of colors to get rich back was popularized by Adobe Photoshop which uses this ink mixture when converting RGB black to CMYK (C=63%, M=52%, Y=51%, K=100%.)

When to use RGB or CMYK
Knowing when to use RGB and when to use CMYK can save you lots of time and headache and the rule is very simple. If your purpose is to display images and colors on a computer monitor (slide shows, web pages, movies, power point presentations, emailing flyers, scanning pictures) use RGB. If you are going to be printing images and colors they need to be in CMYK (although printers can convert the images for you you may incur additional charges or unexpected results since there are many colors in RGB that cannot be replicated in CMYK.

What’s the problem?
The main challenge with the two color spaces is in the printing. RGB colors that are bright and vibrant are normally much duller when printed in CMYK (after all since RGB is light itself you are never going to get a brighter image on paper.) The toughest colors to reproduce for CMYK is blue and red. On the screen RGB blue looks bright and very blue, on paper however you end up with navy blue instead. If you ever printed out a webpage with blue links on it you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Is there a solution to the RGB to CMYK problem?
Yes. The solution to the problem is to to always work in CMYK when printing. If you are using print design software (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, PageMaker, Quark, FreeHand, etc.) then you can select CMYK before you get started and you will not have to worry about a thing. If you are using a program that was not designed for printing (MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, etc.) then you will never have the option of changing to CMYK because the software was not designed for printing. It pays to have the right software.

For more informative articles on printing information or to find out what’s going on in the design for print industry checkout http://printinginformation.org