January, 2007
In this lesson I'll cover some simple rules to follow when running separations. If you are a serious designer but lack preflight skills, it's like a fisherman without a boat. When you are designing a piece, the rule of thumb is run separations all the time. The biggest problem occurs when you decide to run separations at the end of the project and discover that the piece is wrong. It's best to make fixes along the way. Besides, if you are uneducated in this area, you can literally cost yourself and your client a lot of money especially if it's been printed already and you discover an error. Someone will eat the cost and it won't be the printer. Your reputation is in the tank and you'll lose future clients.
For this lesson I created a quick little fake newsletter.
Because I only have an HP Photosmart 7400 Series printer, we'll use that for now. Open Print. Go to Setup and choose Scale to Fit.
Select Marks and Bleed and check All Printer's Marks.
Because I do not have a Postscript printer, I cannot select Separations but if you have the capability, you would choose Separations at this point. Also, if you want to keep the print job fairly inexpensive, you would use Spot colors as opposed to CMYK as shown below. Think of spot colors as cans of paint. Let's say I wanted to use only 3 colors for this newsletter, I would make sure that my colors were spot colors and I would use variations of that same color. Variations of a color could be anything from 100% of ink to 10% of ink which would give you lighter versions of that same color.
Check All for Graphics.
Under Color Management select Proof as sRGB or any variation of that is strictly web related.
For Advanced choose High Resolution.
Finally, print the summary and also save it, then review it for problem areas. Go and fix those problem areas before you continue as it's much easier to fix problems in the beginning than it is at the end. This was only a one page piece but imagine if you were doing a 200 page document, you certainly would want to avoid major problems after you have completed the piece. Also, ask your printer about what they expect from you as a designer. One other key bit of advice, make sure as the designer not to take legal responsibility for the printing or you could be liable for any costs that accrue. Get a book on legal documents for designers, personalize the forms for yourself, and have them signed by the client.
NEW FEATURE: Download the original source files from this tutorial in Zip format Here
Copyright (c) 2007, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved
