On Thursday September 29, 2011, the Printing Industries of Utah will be holding a meeting concerning the new focus of the EPA on the Graphic Arts Industry of Utah.
The Utah Division of Air Quality is claiming that the entire printing industry in Utah is a major contributor of inversion and have determined that if only the printing industry decreased emissions, Utah would be inversion free. This meeting is to help everyone learn about this threat of increased regulation from the government, and also to discuss ideas on how to minimize our VOC contributions.
The meeting starts at noon, with lunch. It will be held at the LDS Printing Division, 1908 West Industrial Circle, Salt Lake City, Utah. You can sign up by calling Lola at 801-253-1329 or email to Lola Monsen(at)piofutah.com. (Just change the "(at)" to @ in your email) The cost is $10.00 for PIU members and $15.00 for everyone else.
Showing posts with label Commercial Print. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commercial Print. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Color Spaces Part 2
This is a continuation of the topic of Color Spaces started in the previous post.
(These recommendations are for images intending to print in CMYK.)
Along with your monitor and your printer, a photo has its own color space. It may fall completely inside both the RGB and CMYK color spaces, or it may be mostly within both spaces with only a few areas out of the CMYK gamut (like the sample photo below, also used in the previous post), or it may have large areas unavailable to a CMYK gamut. To refresh your memory, here is our sample photo with gamut warnings turned on in Photoshop.
If your photo is like ours, with very few areas of gamut warnings, it will probably look just fine in CMYK when it is converted from RGB to CMYK for print. You may want to tweak it a little, but it should look fine. Below is a comparison of our original sample image in RGB, the image with gamut warnings turned on in Photoshop, and the what the image looks like converted to CMYK. Not a lot of difference.
However, if your image has large areas covered in Photoshop's gamut warnings, you should make adjustments before you submit your image to print, otherwise you could be disappointed in the difference and you won't be in control of the effects of color conversion.
Most of the time the problem and its solution lie in the over-saturation of colors. So create an adjustment layer for Saturation in your image.
Then choose the channel in which the most warnings show (if it's in a grassy field, choose the green channel, if it's someone's red sweater, choose red, etc.)
Adjust the saturation down, until many or most or all of the gamut warnings disappear.
Another option is to create a Levels adjustment layer, and use that instead to adjust colors to remove some of the gamut warnings.
Minimizing these gamut warning areas now will minimize color shifts when your image is converted to a CMYK, or print, color space.
Before converting your image to CMYK, know what your Conversion Options are set to in your Color Settings menu. (Control + Shift + k to open the Color Settings menu in Photoshop)
Overall, we recommend that the "Intent" be set to "Relative Colormetric." For a detailed explanation of what these four rendering intents do, please visit this informative tutorial here.
This tutorial does a good job explaining the difference between Photoshop's four rendering intents: Perceptual, Saturation, Relative Colormetric, and Absolute Colormetric. And it will help you know when it's a good idea to use one of the other options besides Relative Colormetric.
(It's also a good idea to know what your other settings in the Color Settings menu are set to, as well, but we aren't covering that, right now.)
Now your conversion of an image from one color space to another will be less surprising, whether you convert your image in Photoshop, or you let your print provider do the conversion from RGB to CMYK in their workflow.
This is really all about control. If you know what is happening to your image's color space as you move from RGB to CMYK, you can better control how it looks. And you don't leave that control in the hands of others.
As you design your print projects, keep in mind the differences between the RGB and CMYK color spaces, or gamuts. Because they are different, what you see on your monitor will not necessarily represent what you see on paper, and what you print out on your inkjet or color laser printer does not necessarily represent what you will get from your print provider.
In fact, without any controls in place, it is a sure thing that they won't be the same.
Remember that each device has it's own color gamut. Each monitor, printer, and press will display or print your image slightly differently from your monitor, your printer, and your print provider's press.
This is one reason why the proofs that a print provider give to you are so important. The color proofs from your print provider should show what you can expect your images to look like when printed. Here at Lorraine Press we've put a lot of effort into making our color proofs an accurate reflection of what you will see on our presses at the press check.
Also, when working in cross-media marketing campaigns, knowing about color spaces and how they basically work can help as you choose colors that can look good for your projects in any medium — especially if you are using web and print in your campaigns.
Hopefully, if there are any readers still out there reading what has to be one of the longest blog posts I've ever written, this has helped introduce what color gamuts are and how they affect your projects.
Photoshop Gamut Warnings, continued
Along with your monitor and your printer, a photo has its own color space. It may fall completely inside both the RGB and CMYK color spaces, or it may be mostly within both spaces with only a few areas out of the CMYK gamut (like the sample photo below, also used in the previous post), or it may have large areas unavailable to a CMYK gamut. To refresh your memory, here is our sample photo with gamut warnings turned on in Photoshop.
If your photo is like ours, with very few areas of gamut warnings, it will probably look just fine in CMYK when it is converted from RGB to CMYK for print. You may want to tweak it a little, but it should look fine. Below is a comparison of our original sample image in RGB, the image with gamut warnings turned on in Photoshop, and the what the image looks like converted to CMYK. Not a lot of difference.
However, if your image has large areas covered in Photoshop's gamut warnings, you should make adjustments before you submit your image to print, otherwise you could be disappointed in the difference and you won't be in control of the effects of color conversion.
Most of the time the problem and its solution lie in the over-saturation of colors. So create an adjustment layer for Saturation in your image.
Then choose the channel in which the most warnings show (if it's in a grassy field, choose the green channel, if it's someone's red sweater, choose red, etc.)
Adjust the saturation down, until many or most or all of the gamut warnings disappear.
Another option is to create a Levels adjustment layer, and use that instead to adjust colors to remove some of the gamut warnings.
Minimizing these gamut warning areas now will minimize color shifts when your image is converted to a CMYK, or print, color space.
Overall, we recommend that the "Intent" be set to "Relative Colormetric." For a detailed explanation of what these four rendering intents do, please visit this informative tutorial here.
This tutorial does a good job explaining the difference between Photoshop's four rendering intents: Perceptual, Saturation, Relative Colormetric, and Absolute Colormetric. And it will help you know when it's a good idea to use one of the other options besides Relative Colormetric.
(It's also a good idea to know what your other settings in the Color Settings menu are set to, as well, but we aren't covering that, right now.)
Now your conversion of an image from one color space to another will be less surprising, whether you convert your image in Photoshop, or you let your print provider do the conversion from RGB to CMYK in their workflow.
Why All This Matters to You
As you design your print projects, keep in mind the differences between the RGB and CMYK color spaces, or gamuts. Because they are different, what you see on your monitor will not necessarily represent what you see on paper, and what you print out on your inkjet or color laser printer does not necessarily represent what you will get from your print provider.
In fact, without any controls in place, it is a sure thing that they won't be the same.
Remember that each device has it's own color gamut. Each monitor, printer, and press will display or print your image slightly differently from your monitor, your printer, and your print provider's press.
This is one reason why the proofs that a print provider give to you are so important. The color proofs from your print provider should show what you can expect your images to look like when printed. Here at Lorraine Press we've put a lot of effort into making our color proofs an accurate reflection of what you will see on our presses at the press check.
Also, when working in cross-media marketing campaigns, knowing about color spaces and how they basically work can help as you choose colors that can look good for your projects in any medium — especially if you are using web and print in your campaigns.
