10 Pre-Press Tips When Designing For Print By Zeno Imaging VP of Production Solutions, Paul Furse A lot of designers think CMYK is the way to go when designing for print. We will, of course, always use CMYK-based ink, but this does not mean you have to work with CMYK files. You can work with RGB images to perfectly optimize your print colors and save a great deal of time in the process. For several of the following tips to work, you will have to keep and save all of your Photoshop images and artwork in RGB color mode. Photos are shot in RGB and 99% of stock images are RGB. Don’t convert them. In fact, you should never convert them at the beginning of the workflow. Any color RGB to CMYK conversions in a print workflow should be done at the end… at the RIP level. 1. Use RGB Color Mode For Photoshop Images If you’re a veteran designer, you probably think this goes against what you’ve been taught, which is to use CMYK color mode. Well, technology has come a long way, and nowadays RGB color mode is better because it produces a wider range of colors and allows you to use one image for several media, including print and Web. RGB colors (red, green, and blue) are created with light. This color space is often referred to as the “additive color space” because light must be added in order to produce color. Your computer monitor, TV, camera, phone and anything else that emits light (except your eyes) use RGB colors to produce its fantastic range of colors. CMYK colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and key, or black), on the other hand, are created by putting ink to paper. This is often referred to as the subtractive color space because light must reflect off of paper to create color… the light source is “subtracted” for color to be interpreted by the viewer. “Ink-on-paper colors” will never be as bright or saturated as the colors on your computer screen or TV, no matter how much ink you add to the paper. So, to get the widest range of colors possible, keeping your raster images in RGB color mode will preserve this. Most of the time, you won’t even have to think about it, because almost every photographer will supply you with RGB images. All you have to do is keep them in that mode. Opinions will differ about which RGB profile is best, but we’ll save that never-ending argument for another day.
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2. Unify Your Color Settings To successfully use an RGB image in the Creative Suite/Cloud, you first need to specify the appropriate color settings. Fortunately, Adobe has made it quite easy for you to specify the right settings and quickly apply them across its Creative Suite. This is where Adobe Bridge comes in. To specify a color setting in Adobe Bridge, choose Edit → Creative Suite Color Settings and then select your region: either “North America Prepress 2,” “Europe Prepress 2″ or “Japan Prepress 2.” If your region isn’t displayed in the dialog box, select “Show Expanded List Of Color Settings Files” at the bottom of the dialog box. After clicking “Apply,” the setting you have specified will be applied to the entire suite except for Acrobat. I personally use Adobe 98 and GRACoL 2006 as defaults. Bridge makes it very easy for me to manage my settings; especially when I do work that spans Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. 3. Ditch Photoshop EPS Files And Use PSD Files Instead After your images and artwork have been saved in RGB color mode and you’ve specified the right color settings, it’s time to start designing. Do you still keep a copy of your native Photoshop (PSD) files and save TIFF or EPS versions, which you then import into InDesign? If so, you’re missing out on some valuable opportunities. If you’ve been using InDesign for a while, you probably already know that it honors transparency effects in PSD files, but that’s not all. When you import PSD files, InDesign also honors color profiles, clipping paths, spot colors, alpha channels, duotone colors and vector information (such as Smart Objects). You can even access all the layers in a PSD file by selecting “Show Import Options” when you import an image or choosing Object → Object Layer Options after importing an image. With all of these time-saving opportunities, saving all of your Photoshop images in the PSD file format is a no-brainer. 4. Accurately Simulate CMYK While Working In RGB Keep in mind that even though you’re importing RGB images with bright and saturated colors, InDesign actually shows you what the CMYK equivalent of each image will look like. So, how does InDesign make that color conversion properly? Well, because you’ve specified the appropriate color settings in Adobe Bridge, InDesign will use those settings to simulate the appearance of each RGB image when it’s converted to CMYK color mode. InDesign even goes a step further and shows you exactly how the colors in a layout will appear when printed on a certain type of paper using a specific output device. Simply choose View → Proof Setup → Custom . Then choose an output device from the “Device to Simulate” pop-up menu, and select the “Simulate Paper Color” option. After clicking “Okay,” the color of your pages will change, and your images will appear darker and less saturated. So, to get a good idea of how your layout will appear when printed on coated paper using a sheet-fed printer, choose “U.S. Sheetfed Coated v2.” This feature is great because it gives you an accurate idea of how your colors will appear when they’re printed. www.zenoimaging.com
