pre- press print prod- uction

Key concepts, methods, and principles of print production II | prepress prepress prepress color 2 table of additive color 2 subtractive color 2 cmyk 3 rich 3 rgb 3 spot color 4 process color 4 stochastic 4 halftone 5 duotone 5 color gamut 6 screen angle 6 prepress 7 trapping 7 dot gain 7 knockout 8 overprinting 8 imposition 8 readers spread vs. printers spread 9 trim size & bleed size 9 nesting 9 print 10 contents 10 10 ink jet printing 10 presses & methods 10 letterpress 11 11 printing 11 11 & binding 12 varnishing 12 foiling 12 embossing 13 folding dummy 13 die cutting 13 signatures 13 page creep 14 saddle stitch 14 perfect bound 14 spiral bound 14 paper 15 A 15 B 15 color

SUBTRACTIVE COLOR When we mix colors in the real world and not on screen, like when we mix paints, or through the process of printing we are using what is known as the subtractive color method. Meaning as we mix colors, that would usually start in white, we end up moving towards black as we add more and more colors.

ADDITIVE COLOR Additive color is the method that is used on screens when we are playing in pro- grams like Adobe Illustrator. The colors on the screen are made of light. This process starts with black and then go whiter as we add color. For example, when we code a website the hexadecimal value of white is #ffffff, meaning full color value, more on that later.

C M Y K

C=100 M=0 Y=0 K=0 C=0 M=100 Y=0 K=0 C=0 M=0 Y=100 K=0 C=0 M=0Y=0 K=100

2 | color CMYK We use printers throughout our lives, but what do we know about them? Well, in terms of colors, printers use a four-color process using CMYK, or , , , and K or black. When you add these three colors together however you get a very dark brown, not black. The K color is used to remove light from the print which is why we see black.

RGB When we are making something for screen use, we are most likely in the RGB color mode. RGB uses red, green, and blue to create different colors. When these three colors are mixed on screen, we get white. RGB offers the widest range of col- or which is why we see this color method on screens.

RICH BLACK Rich black in print, is a mixture of solid black with the CMYK colors. If you try and print the default black on a machine it C = 50 comes out gray and is not as pigmented M = 50 as it could be. Rich black is used to create Y = 50 a better more pigmented black that looks much better on printed designs. K = 100

R G B

R=255 G=0 B=0 R=0 G=255 B=0 R=0 G=0 B=255

color | 3 SPOT COLOR Spot colors are colors created without screens or dots, like the colors found in the Pantone Matching System. Pantone spot colors is a precise mixing system for inks to get the most accurate colors. Pantone spot colors tend to be brighter and more pigmented than colors created with the four-color process.

PROCESS COLOR The most common method of color mixing, is in print, using the four-color process with CYMK colors. Process colors are all different percentages of cyan, yellow, magenta and black. Most printers will not print spot colors and convert spot into process color.

STOCHASTIC PRINTING Stochastic printing or screening is a halftone process based an almost random distribution of the halftone dots. Traditional prints have a very geometric and fixed placement of the dots. When you print using stochastic screening it’s mostly random with varying dot density.

Pantone Color Guide

4 | color HALFTONE Halftone is a technique of image repro- duction that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of many different dots. The dots vary in size and spacing which gives us a gradient-like effect. Halftone is used to refer specifically to the image that is the product of this process.

Halftone Dots What we see

DUOTONE Duotone is a halftone reproduction of an image using two different colors or inks. Normally black and another color are used. It is the superimposition of these two halftone colors over each other and it brings out the highlights and middle tones of an image.

Duotone Original

color | 5 SCREEN ANGLE In print, the screen angle is the angle at which the halftone dots of different colors are printed on a final product. In print col- ors are put on different lithographic plates. When you don’t use the correct angles, it turns into just some optical noise.

COLOR GAMUT Color gamut is the entire range of color that can be produced on a specific device, like on your laptop or on a . Normal- ly, a monitor or something with a screen uses RGB which has a greater color gam- ut than a printer which uses CMYK.