Hopefully, if there are any readers still out there reading what has to be one of the longest blog posts I've ever written, this has helped introduce what color gamuts are and how they affect your projects.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Color Spaces Part 1
We are going to start off today's post with a thought exercise.
Imagine all the different visible colors, the millions upon millions of all different shades and hues. Now, picture them as a three-dimensional sphere, with white on the top most point, moving to pastels and light colors until the "equator" which has the most saturated pure colors, and then shading towards black at the bottom most point. If you start spinning your sphere, like a globe, on its White/Black axis, you would see the colors of the rainbow along the equator morph from red to orange to yellow, to green, cyan, blue purple, magenta, back to red, etc. as it turns.
Okay, you can stop spinning around. Got your sphere in your mind? We are going to pretend that this is an accurate 3D model of all the visible colors.
In reality, the 3D image of all visible color is not nearly as perfect or even very spherical, but reality is usually messy and this is just a thought exercise!
Now, inside of your sphere of all the visible colors of the world is another sphere, a smaller subset of colors. This is what we see on our computer monitors and televisions. This is the RGB color set. It can't re-create all the colors we can see with our eyes, but there are still millions of colors it can produce.
Inside that sphere is another smaller sphere. This one represents all of the colors that can be printed in ink, on paper. In our perfect imaginings, this sphere is smaller, and it will represent an average CMYK color space, for example all the colors that our printing presses here at Lorraine Press can reproduce with the normal four colors of ink.
This is a very simplified way of thinking about color spaces. But it's also a helpful way of imagining what is happening to your image during the printing process without getting into the nitty gritty and usually complicated details of color spaces. Each of step of capturing and then printing an image uses a different color space: seeing something colorful, taking a picture of it with your digital camera, looking at it on your monitor, and printing it out on your printer.
If you are interested in what a CMYK color gamut looks like in reality (the smallest sphere you imagined), click here to go to a blog post by Gordon Pritchard. The post is talking about spot colors, but the 3D image of a CMYK gamut is a good one.
Now, imperfect, messy reality demands that each monitor, digital camera, and printing device has its own unique color subset, or sphere, its own subset of possible colors it's able to reproduce. Some are RGB and some CMYK. And also in reality CMYK color spaces can even intrude outside parts of the RGB color space in certain colors.
Each imagined sphere, or color space, also called a color gamut, represents the complete subset of colors that can be accurately reproduced in that color space. It is a measured fact that the visible color gamut is much larger than the RGB gamut which is in general larger than the CMYK gamut. And this is a reality we all must live with, and it can get messy.
Here is another (two dimensional) way to look at it: (graph courtesy of Wikipedia)
The gray area represents the entire visible spectrum. And the colored triangle is what an average monitor can show. (Even though each monitor is slightly different, the technologies we use can only display a small portion of visible colors.) It may seem limiting, but your eyes are usually happy with what they see.
It gets a little more complicated when you add in the CMYK color space, but here is another graph which adds the typical CMYK color space with the typical RGB values inside of the visible spectrum: (graph courtesy of BU, who pulled it from Jackson, Richard, MacDonald, Lindsay and Freeman, Ken, Computer Generated Color, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, West Sussex, England 1994, page 221)
The CMYK area is the pentagram looking shape represented by the dotted line. Note the areas of green (at the top of the RGB triangle on the graph) and blue (the bottom left corner of the RGB triangle) that the CMYK color space cuts through. These areas involve colors that you can readily see on your monitor, but are impossible to reproduce in regular CMYK printing.
These colors are called out of gamut for the CMYK color space. There is no way to make the CMYK gamut print those colors. Therefore, when viewing a photograph on your computer screen, you should keep in mind that it is possible that there are places in your photo that CMYK won't be able to reproduce. Adobe Photoshop has a tool that can show where these places are in an image.
In Photoshop, on a Mac or PC, have your image open, then click on View, then go down to Gamut Warning. Or if you like keyboard shortcuts, hold down command and shift and the "Y" key to toggle the Warning off and on. Here is a regular RGB image, opened up in Photoshop:
If we then turn on Gamut Warning in Photoshop, grayed out areas will appear and usually look speckled:
Note the grey speckles within the black circles. These are areas that are out of gamut. This is just a warning. And it doesn't change anything in your image. It just turns on and off. Now you are probably wondering what to do about the warnings. We'll talk about that in Color Spaces - Part 2.
In the next blog post, Color Spaces Part 2, since this one is already way too long, (kudos to anyone who made it this far!) I'll explain more about color gamuts, color conversions, and why knowing about color gamuts is important to those wanting to print in color.
Imagine all the different visible colors, the millions upon millions of all different shades and hues. Now, picture them as a three-dimensional sphere, with white on the top most point, moving to pastels and light colors until the "equator" which has the most saturated pure colors, and then shading towards black at the bottom most point. If you start spinning your sphere, like a globe, on its White/Black axis, you would see the colors of the rainbow along the equator morph from red to orange to yellow, to green, cyan, blue purple, magenta, back to red, etc. as it turns.
Okay, you can stop spinning around. Got your sphere in your mind? We are going to pretend that this is an accurate 3D model of all the visible colors.
In reality, the 3D image of all visible color is not nearly as perfect or even very spherical, but reality is usually messy and this is just a thought exercise!
Now, inside of your sphere of all the visible colors of the world is another sphere, a smaller subset of colors. This is what we see on our computer monitors and televisions. This is the RGB color set. It can't re-create all the colors we can see with our eyes, but there are still millions of colors it can produce.
Inside that sphere is another smaller sphere. This one represents all of the colors that can be printed in ink, on paper. In our perfect imaginings, this sphere is smaller, and it will represent an average CMYK color space, for example all the colors that our printing presses here at Lorraine Press can reproduce with the normal four colors of ink.
This is a very simplified way of thinking about color spaces. But it's also a helpful way of imagining what is happening to your image during the printing process without getting into the nitty gritty and usually complicated details of color spaces. Each of step of capturing and then printing an image uses a different color space: seeing something colorful, taking a picture of it with your digital camera, looking at it on your monitor, and printing it out on your printer.
If you are interested in what a CMYK color gamut looks like in reality (the smallest sphere you imagined), click here to go to a blog post by Gordon Pritchard. The post is talking about spot colors, but the 3D image of a CMYK gamut is a good one.
Now, imperfect, messy reality demands that each monitor, digital camera, and printing device has its own unique color subset, or sphere, its own subset of possible colors it's able to reproduce. Some are RGB and some CMYK. And also in reality CMYK color spaces can even intrude outside parts of the RGB color space in certain colors.
Each imagined sphere, or color space, also called a color gamut, represents the complete subset of colors that can be accurately reproduced in that color space. It is a measured fact that the visible color gamut is much larger than the RGB gamut which is in general larger than the CMYK gamut. And this is a reality we all must live with, and it can get messy.
Here is another (two dimensional) way to look at it: (graph courtesy of Wikipedia)
The gray area represents the entire visible spectrum. And the colored triangle is what an average monitor can show. (Even though each monitor is slightly different, the technologies we use can only display a small portion of visible colors.) It may seem limiting, but your eyes are usually happy with what they see.
