Overprinting White Type, or How to Make Type Invisible

No, this post isn't about a cool magic trick with type. It's really about how to not end up with invisible type. White type and other white elements can sometimes surprise you by not showing up on a printed version of your design. You can see the white type on your screen, so why doesn't it show up on paper?

On your screen:

On your paper:

The most common reason is that somehow those white elements in your design have been set to overprint, and white + overprint = invisibility.

There are several ways to check if any of your white elements are set to overprint. The easiest is to turn on the "Overprint Preview" feature in Illustrator, and InDesign. Simply go to View in the menu bar, and then down to "Overprint Preview." This will simulate what your design will look like when printed. If any white is set to overprint, it will disappear and reappear as you toggle this off and on. The keyboard shortcut for this is the same in Illustrator and InDesign: Command + Option + Shift + Y.

Here is Illustrator's menu bar with Overprint Preview selected:

And here is InDesign's menu bar:

You can also check your pdfs for overprinting white type in Acrobat. In Acrobat 9, an easy way to do this is to go to Advanced on the menu bar, then to Print Production, then to Output Preview.

A menu will come up. Simply check the "Simulate Overprinting" box. Any overprinting white will "disappear" from your design when this is turned on.

No one likes to be surprised when it comes to a press check, and we don't want to hear anyone say, "Hey, where is my white type?" So Lorraine Press has safeguards built into our system that will find any overprinting white, whether it be lines or type, and correct it to knock out. But for your own files, and for those that don't print here at Lorraine (if there happen to be any!), you should always check that your white doesn't overprint.

Color Spaces Part 2

This is a continuation of the topic of Color Spaces started in the previous post.

Photoshop Gamut Warnings, continued

(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.

Why All This Matters to You

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.

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.

A Favorite Photoshop Trick - Straightening Things Out

When I discovered this Photoshop trick, I was in the middle of scanning in a variety of odd-sized photographs. I was placing them loose on a flatbed scanner, and discovered that getting them exactly straight was a challenge. I didn't want to crop out the crooked edges and lose some of the image, or straighten the photos manually with the Rotate tool. And no, being extra careful when closing the scanner lid wasn't going to solve my problem either.

That's where this cool Photoshop trick came in handy. Behind the Eyedropper tool, in Photoshop CS 3, 4, or 5 (on a Mac or PC), there is a Ruler tool. (Click on the Eyedropper tool and hold down the mouse button, a list of other tools comes up, select the Ruler tool.) Previously, I had disdained this tool, because I could see no use for such an imprecise measuring method. But no longer! And besides, in this trick we are not measuring with it anyway.

Click on the Ruler tool (which lives behind the Eyedropper tool), and your mouse will turn into a crosshair. Position your crosshairs over the start of an edge of the photo, or a horizon in the photo, or any line or edge in the photo you want to be exactly horizontal. Click and hold down the mouse button and drag the mouse along the part of the photo you want to be horizontal. This creates a line. Let go of the mouse button when you reach the end of the photo's line or edge.

Then click on Image (next to File, and Edit), go down to Image Rotation, and then over and down to Arbitrary. A window pops up with a number already filled into the box. Just click "Okay," and in an blink of an eye, your photo has been straightened more quickly and accurately than any manual tweaking could have done it.

Photoshop rotates the photo according to the number in the Arbitrary Rotation box. Photoshop got that number from the ruler tool's measuring the angle between the start and finish points on the line. (This also works for tweaking photos vertically, just drag the Ruler tool down a vertical edge or line.)

See, it's easy and quick, my favorite type of Photoshop trick.

Finding That Special Character

Ever spent time looking for an É, ©, ❏, or ™symbol? Well, here's a short list of where you can find these special characters, and others just like them.

If you are using InDesign (CS 3, 4, or 5, either Mac or PC), you are in luck. The Glyphs palette can save you from fruitlessly searching for an operating system character map. Click Type, then go down to Glyphs. A palette will pop up that shows you all the special characters for your font. It can even sort the characters by category to narrow your search so you can find what you need quickly and easily.

Of course, on a Mac, if you can remember your keyboard shortcuts, (Option +g = ©) you don't have to use a palette at all. But there are a lot of special characters out there, and I know that I don't want to spend my time memorizing all available keystrokes. However, a quick Internet search has always revealed a needed keystroke of a character that is going to be used multiple times in a document. The PC has keyboard strokes for characters. I don't think that they can be called shortcuts, but they are available. (see the PC info below)

Both Mac and PC operating systems also have solutions to finding that esoteric character.

On a Mac, in Finder, click on Edit then go down to Special Characters. A window will open that has characters by categories, and a search feature. Plus, by double clicking the desired character, it will appear where ever you left your cursor.

On a PC, click Start, go to Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, then Character Map. (If you plan on using the Character Map frequently, you should think about putting a shortcut on your desktop!) A window comes up with your characters ready to be copied and pasted into your text. At the bottom of the window, there's a line of type that shows what the keyboard strokes are for a highlighted character, but I prefer the copy-and-paste option.

Options abound! (Especially in the Mac keyboard shortcuts!) So now you can wow all your friends and acquaintances with how quickly you can type even the most tricky or foreign characters no matter which operating system you are on.

Typeface Identification 101

We in the Prepress department have a love/hate relationship with fonts, but we tend to love them more than hate them. We've been known to clamor rather excitedly over a newly discovered font. And we can't help sharing our excitement with others.

But there are millions of fonts out there. (by the way, do not load them all onto your computer at once, you will be sad!) And it's impossible to identify even a small portion of them at a glance. Have you ever had someone ask you to make them a business card with type that looks exactly like their favorite movie title, or hand you a sample of something and ask you to make their letterhead look like that sample? And they have no idea what that font is called. What can you do?

When a customer asks us to match a font, one of the first resources we turn to is the website Identifont.

This website has come up with the correct font for us time and time again. It's not perfect, but it makes our lives much easier. All you need is just a portion of the font, although the more letters you have for an example, the easier it is for Identifont to help you find the correct font.

Just enter in the letters you have, capital and lowercase, and Identifont will then ask you questions about how those letters look. They ask about serifs, strokes, slants, and curves, and how the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. And after you answer, they give you a list of fonts they think match your sample the best. It's that easy.

Identifont is not the only resource out there, but it has proven to be the most reliable in our experience, plus it's free, you don't have to log in and remember a password, and you get an immediate response.

For those of you who need more tools to try out and play with, you can also try the website What The Font?!, which seems to be pretty popular, the message board Typophile, a website similar to Identifont Type Navigator, or try just browsing through lists of fonts on any of the font websites that come up with a web search of "fonts." (But that sounds like the slow way of getting an answer. We'd rather have the answer handed to us on a silver platter!)

There may be millions of fonts and only one of you, but don't worry! There are myriad tools out there to help you identify the exact one you are looking for. If you need any help getting started in the search for that elusive font, email us at info@lorrainepress.com, and we'll try our hand at helping you identify your font.

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.

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