printing information

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