It gets a little more complicated when you add in the CMYK color space, but here is another graph which adds the typical CMYK color space with the typical RGB values inside of the visible spectrum: (graph courtesy of BU, who pulled it from Jackson, Richard, MacDonald, Lindsay and Freeman, Ken, Computer Generated Color, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, West Sussex, England 1994, page 221)
The CMYK area is the pentagram looking shape represented by the dotted line. Note the areas of green (at the top of the RGB triangle on the graph) and blue (the bottom left corner of the RGB triangle) that the CMYK color space cuts through. These areas involve colors that you can readily see on your monitor, but are impossible to reproduce in regular CMYK printing.
These colors are called out of gamut for the CMYK color space. There is no way to make the CMYK gamut print those colors. Therefore, when viewing a photograph on your computer screen, you should keep in mind that it is possible that there are places in your photo that CMYK won't be able to reproduce. Adobe Photoshop has a tool that can show where these places are in an image.
In Photoshop, on a Mac or PC, have your image open, then click on View, then go down to Gamut Warning. Or if you like keyboard shortcuts, hold down command and shift and the "Y" key to toggle the Warning off and on. Here is a regular RGB image, opened up in Photoshop:
Note the grey speckles within the black circles. These are areas that are out of gamut. This is just a warning. And it doesn't change anything in your image. It just turns on and off. Now you are probably wondering what to do about the warnings. We'll talk about that in Color Spaces - Part 2.
In the next blog post, Color Spaces Part 2, since this one is already way too long, (kudos to anyone who made it this far!) I'll explain more about color gamuts, color conversions, and why knowing about color gamuts is important to those wanting to print in color.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Swatch Color Matching for Printed Catalogs
Have you ever bought clothing, or anything else for that matter, from a catalog (after carefully scrutinizing the image, of course) and upon receiving it, you were surprised by the product's actual color? The most likely answer to this questions is, "of course!"
It is probably only a slight exaggeration to say that this has happened at least once to everyone who has ordered anything ever.
As common as this problem is, however, there are ways to reduce the sometimes stark differences between catalog images and the actual products. Lorraine Press can help vendors and catalog designers depict products more accurately in their printed catalogs.
We can work with your color swatches, product samples, or even fabrics, and we will create the best CMYK match for the swatch color. With the color separations we create, you'll be able to design and print your catalog, confident that it will represent your products better than ever before.
Contact us for more information, or if you would like help in creating your most accurate catalog to date.
It is probably only a slight exaggeration to say that this has happened at least once to everyone who has ordered anything ever.
As common as this problem is, however, there are ways to reduce the sometimes stark differences between catalog images and the actual products. Lorraine Press can help vendors and catalog designers depict products more accurately in their printed catalogs.
We can work with your color swatches, product samples, or even fabrics, and we will create the best CMYK match for the swatch color. With the color separations we create, you'll be able to design and print your catalog, confident that it will represent your products better than ever before.
Contact us for more information, or if you would like help in creating your most accurate catalog to date.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Spot colors, Custom colors, Brand colors, and Pantone Colors
All these are names for the same type of thing: an ink that requires its own plate in the printing process. This ink color could be in addition to any or all of the usual four C, M, Y, and K inks used in the printing process, or it could be used all by itself.
Spot color inks are useful for several reasons: for producing a color not within the CMYK color gamut, maintaining a color specific to a certain brand or product (think Tiffany's, 3M, UPS, Coke, what colors do these companies bring to mind? Those are their brand colors.) or even for shrinking costs when only one or two colors (instead of four or five) can be used to produce a project.
When submitting a project with a spot color, you can identify that spot color several different ways to your printer:
For this reason, the Pantone color guide book (the actual physical book) is useful for picking your colors even though most graphic design programs have digital color books available. It is also nice to see what the actual Pantone color will look like as opposed to what is on the screen. But since the last time we bought the full range of color books from Pantone, they came in their own little suitcase, there may be financial considerations before you buy every kind of color from Pantone.
The color book does have a handy feature. If the Pantone color is achievable in CMYK, then a four-dot icon is underneath the color name. Like this picture demonstrates here:
We have put together a list of helpful hints about spot colors. Please read through this list for helpful suggestions on what to do with your spot color project before you submit it to your printer:
Spot color inks are useful for several reasons: for producing a color not within the CMYK color gamut, maintaining a color specific to a certain brand or product (think Tiffany's, 3M, UPS, Coke, what colors do these companies bring to mind? Those are their brand colors.) or even for shrinking costs when only one or two colors (instead of four or five) can be used to produce a project.
When submitting a project with a spot color, you can identify that spot color several different ways to your printer:
- with a physical sample of that color, (but sometimes the physical sample doesn't fit in your car to bring it to the print shop)
- with numerical values in a specified color space, such as CMYK, or Lab (but these numbers are all different depending on what color space they are in, so identify which color space you are using.)
- with an ink formula or recipe to mix the color, (not a usual way, but certainly possible)
- or most likely, with a color chip or a name from a color book, with the most popular color book in the U.S. being produced by Pantone. (Pantone colors are in many graphic design programs already!)
For this reason, the Pantone color guide book (the actual physical book) is useful for picking your colors even though most graphic design programs have digital color books available. It is also nice to see what the actual Pantone color will look like as opposed to what is on the screen. But since the last time we bought the full range of color books from Pantone, they came in their own little suitcase, there may be financial considerations before you buy every kind of color from Pantone.
The color book does have a handy feature. If the Pantone color is achievable in CMYK, then a four-dot icon is underneath the color name. Like this picture demonstrates here:
We have put together a list of helpful hints about spot colors. Please read through this list for helpful suggestions on what to do with your spot color project before you submit it to your printer:
- Tell your printer which spot color you want. You can use any of the methods described above, but make sure it gets said. Out loud or written down. It may sound silly to spell this out, but sometimes people forget to tell their printer, "There's a spot color on this job."
- Make certain that the spot color is named the exact same thing across programs. If in Illustrator you use "PANTONE 123C," and in InDesign you use "Pantone 123C" and then place that Illustrator file in InDesign, your final file will have two spot colors. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but without care, the number of spot colors in a project can multiply as quickly as tribbles. (I think the current record at Lorraine Press is well over 200 spot colors used in one document that was only supposed to have 1 spot color.)
- Double check in all programs used for your project that your spot color is defined as a spot color and not as a process color. The objects using the color marked process, even with the same name as your spot color, will come out on the CMYK plates and not the spot color plate. Once again, this sounds pretty basic, but it has caused headaches for people in the past.
- If there is an exact color, or an acceptable range of hues for that exact color that the printer absolutely needs to match or be constrained to, make certain that a physical sample of that exact color along with any acceptable shade tolerances is in the printer's possession, preferably before the job proofs, and especially before the job gets to the press. Nobody, you or the press operator, wants a surprise at the press check.
- If the printed piece is going to be subjected to heat, (for example be laminated), after printing, ask about possible color shifts with your spot color. If you are concerned about color shifts, ask for a laminated sample before moving forward with that color.
- If you are using a spot color and an aqueous coating in your project, be aware that with some spot colors in the blue, violet, and purple ranges, coatings will cause unacceptable visual color shifts after drying. Therefore, your ink manufacturer, or printer, may substitute pigments in your color which will not shift with applied coatings. And those pigments may not be an exact match for the original specified color. Check with your printer before printing to alleviate any concerns in this area.