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If you use Photoshop, you may be wondering, “Wouldn’t it be nice if Photoshop could do the same trick, so that I can see what happens to my RGB images when they’re converted to CMYK?” Well, of course it can. Just choose View → Proof Colors , and make sure that “Working CMYK” is specified by choosing View → Proof Setup → Working CMYK . When you proof colors, you’re not actually changing the color mode of the image, so you can continue working in RGB color mode while simulating CMYK. This is yet another reason not to convert your Photoshop files to CMYK. 5. Selecting the Right CMYK Output Profile For The Job This one is geared more towards the advanced designer. There are many different kinds of paper, such as recycled and brownish paper for newspapers, glossy paper for magazines, uncoated paper for stationary and bright-white coated paper for high-quality brochures. As you can imagine, each type has different characteristics when it comes to printing. The recycled paper sucks up more ink, and if you don’t take this into account, your beautiful full-color photos will become too dark, and the ink will blur over the paper, creating an ugly brownish effect. How do you optimize artwork for all of these different kinds of papers? Well, that’s the easy part. Standard CMYK inks have been tested on every type of paper to the extreme. The way cyan, magenta, yellow and black are printed on a specific type of paper is documented in an ICC profile. All you need to do is download these free “Color Profiles” and select the right one when you export a PDF using InDesign ( Export → Output → Color Conversion & Destination ). If you’re not sure what kind of paper your printer will use, simply ask them. Most printers would rather answer a simple question than clean up colors afterward. 6. Let The RIP Make The Final Color Conversion Most modern printers including offset are digitally driven by a Raster Image Processor (RIP). Advanced RIPs will allow the user to specify exactly how color is converted and manage the profiles involved. For the sake of simplicity, let the RIP do the work. Color is a waterfall… it only flows one way. Let the color flow to the end with any profile conversion taking place at the RIP level. Changing the color upstream can greatly alter the final intent when the final image comes out and/or be a nightmare for the pre-press team when generating a proof. 7. Use All The Profiles Different CMYK Color Profiles are available for different kind of papers and print processes. Several organizations provide top-of-the-line ICC profiles, all of which can be downloaded for free at the bottom of this page. The most common are already included in the Creative Suite: Newspaper: ISOnewspaper Magazines: ISOWebcoated Full Color Offset: GRACoL 2006 U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 ISOCoated_v2 ISOuncoated www.zenoimaging.com
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Europe ISOCoated FOGRA39 8. Retain As Much Original Intent As Possible The only thing Bridge can’t do is manage how profiles outside of the working space are handled. In any Creative Suite product, if you go to “Edit > Color Settings,” you will see two check boxes for profile mismatches and one for missing profiles. I recommend checking them all. Why? I want to know 100% of the time when profiles don’t match my working space, and in the case of raster images, I want to preserve the embedded profile. My vectors are a little different, but this comes down to what the intent of the finished product is. This conversation can very quickly escalate, but just becoming more aware of your profile management will help you and your hired printer get what you want out of a finished product much faster. 9. Exporting A Perfect PDF Using All Of Your Embedded Profiles. If you’re using InDesign with multiple images and imported objects, you will want to preserve the intent of the images by including all of the profiles in the document to later let the RIP make the conversions. You don’t need to select the right profile and assign it to your InDesign document or convert to a particular color space. All you have to do is tell InDesign to include all of the profiles when you export the document to PDF ( Export → Output → Color Conversion & Destination ). You want to select “No Conversion” for the output intent and “Include All Profiles” for profile inclusion policy. Anything created in InDesign will use the working space profiles. Anything placed into InDesign (assuming your profile management policies are correct will retain the embedded profile) will retain its original intent. 10. Avoiding Errors When Using RGB Images And Spot Colors You can use RGB images even when producing a high-end brochure that has die-cut embossed areas and spot UV coating. All you have to do is lay everything out in InDesign and then use a CMYK spot color to define the areas that will be die-cut, embossed or UV-coated. Make sure that the spot color objects are placed on top of the RGB images and that they are set to overprint: choose Window → Attributes to open the “Attributes” panel and select “Overprint Fill.” When you export the document to PDF, the RGB images will convert to CMYK, and all of your spot colors will remain unchanged. I recommend that you check the color separations in Adobe Acrobat to make sure that everything that needs to overprint has been set to “Overprint” ( Advanced → Print Production → Output Preview ). ----All of the color profiles and tricks in this article can be used throughout the entire Creative Suite: 1, 2, 3 and 4. ICC Profiles can be accessed from the following directories: Mac OS X: …/Library/ColorSync/Profiles Windows: …Windows/system32/spool/drivers/color www.zenoimaging.com
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Owning a copy of Adobe Acrobat is not necessary, but the application comes in handy when checking the PDF files that you’ve exported from Adobe InDesign. Adobe Acrobat even lets you see which destination profile you have specified in InDesign by choosing Advanced → Print Production → Output Preview . Quark XPress users can use these same ICC profiles. Keep in mind that experimenting with color can create undesired results if you’re not sure what you’re doing. I highly recommend speaking with your printer before altering your workflow because he/she won’t be expecting color-optimized artwork if you’ve never bothered to submit it before. Should you have any doubts about the colors in a design, ordering a color proof on paper is always a good idea. If you would like to know more and learn how to make print work for you, please don’t hesitate to contact Zeno Imaging! Connect with Tim Baechle , Vice President of Production Systems at
[email protected] or Paul Furse , Vice President of Production Solutions
[email protected]
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