Visible Light

CMYK

RGB

6 | color pre- press

TRAPPING Trapping is a technique in prepress that is used to make sure that your illustra- tions turn out how you intend them too. They compensate for registration issues of successive colors/images. It ensures that everything is looking beautiful on the finished product.

with trapping without trapping

DOT GAIN Dot gain is something that sometimes happen in print when the printed product looks darker than it was supposed to. This happen because the halftone dots expand during the printing process. It is unavoid- able, but you can try to minimize the effect.

effects of dot gain

prepress | 7 KNOCKOUT Using knockout in prepress is like doing the opposite of overprinting. Instead of printing one thing over the other, the element on the top is “knocked out” of the base so that the color shows through.

knocked out area

OVERPRINTING Overprinting is the process of printing one color on top of another. It is linked to trapping, essentially the other side of the same coin.

overprinted area

5 12 9 8 front

4 13 16 1 IMPOSITION Imposition is a fundamental step in pre- press. It is the organization of pages on the printer’s sheet in order to get printing done faster, simplify binding and lessen paper waste. 7 10 11 6 back

2 15 14 3

8 | prepress READERS SPREAD VS. 1 PRINTERS SPREAD 6 1 Readers spreads show the consecutive pages in two-page spreads, they sit in the 2 3 order someone would read the document. 2 5 Printer spread are in the correct order that 4 5 they should be printed so that when it is printed, trimmed, and put together it looks 4 3 and appears as a book should. 6

reader’s spread printer’s spread

NESTING On a spread of products you need to print, you can nest items. Nesting is the process of organizing the items on a page so you save paper and printing materials instead of wasting many pieces to print one thing on each page. not nested nested

TRIM SIZE & BLEED SIZE Trim size and bleed are fairly important when created a document such as a poster or a letter. Bleed is the area of your document that is off the page. This is where you would drag patches of color or images to ensure that there is no white edge along your document. Bleed is generally an eight on an inch on all sides. There is also type safety or margin on most documents. Type safety is the space you leave on the outer edges of a page to make sure that your type isn’t to close to the edge and doesn’t get cut off in the final printing process. Margin is generally half an inch on all sides. Here is an ex- ample of what a document looks like with bleed and type safety included. margin .5” trim 8.5” x 11” bleed .125”

prepress | 9 printPRESSES & METHODS

XEROGRAPHY Xerography is an image-forming pro- cess that uses charged particles and a photoconductive substance to produce the images. Light that passed through an image reaches a drum that is coated in . Negatively charged particles are sprayed onto the drum and it makes an image. A positively charged sheet attracts the negatively charged toner that transfers the image onto the page. Add heat to this little mixture and you get your copy. INK JET PRINTING Ink jet is the most commonly used type of printing. It’s a type of computer printing that recreates an image by putting drops of ink onto paper, or another substrate. These machines range from your own printer that sits in your home office to massive and professional machines.

OFFSET PRINTING Offset printing or offset is a widely used printing technique where the inked image on a printing plate is then printed on a rubber cylinder and the offset to paper or another material. The rubber cylinder is what helps the process greatly because the image can easily be printed on wood, cloth, metal, leather, and other rough surfaces and paper.

10 | print LETTERPRESS Letterpress or is a process where many copies of an image are produced by repeated direct impression of a raised, inked surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. Letterpress is the oldest of the traditional print techniques.

SCREEN PRINTING Screen printing is a stenciling technique used to apply inked images on to different surfaces. Using a stencil or stencils, the ink is distributed to the area by being pressed through a screen hence the name screen printing. This is technique in which people create things like t-shirt designs.

ROTOGRAVURE PRINTING Roto or gravure for short is a type of printing process. This involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. In gravure printing the image is engraved onto a cylinder, kind of like offset printing, it uses a rotary . It is used for commercial magazine, postcard, cardboard and other product packaging.

FLEXOGRAPHY Flexography is a form of rotary printing where the ink is applied to different sur- faces by the use of flexible rubber printing plates. The ink that is used in flexography dries very quickly by evaporation and is safe to use on things like wrappers that come in direct contact with food products.

print | 11 finishing &binding

VARNISHING A varnish is a liquid applied to a printed surface. You use a varnish to increase color absorption, speed up the drying process, to help prevent the ink from rubbing off the paper and protec- tion. They are used most successfully on coated papers.

FOILING Foiling is a process that places a foil onto a substrate. A design is etched into a piece of metal called a foiling die, it’s basi- cally a metal stamp. That is putting into a hot stamping press, heats it up, and a thin roll of foil goes between the die and the paper and the two come together through a lot of pressure and you have your foil.

12 | finishing EMBOSSING Embossing or debossing are the process- es of creating either raised or recessed re- lief images and designs in paper and other materials. Embossing in particular is raised against a background, and embossed is sunken into a surface.

DIE CUTTING Die cutting involves the use of metal dies to give paper or a different substrate products specific shapes or designs that cannot be accomplished by a straight cut on a web press or otherwise. By using sharp cutting blades that are formed into the desired design, a machine presses the die into the material to produce it.