- Double check your project to make sure that all the objects that should be using your spot color are actually using your spot color and not a process color similar to your spot color. This has tripped up customers in the past. One way to check this if you have a pdf of your project is in Adobe Acrobat (not Reader). It has a handy feature called Output Preview which will let you check your pdf for your spot color. (With recent versions of Acrobat: go to Advanced, then Print Production, then Output Preview. It will bring up a menu that lets you turn on and off your color separations. It will also show you if you have the correct number of spot colors in your pdf.)
Monday, January 17, 2011
Stochastic vs. Conventional Screening
Being in the printing industry and scrutinizing the printing on sheets of paper for over a decade comes with some side effects. I can't look at any printed piece anywhere without noticing the quality of print job. Some things were so atrocious (to me) I wasn't sure how they made it out of the print shop's door: I've seen food labels missing the yellow from the image completely, book covers embossed out of register (so far out of register that I was dubious that they were really even aiming for the cover, but the person with me said, "What? I don't see anything wrong." Sigh.), double or upside-down signatures in books, print artifacts (hickies) so large that they blot out portions of the text, and calenders with a coating on it that won't accept ball point pen.
But recently I noticed a new side effect. I went shopping for tile for my bathroom remodel. Did you know that the ceramic tile made to look like stone is printed? I didn't. But on the display shelf in the store, there was a piece of tile that made me do a double-take. "Wait a minute!" I said, "This tile is completely out of register!" I wasn't even looking that closely. But after seeing that, you can believe I did. And after looking at ceramic tile for a couple of hours I knew that the conventional screening pattern in the tile, whether in register or not, would drive me crazy every single time I took a shower. There were no stochastic screened tiles at all!
You see, I am not used to seeing a pattern at all in the printing I work with. Lorraine Press uses stochastic screening in all of its offset printing, and I am converted to the benefits of stochastic screening over conventional. I don't like seeing a pattern of dots making up the images. After working with the tiny micron-sized spots of stochastic, the dots used in conventional screening seem large and extremely distracting to me. And there was no way I could look at that tile and not see the conventional pattern every time I washed my hair. (But my tile saga has a happy ending, I ended up with natural stone tile, and it's gorgeous!)
For me, this experience just highlighted the differences between stochastic screening techniques and conventional screening techniques. There has been much debate about the benefits and difficulties associated with stochastic screening technology–more appropriately termed Frequency Modulated, or FM screening. A great deal of information is available from all kinds of sources, some correct and well-researched and some very incorrect. The information here, in this blog post, comes from Lorraine Press's own experiences through our eighteen years of printing using stochastic screening.
When starting out, some people told us that stochastic screening had limited benefits and was too difficult to work with to be useful. But after careful investigation and testing, we chose to use only stochastic screening, and since then we've never looked back.
Though there was a small learning curve when we began using this technology, we already had the quality controls in place that guaranteed our printing and proofing processes would be able to reproduce stochastic screening. And in the eighteen years since implementing stochastic, we have not experienced any problem that would undermine the many benefits that this technology provides. Lorraine Press has always emphasized high quality results, and our expertise in stochastic printing gives our customers just one more reason to print with us.
What exactly is stochastic, or FM, screening and how is it different from conventional screening methods?
Simply put, stochastic screening creates the illusion of highlights and shadows with extremely tiny, randomly placed spots. More spots create shadows, fewer create highlights. The "random" nature of the spots eliminates the possibility of moiré and other conventional screening artifacts. And the small size of the spots allows greater detail in the reproduction of images and an appearance closer to the original continuous tone image. Conventional screening creates the illusion of highlight and shadow by altering the size of uniformly spaced dots, larger dots for shadow areas, and smaller dots for highlight areas. These dots, because of their uniformity, can create artifacts in printing.
Here is one of our sample images we've printed using both stochastic and conventional screening techniques.
And below are side-by-side comparisons of that same test image, viewed under a microscope, printed in the stochastic screening which we use at Lorraine Press and in the conventional screening technology that has been used in offset printing for many years. Stochastic is on the left, conventional is on the right.
Here is a sample of four-color screened type, left side being stochastic, and the right side conventional screening:
These photographs demonstrate the superior results achieved at Lorraine Press with stochastic screening. However, in our experience, most people don't look at our printed pieces under a loupe or microscope. But when handed two samples of the same product on the same paper but one is printed in stochastic and one in conventional and asked which one they liked better, invariably people chose the stochastic sample. So all those microscopic details shown above may not be what your end-user sees, but those details and clean lines add up to a finer quality product overall, and they will see that.
Here is a list of some other benefits of stochastic screening:
In summary, stochastic screening at Lorraine Press provides a more photo-realistic reproduction of continuous tone images, smoother screen builds, and sharper fine line and type simulations, while eliminating subject moiré and other objectionable artifacts. If you would like additional information on stochastic screening, or to see more samples printed in stochastic, feel free to contact us at Lorraine Press.
But recently I noticed a new side effect. I went shopping for tile for my bathroom remodel. Did you know that the ceramic tile made to look like stone is printed? I didn't. But on the display shelf in the store, there was a piece of tile that made me do a double-take. "Wait a minute!" I said, "This tile is completely out of register!" I wasn't even looking that closely. But after seeing that, you can believe I did. And after looking at ceramic tile for a couple of hours I knew that the conventional screening pattern in the tile, whether in register or not, would drive me crazy every single time I took a shower. There were no stochastic screened tiles at all!
You see, I am not used to seeing a pattern at all in the printing I work with. Lorraine Press uses stochastic screening in all of its offset printing, and I am converted to the benefits of stochastic screening over conventional. I don't like seeing a pattern of dots making up the images. After working with the tiny micron-sized spots of stochastic, the dots used in conventional screening seem large and extremely distracting to me. And there was no way I could look at that tile and not see the conventional pattern every time I washed my hair. (But my tile saga has a happy ending, I ended up with natural stone tile, and it's gorgeous!)
For me, this experience just highlighted the differences between stochastic screening techniques and conventional screening techniques. There has been much debate about the benefits and difficulties associated with stochastic screening technology–more appropriately termed Frequency Modulated, or FM screening. A great deal of information is available from all kinds of sources, some correct and well-researched and some very incorrect. The information here, in this blog post, comes from Lorraine Press's own experiences through our eighteen years of printing using stochastic screening.
When starting out, some people told us that stochastic screening had limited benefits and was too difficult to work with to be useful. But after careful investigation and testing, we chose to use only stochastic screening, and since then we've never looked back.
Though there was a small learning curve when we began using this technology, we already had the quality controls in place that guaranteed our printing and proofing processes would be able to reproduce stochastic screening. And in the eighteen years since implementing stochastic, we have not experienced any problem that would undermine the many benefits that this technology provides. Lorraine Press has always emphasized high quality results, and our expertise in stochastic printing gives our customers just one more reason to print with us.
What exactly is stochastic, or FM, screening and how is it different from conventional screening methods?
Simply put, stochastic screening creates the illusion of highlights and shadows with extremely tiny, randomly placed spots. More spots create shadows, fewer create highlights. The "random" nature of the spots eliminates the possibility of moiré and other conventional screening artifacts. And the small size of the spots allows greater detail in the reproduction of images and an appearance closer to the original continuous tone image. Conventional screening creates the illusion of highlight and shadow by altering the size of uniformly spaced dots, larger dots for shadow areas, and smaller dots for highlight areas. These dots, because of their uniformity, can create artifacts in printing.
Here is one of our sample images we've printed using both stochastic and conventional screening techniques.
And below are side-by-side comparisons of that same test image, viewed under a microscope, printed in the stochastic screening which we use at Lorraine Press and in the conventional screening technology that has been used in offset printing for many years. Stochastic is on the left, conventional is on the right.
Here is a sample of four-color screened type, left side being stochastic, and the right side conventional screening:
These photographs demonstrate the superior results achieved at Lorraine Press with stochastic screening. However, in our experience, most people don't look at our printed pieces under a loupe or microscope. But when handed two samples of the same product on the same paper but one is printed in stochastic and one in conventional and asked which one they liked better, invariably people chose the stochastic sample. So all those microscopic details shown above may not be what your end-user sees, but those details and clean lines add up to a finer quality product overall, and they will see that.
Here is a list of some other benefits of stochastic screening:
- four-color process simulations of spot colors have the appearance and texture of an actual spot color and don't have visible screen patterns like they do in conventional,
- gradients can be reproduced with smoother transitions from light to dark without hue shifts and the lightest shades of the gradient print,
- fine type and curved or angled lines don't have stair-stepping, and lines remain the same width regardless of the angle they are set at,
- reversing type from screened areas is cleaner and shows more detail especially with a delicate serif font,
- shadows contain more detail in the darker areas,
- more details overall in photos even under a loupe or microscope, creating a more photo-realistic appearance,
- subject moiré issues and visible rosette issues are nonexistent,
- less ink is used to print on the page, therefore stochastic is more "green,"
- inkjet proofing also uses stochastic, so there are no surprises on press due to screening difficulties.
In summary, stochastic screening at Lorraine Press provides a more photo-realistic reproduction of continuous tone images, smoother screen builds, and sharper fine line and type simulations, while eliminating subject moiré and other objectionable artifacts. If you would like additional information on stochastic screening, or to see more samples printed in stochastic, feel free to contact us at Lorraine Press.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Economical fonts
Searching for a way to cut costs next year? How about switching the default font for your company? By choosing an "economical" font, a company could end up saving money on the amount of ink or toner used by business printing needs or by those business associates who just have to print out their emails.
Which fonts are economical? Glad you asked.
Printer.com has compared fonts with ink or toner use. By switching only the font, Printer.com asserts you could save money. The standard font measured against was the ubiquitous Arial, and it was compared to nine other fonts. Century Gothic came in as the winner with a 31% savings of ink. Here is Printer.com's results chart:
The private cost is based on 25 printed pages a week, and business cost is based on 250 printed pages per week on specific printers. For more information on the study, go to Printer.com's blog post.
For a more visual approach on how much ink a font uses, check out Matthew Robinson's Measuring Type project. Here are the results of his measurements with Garamond using the least amount of ink:
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay switched its default email font from Arial to Century Gothic as part of their plan to go "green." According to the university spokesperson, ink accounts for about 60% of the cost of a printed page, and the university can accumulate savings each time an email is printed. News story source
However, if Century Gothic doesn't appeal to your aesthetic sensibilities, another approach is available. Ecofont has created software that can put holes in any font's letters at 11 point or below. By doing this, less ink is used when printing. Ecofont claims a 25% savings overall, no matter what font you choose. There is even a free sample font, Eco Vera Sans. (Click here for the free download of the sample Ecofont.) Here is an 11 point sample scanned in and enlarged to show texture:
Whichever fonts you end up using in your project, just remember to include them with your file or embed them in your pdf when submitting the project to a print shop! Doing these two things correctly will definitely help save money and time.
Which fonts are economical? Glad you asked.
Printer.com has compared fonts with ink or toner use. By switching only the font, Printer.com asserts you could save money. The standard font measured against was the ubiquitous Arial, and it was compared to nine other fonts. Century Gothic came in as the winner with a 31% savings of ink. Here is Printer.com's results chart:
The private cost is based on 25 printed pages a week, and business cost is based on 250 printed pages per week on specific printers. For more information on the study, go to Printer.com's blog post.
For a more visual approach on how much ink a font uses, check out Matthew Robinson's Measuring Type project. Here are the results of his measurements with Garamond using the least amount of ink:
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay switched its default email font from Arial to Century Gothic as part of their plan to go "green." According to the university spokesperson, ink accounts for about 60% of the cost of a printed page, and the university can accumulate savings each time an email is printed. News story source
However, if Century Gothic doesn't appeal to your aesthetic sensibilities, another approach is available. Ecofont has created software that can put holes in any font's letters at 11 point or below. By doing this, less ink is used when printing. Ecofont claims a 25% savings overall, no matter what font you choose. There is even a free sample font, Eco Vera Sans. (Click here for the free download of the sample Ecofont.) Here is an 11 point sample scanned in and enlarged to show texture:
Whichever fonts you end up using in your project, just remember to include them with your file or embed them in your pdf when submitting the project to a print shop! Doing these two things correctly will definitely help save money and time.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Print: A Trusted Source for Information
Recently, several polls have shown that 66% of the coveted 18–34 demographic trust offline print media more than online information, especially in areas such as financial information, catalogs, and household or health products. In contrast, only 8% found Facebook a trustworthy source for general product information. The only category where online information was preferred was travel, and then only by a 42% to 35% margin.
Direct mail and other offline options still need to be included in marketing plans. Mail as a trusted source of information has been growing in all age brackets. In 2010, 36% of US respondents, up from 29% in 2008, said information is more private sent through the mail. And 20% said they trust information received by mail more than online, up from 12% in 2008.
So, when wondering how to engage your customers, even those in the 18–34 age bracket, don't exclude direct mail and print advertising methods. Trust is a major factor in driving consumers to these relevant and powerful marketing channels.
By all means diversify your marketing efforts, but don't forget to include offline and direct mail printed pieces.
Sources:
http://www.epsilon.com/News%20&%20Events/Press%20Releases%202010/Young_Adults_Strongly_Prefer_Offline_to_Online_Sources_for_Marketing_Offers_Research_Reveals/p893-l3
http://marketingpowersactivate.com/2010/08/young-consumers-like-offline-channels-for-marketing-offers/
Direct mail and other offline options still need to be included in marketing plans. Mail as a trusted source of information has been growing in all age brackets. In 2010, 36% of US respondents, up from 29% in 2008, said information is more private sent through the mail. And 20% said they trust information received by mail more than online, up from 12% in 2008.
So, when wondering how to engage your customers, even those in the 18–34 age bracket, don't exclude direct mail and print advertising methods. Trust is a major factor in driving consumers to these relevant and powerful marketing channels.
By all means diversify your marketing efforts, but don't forget to include offline and direct mail printed pieces.
Sources:
http://www.epsilon.com/News%20&%20Events/Press%20Releases%202010/Young_Adults_Strongly_Prefer_Offline_to_Online_Sources_for_Marketing_Offers_Research_Reveals/p893-l3
http://marketingpowersactivate.com/2010/08/young-consumers-like-offline-channels-for-marketing-offers/
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Free Planning Calendar for 2011
From now until December 31, 2010, Lorraine Press is offering to send you our annual 2011 wall calendar for free!