FOLDING DUMMY

Page 4 Page 3 Page 6 Page A folding dummy is an actual-sized press 5 Page sheet that has been folded into the pages of the desired size and then marked with page numbers to indicate the proper page imposition. Often folding dummies are cre- ated in miniature to plan for a publication Front Front Cover Cover Page 7 Page 2 structure, content, and visual continuity. Page 8 Page1

Outside Inside

p8 p6 SIGNATURES p1 p3 Signatures are large sheets of paper on p11

p9 which pages of a book are printed on, they

p16 p14 have multiple pages and are printed on each side. All signatures have page counts p12 p10 in multiples of four. Examples include p13 p15 64-page, 32-page, 24-page, 16-page, 12- page, 8-page, and 4-page layouts. p5 p7 p4 p2

Front of Sheet Back of Sheet finishing | 13 PAGE CREEP Creep is when the bulk of the paper in a saddle stitched booklet causes the inner pages to extend or “creep” further out than the outer pages when folded.

Trimmed Untrimmed Inside & Outside Inside Pages are are the same size smaller than the outside pages SADDLE STITCH Saddle stitch is a common book bind- ing method in which folded sheets are gathered together on inside the other and the stapled through the fold line. The staples are through the folded crease from the outside and are clinched between the centermost pages.

PERFECT BOUND Perfect bound is another common book binding method in which the pages and cover are glued together at the spine with a strong and flexible thermal glue. They have a square, printed spine and the cover is usually made from paper or something that is heavier than the inside pages.

SPIRAL BOUND Spiral binding allows a large number of pages loose sheets to be bound together while still allowing the book to lay flat. This binding method is commonly used as an economical option for presentations.

14 | finishing BINDERY PROCESSES

1 Cutting & Triming 3 Collating & Gathering

2 Folding 4 Binding

DECORATIVE PROCESSES

1 Embossing & Debossing 3 Coating

2 Foil Stamping 4 Laminating

5 Edge Staining

MORE FINISHING PROCESSES

1 Die Cutting

2 Glueing

3 Indexing

finishing | 15 paper

COMMON US PAPER SIZES Writing Text Cover GSM 17 x 22 25 x 38 20 x 26 20 50 — 75 24 60 — 90 27 68 — 100 28 70 — 105

11” — 78 — 115 A 32 80 — 120 36 91 50 135 40 100 55 150 — 110 60 162 ­— 119 65 175

8.5” — 122 67 180 — 146 80 215 — — 92 250 — 182 100 270 — — 120 324 — — 130 350 — — 160 432 — — 180 486

17” Please Note: North America, including the B United States, Canada and some parts of Mexico, is the only area of the first world that doesn’t use the ISO 216 standard papers sizes.

11”

16 | paper INTERNATIONAL PAPER SIZES The international paper sizes or ISO 216 specifies the standard in most countries. Not including the United States, Mexico, Colombia, or the Dominican Republic. Shown below is the A series formats.

841mm

105mm 210mm 420mm A6 148mm

A4 210mm 297mm

A5 148mm

A2

420mm 594mm

A3 297mm 1189mm

841mm

A1 594mm

paper | 17 Prepress is the term used in the printing and publishing indus- tries for the processes and procedures that occur between the creation of a print layout and the final printing. The prepress procedure includes the manufacture of a printing plate, image carrier or form, ready for mounting on a printing press, as well as the adjustment of images and texts or the creation of a high-quality print file. In today’s prepress shop, the form of delivery from the customer is usually electronic, either a PDF or application files created from such programs as Scribus, Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress.

During the 1980s and 1990s, computer-aided prepress tech- niques began to supplant the traditional dark room and light table processes, and by the early 2000s the word prepress became, in some ways, synonymous with digital pre-press. Immediately before the mainstream introduction of computers to the process, much of the industry was using large format cameras to make emulsion-based copies of text and images.

This film was then assembled (planning (UK) or stripping) and used to expose another layer of emulsion on a plate, thus copying images from one emulsion to another. This method is still used; however, as digital pre-press technology has become less cost intensive, more efficient and reliable, and as the knowledge and skill required to use the new hardware and especially software have become more widespread within the labor force, digital automation has been introduced to almost every part of the process. Some topics related to digital but not analog prepress include preflighting (verifying the presence, quality and format of each digital component), color manage- ment, and RIPping.

MADE BY TAYLOR BALL