It's poster-sized at 38 inches by 24 inches, and shows the year at a glance. The calendar's background photo, a summer sunrise, was taken from right outside our back door by Kent Brinker. To receive your 2011 calendar, please send an email to info@lorrainepress.com which includes "Calendar Offer" in the subject line, and has your name and mailing address in the body of the email. One calendar per email address will be sent.
It's poster-sized at 38 inches by 24 inches, and shows the year at a glance. The calendar's background photo, a summer sunrise, was taken from right outside our back door by Kent Brinker. To receive your 2011 calendar, please send an email to info@lorrainepress.com which includes "Calendar Offer" in the subject line, and has your name and mailing address in the body of the email. One calendar per email address will be sent.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Don't forget about your holiday printing needs!
Lorraine Press can save you time this busy holiday season. It may seem early to be thinking about holiday greeting cards, but if you order now, you can check this off your list.
Not only can we print your holiday cards, but we can personalize the inside message and then mail them out for you, too. You can order them now, and then choose which day in December you would like them mailed out. The more on your list, the merrier we'll be to help you out! And you can relax, knowing that your holiday greeting cards will look fantastic and will be done on time.
Contact us today to fulfill your holiday card needs!
Not only can we print your holiday cards, but we can personalize the inside message and then mail them out for you, too. You can order them now, and then choose which day in December you would like them mailed out. The more on your list, the merrier we'll be to help you out! And you can relax, knowing that your holiday greeting cards will look fantastic and will be done on time.
Contact us today to fulfill your holiday card needs!
Monday, November 1, 2010
Printing Tip of the Week - Font Color and Size
Election day is tomorrow, and there doesn't seem to be a fence post or curb empty of campaign signs. When I pass any new signs, I like to evaluate them based on their design more than for their actual message. Anyone else out there do that, too?
Some campaign signs are clear and legible from yards away, while certain others can only be read if you are within 20 feet and are at a complete stop. I've decided that the main difference comes down to the fonts used: the choice of font, the font color, and the font size.
We see a lot of design work come through Lorraine Press. Some projects are simpler than others, but all benefit from a sensible use of font sizes and colors. When choosing what font to use and at what size, first determine where your project is going to be viewed. Will it be outside, by passing cars, or held in a hand indoors? Knowing this will help you choose which fonts at what size to use. (And then before the design is finalized, view it in that environment, you might be surprised.)
Something else to take into consideration is the color of the type and the color of the background the type is on. Black type on a white background is easiest to read on paper with the highest possible contrast, and it is easy to print. We see this combination used everywhere.
However, if you are printing on a black background with white, reversed-out type, there are a few more considerations. If you are using a serif font, or thin sans serif font reversed out of a black background, we at Lorraine Press advise that they be set at 9 points or larger, especially if you are using a supported black. This is purely for legibility reasons. What looks readable on your laser printer, may not turn out the same on a printing press. Small white type makes the job more difficult for your printer to produce and your serifs or thin strokes of letters may not appear due to trapping and ink considerations. If your black background is supported (using all four colors to make a richer looking black), consider using a thicker font, or a point size of 11 or larger.
Black type that is 4 points or below is hard enough to read already for some people, but add in the lower contrast of colors other than black and you will have an even harder time getting your message across. As for the printing aspects of tiny colored type, you may see misregistration between the ink colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black), or a pattern of dots may become visible with conventional screening techniques (One of the problems solved by Lorraine Press using stochastic screening!). This can leave your tiny type looking unfocused or shadowed.
Also, this is common sense but we want to say it anyway: use fonts designed for superior legibility for your body of text, and leave the display and fancy fonts for titles and attention grabbing headlines. The font that makes words in English look like Klingon from Star Trek can be fun for you, but your reader will give up long before reading your entire message if your type is set entirely in a crazy, hard-to-read font.
Looking to design large signs or billboards? Take a look around you as you drive. Instead of noticing the advertising message, notice which signs are visible and legible from farthest away, and figure out why. Then incorporate that knowledge into your design.
This is pretty basic advice, nothing earth-shatteringly new. But sometimes a little reminder of the basics can be helpful. There's just one more thing. Unless you are giving your printer a pdf with embedded fonts or an eps with outlined fonts (and you have double checked that they are all outlined), please include your fonts in the files you give to your printer. Your printer will be grateful, we promise.
Some campaign signs are clear and legible from yards away, while certain others can only be read if you are within 20 feet and are at a complete stop. I've decided that the main difference comes down to the fonts used: the choice of font, the font color, and the font size.
We see a lot of design work come through Lorraine Press. Some projects are simpler than others, but all benefit from a sensible use of font sizes and colors. When choosing what font to use and at what size, first determine where your project is going to be viewed. Will it be outside, by passing cars, or held in a hand indoors? Knowing this will help you choose which fonts at what size to use. (And then before the design is finalized, view it in that environment, you might be surprised.)
Something else to take into consideration is the color of the type and the color of the background the type is on. Black type on a white background is easiest to read on paper with the highest possible contrast, and it is easy to print. We see this combination used everywhere.
However, if you are printing on a black background with white, reversed-out type, there are a few more considerations. If you are using a serif font, or thin sans serif font reversed out of a black background, we at Lorraine Press advise that they be set at 9 points or larger, especially if you are using a supported black. This is purely for legibility reasons. What looks readable on your laser printer, may not turn out the same on a printing press. Small white type makes the job more difficult for your printer to produce and your serifs or thin strokes of letters may not appear due to trapping and ink considerations. If your black background is supported (using all four colors to make a richer looking black), consider using a thicker font, or a point size of 11 or larger.
Black type that is 4 points or below is hard enough to read already for some people, but add in the lower contrast of colors other than black and you will have an even harder time getting your message across. As for the printing aspects of tiny colored type, you may see misregistration between the ink colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black), or a pattern of dots may become visible with conventional screening techniques (One of the problems solved by Lorraine Press using stochastic screening!). This can leave your tiny type looking unfocused or shadowed.
Also, this is common sense but we want to say it anyway: use fonts designed for superior legibility for your body of text, and leave the display and fancy fonts for titles and attention grabbing headlines. The font that makes words in English look like Klingon from Star Trek can be fun for you, but your reader will give up long before reading your entire message if your type is set entirely in a crazy, hard-to-read font.
Looking to design large signs or billboards? Take a look around you as you drive. Instead of noticing the advertising message, notice which signs are visible and legible from farthest away, and figure out why. Then incorporate that knowledge into your design.
This is pretty basic advice, nothing earth-shatteringly new. But sometimes a little reminder of the basics can be helpful. There's just one more thing. Unless you are giving your printer a pdf with embedded fonts or an eps with outlined fonts (and you have double checked that they are all outlined), please include your fonts in the files you give to your printer. Your printer will be grateful, we promise.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Cool Video on How Ink is Made
I hope you find this as interesting as I did! This is a video of The Printing Ink Company making ink.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Oooh, Shiny! And Writeable, Too!
Lorraine Press is pleased to announce a new glossy coating we've developed in partnership with our trusted manufacturer of coatings.
A customer came to us with a pressing need. They wanted a glossy finish on their products, but they also needed to be able to write on it later or even send it through a water-based ink jet printer to add type or a barcode. Normal glossy coatings don't accept ink. The ink on top of the regular glossy coating smears and spreads, never drying, making the ink unreadable and the product unusable.
We turned to our partner in coatings for help. After a few trials and tests, we had a winner. They had developed a coating just as glossy that also fulfilled our customer's desires. This glossy coating has been created especially for accepting after-product water-based ink imprinting. This includes mailing machines adding addresses, ink jet printers adding type, or even a person using pencil, pen, or markers on it later.
Before this new and exciting development, if a customer wanted to imprint or address a glossy-coated printed piece, no coating could be put on the area to be imprinted or addressed of the postcard or magazine. So the finished product would be shiny, except for a rectangle left alone for the imprinting. It unappealingly stuck out like a sore thumb. Plus, to avoid coating that area, a dedicated coating blanket would have to be specially cut for that specific job, ratcheting up the cost of producing the job.
However, that's all in the past now.
If you have a project that could use a shiny coating and still be writable, let us know, and we can help. If you have any questions, you can contact your LP salesperson, or email your questions to info@lorrainepress.com.
A customer came to us with a pressing need. They wanted a glossy finish on their products, but they also needed to be able to write on it later or even send it through a water-based ink jet printer to add type or a barcode. Normal glossy coatings don't accept ink. The ink on top of the regular glossy coating smears and spreads, never drying, making the ink unreadable and the product unusable.
We turned to our partner in coatings for help. After a few trials and tests, we had a winner. They had developed a coating just as glossy that also fulfilled our customer's desires. This glossy coating has been created especially for accepting after-product water-based ink imprinting. This includes mailing machines adding addresses, ink jet printers adding type, or even a person using pencil, pen, or markers on it later.
Before this new and exciting development, if a customer wanted to imprint or address a glossy-coated printed piece, no coating could be put on the area to be imprinted or addressed of the postcard or magazine. So the finished product would be shiny, except for a rectangle left alone for the imprinting. It unappealingly stuck out like a sore thumb. Plus, to avoid coating that area, a dedicated coating blanket would have to be specially cut for that specific job, ratcheting up the cost of producing the job.
However, that's all in the past now.
If you have a project that could use a shiny coating and still be writable, let us know, and we can help. If you have any questions, you can contact your LP salesperson, or email your questions to info@lorrainepress.com.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Some Mailing Basics - Postcards
I have been receiving a lot of political mail as Election Day draws near. These mainly come in the form of what most people would probably call a postcard. They are printed on cover stock, usually in full color on both sides with an address area on the back and most are larger than a half-sheet of letter-sized paper.
However, these campaign mailers I've been receiving are not technically postcards. They are much too big. The United States Postal Service has strict definitions about what exactly can go through the mail as a postcard. The height of a postcard can be between 3.5 inches and 4.25 inches. The width of the postcard is a minimum of 5 inches and a maximum of 6 inches.
Do we really expect a politician running for office to fit a message in such a small space?
What is it then if it looks like a postcard but is bigger than 4.25 inches by 6 inches? The Post Office calls these letters. That's right. They are sent out at a letter rate. So if you want to send out an advertisement, using a postcard rate, you have to keep the final size of your design to 4.25 x 6 inches.
Don't worry if you, too, can't fit all you want to say on a small area; other sizes can mail just fine, they just are sent at the slightly more expensive letter rate. It's just a cost you need to take into consideration as you are designing your mailer.
Also, a common design move is to fill up a mailer with information on both sides, and leave a tiny corner on the back for the addressing. However, to qualify for the least expensive mailing rate, the area for the address on a postcard needs to fit certain specifications. Just about anything can mail, but if you are looking to save money, we highly recommend showing your design to the Post Office before it is finalized. Or email us a copy to info@lorrainepress.com and we'll take a look for you and let you know if and how the piece will go through the mail.
There are multitudes of variables when designing a piece for mailing. And we hope that if you run into any questions you'll email us or call. We'd love to help you produce a mailer or postcard that fits all postal requirements.
However, these campaign mailers I've been receiving are not technically postcards. They are much too big. The United States Postal Service has strict definitions about what exactly can go through the mail as a postcard. The height of a postcard can be between 3.5 inches and 4.25 inches. The width of the postcard is a minimum of 5 inches and a maximum of 6 inches.
Do we really expect a politician running for office to fit a message in such a small space?
What is it then if it looks like a postcard but is bigger than 4.25 inches by 6 inches? The Post Office calls these letters. That's right. They are sent out at a letter rate. So if you want to send out an advertisement, using a postcard rate, you have to keep the final size of your design to 4.25 x 6 inches.
Don't worry if you, too, can't fit all you want to say on a small area; other sizes can mail just fine, they just are sent at the slightly more expensive letter rate. It's just a cost you need to take into consideration as you are designing your mailer.
Also, a common design move is to fill up a mailer with information on both sides, and leave a tiny corner on the back for the addressing. However, to qualify for the least expensive mailing rate, the area for the address on a postcard needs to fit certain specifications. Just about anything can mail, but if you are looking to save money, we highly recommend showing your design to the Post Office before it is finalized. Or email us a copy to info@lorrainepress.com and we'll take a look for you and let you know if and how the piece will go through the mail.
There are multitudes of variables when designing a piece for mailing. And we hope that if you run into any questions you'll email us or call. We'd love to help you produce a mailer or postcard that fits all postal requirements.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Printing Tip of the Week
Here's a quick tip for InDesign users out there. We think that everyone should know what their InDesign preferences are set to when it comes to the "Appearance of Black." We recommend the following three settings: On Screen should be set to "Display All Blacks Accurately," Printing / Exporting should be set to "Output All Blacks Accurately," and the Overprinting of Black at 100% should in most cases be clicked on.
In CS 5, 4, and 3, on the Mac, these settings can be found by launching InDesign and before opening any document, click on the word "InDesign" (to the left of "File"), go down the menu to "Preferences" and then go down that menu to "Appearance of Black." A pop-up menu with the three options on it should appear.
In CS 5, 4, and 3 on the PC, these settings can be found by launching InDesign and before opening any document, click on "Edit" (to the right of "File"), go down the menu to "Preferences" and then go down that menu to "Appearance of Black." A pop-up menu with the three options on it should appear.
Our preferred settings are recommendations only. The most important thing is to know how these preferences are set, so when they need to be customized for that special project, you'll know how to manipulate your appearance of black in InDesign.
If you have any questions, please email us, info@lorrainepress.com
Friday, October 1, 2010
Showing Off Our Skills By Blending In
We love projects that allow us to show off a little. Unfortunately, if we do our jobs right, most of the time no one usually notices how skillful we really are.
Recently, Lorraine Press had the opportunity to print a beautiful catalog – well designed and full of colorful photography. Our customer chose an uncoated sheet for the cover, and a coated sheet for the inside text. This is normally not anything special, people choose that combination all the time, right?
But this catalog had an image crossover from the inside front cover to the first page of text. Part of the image would be printing on coated stock, the other part on uncoated stock. Anyone with printing experience right now is thinking, "That's never going to look the same!"
Well, instead of saying, "You really can't do that and expect similar results. You should change your design." to our customer, we said, "We haven't tried this before, let's see what we can do!"
We decided to adjust one side of the photo to match what the other side would look like on press. Our ability to do this depended largely on having calibrated proofs that are printed to look like what comes off our presses. If you choose on an uncoated stock, we have an uncoated paper profile on your proof so you will see what your project will look like on press. If you choose a coated paper, we have a coated profile. If you have a combination of papers, like in this example, your proofs will reflect that as well. We want no surprises for our customers when they come to the press check.
Due to some prepress skills and our excellent pressmen, the catalog printed beautifully. In the finished product, no one is going to ever notice the image transition from uncoated to coated. And that's the way we like it.
Recently, Lorraine Press had the opportunity to print a beautiful catalog – well designed and full of colorful photography. Our customer chose an uncoated sheet for the cover, and a coated sheet for the inside text. This is normally not anything special, people choose that combination all the time, right?
But this catalog had an image crossover from the inside front cover to the first page of text. Part of the image would be printing on coated stock, the other part on uncoated stock. Anyone with printing experience right now is thinking, "That's never going to look the same!"
Well, instead of saying, "You really can't do that and expect similar results. You should change your design." to our customer, we said, "We haven't tried this before, let's see what we can do!"
We decided to adjust one side of the photo to match what the other side would look like on press. Our ability to do this depended largely on having calibrated proofs that are printed to look like what comes off our presses. If you choose on an uncoated stock, we have an uncoated paper profile on your proof so you will see what your project will look like on press. If you choose a coated paper, we have a coated profile. If you have a combination of papers, like in this example, your proofs will reflect that as well. We want no surprises for our customers when they come to the press check.
Due to some prepress skills and our excellent pressmen, the catalog printed beautifully. In the finished product, no one is going to ever notice the image transition from uncoated to coated. And that's the way we like it.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
"How Much More Black Can It Be?"
When it comes to Lorraine Press's new Rich Black Ink, the answer is, as Nigel Tufnel would say, "None, none more black."
We are pleased to present an augmented-pigment black ink with no dry back. What your black areas look like when they are fresh off the press is how they will look when they are dry. Our newly available rich black ink is best for larger solid areas, especially those areas that would require a double hit of regular black ink, or a 4-color supported black, to achieve the same result. Its density is greater than a regular black ink or even a 4-color supported black.
We are pleased to present an augmented-pigment black ink with no dry back. What your black areas look like when they are fresh off the press is how they will look when they are dry. Our newly available rich black ink is best for larger solid areas, especially those areas that would require a double hit of regular black ink, or a 4-color supported black, to achieve the same result. Its density is greater than a regular black ink or even a 4-color supported black.
Normally on projects with large black areas, we would recommend a double hit of black to the solid areas, or if it was a 4-color job, a support black of 60% cyan, 50% magenta, 50% yellow, and 100% black. This would help the black areas look truly black with regular black ink. However, with our new rich black ink, the extra hit and extra support colors are unnecessary.
Our rich black ink prints grayscale images with an added visual depth to them compared with regular black ink. Another great time to use our rich black ink is when a project with large black areas is printing on an uncoated sheet. And most one-color black projects would benefit from being printed with this rich black ink. However, we would recommend caution when using it with 4-color images, it may muddy them up.
Would you like to know more about Lorraine Press's new rich black ink? Just call us (801-972-5626) or email any questions to info@lorrainepress.com.
Our rich black ink prints grayscale images with an added visual depth to them compared with regular black ink. Another great time to use our rich black ink is when a project with large black areas is printing on an uncoated sheet. And most one-color black projects would benefit from being printed with this rich black ink. However, we would recommend caution when using it with 4-color images, it may muddy them up.
Would you like to know more about Lorraine Press's new rich black ink? Just call us (801-972-5626) or email any questions to info@lorrainepress.com.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Stochastic Printing for 17 years and counting
A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend in the book publishing business. He had just secured an awesome printer for a book he was working on. He waxed poetic on the fabulous quality that this printer can produce on the illustrations of his book. Naturally, I was interested.
He showed me samples and told me to look closely and I wouldn't see a dot pattern. He said, "It's this great new technology called stochastic printing!"
In his excitement, he then gave me a primer on stochastic printing. I was reluctant to burst his bubble even just a little bit, but I had to tell him that stochastic printing had been around a long time. And I was in a position to know. Lorraine Press has been printing in "awesome" stochastic for almost twenty years!
But he was right to be excited about stochastic printing. We still are! Illustrations and photographs reproduced in stochastic printing can show far more detail than when printed with the conventional screening technique. Below we have two examples of photographs with really small type. The left hand one was printed in stochastic printing here at Lorraine Press, and the right hand one was printed elsewhere in conventional.
They may look similar here (above), but when we put them under our microscope, we saw a huge difference in the tiny type. Below, the left hand photo is the stochastic sample under our microscope, and the right hand photo the conventional sample. The grey box in the stochastic sample (above) is what is enlarged below left.
There is a clear difference! If you would like to know more, you can visit our website, or you can schedule a tour. We would be glad to show you around and explain more about our printing processes. We have worked hard to become known for producing high quality, customized, or difficult pieces, and we’d love to share our experiences with you.
He showed me samples and told me to look closely and I wouldn't see a dot pattern. He said, "It's this great new technology called stochastic printing!"
In his excitement, he then gave me a primer on stochastic printing. I was reluctant to burst his bubble even just a little bit, but I had to tell him that stochastic printing had been around a long time. And I was in a position to know. Lorraine Press has been printing in "awesome" stochastic for almost twenty years!
But he was right to be excited about stochastic printing. We still are! Illustrations and photographs reproduced in stochastic printing can show far more detail than when printed with the conventional screening technique. Below we have two examples of photographs with really small type. The left hand one was printed in stochastic printing here at Lorraine Press, and the right hand one was printed elsewhere in conventional.
They may look similar here (above), but when we put them under our microscope, we saw a huge difference in the tiny type. Below, the left hand photo is the stochastic sample under our microscope, and the right hand photo the conventional sample. The grey box in the stochastic sample (above) is what is enlarged below left.
There is a clear difference! If you would like to know more, you can visit our website, or you can schedule a tour. We would be glad to show you around and explain more about our printing processes. We have worked hard to become known for producing high quality, customized, or difficult pieces, and we’d love to share our experiences with you.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Lorraine Press in September's Printing Impressions
We've been making some big changes here at Lorraine Press, and one of them caught the eye of Printing Impressions. When we changed inks, our scientific approach to print quality helped us keep up our consistent results. We have a passion for measuring every variable possible and collecting data on our processes. And this in turn allows us to match our end product to our proof. You can read more about us in the September issue of Printing Impressions, or you can Click here for the on-line article. Happy reading!
Friday, May 7, 2010
Welcome to the Lorraine Press Blog
Lorraine Press is now blogging!
For those of you who don't know, Lorraine Press offers Web, Marketing and Print all under one roof.
We have award winning web media services, and marketing development services. Plus, we still deliver our top quality stochastic offset and digital printing.
Check out our website at http://www.lorrainepress.com
For those of you who don't know, Lorraine Press offers Web, Marketing and Print all under one roof.
We have award winning web media services, and marketing development services. Plus, we still deliver our top quality stochastic offset and digital printing.
Check out our website at http://www.lorrainepress.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)