How to Convert CMYK Values to the Closest Pantone Color

Here's a handy tip for finding the closest Pantone color for any color with a CMYK breakdown; well, other than hunching over your color sample with a Pantone color book, flipping through the possibilities. Or perhaps you don't have a physical sample, you only have a color on your monitor. Did you try holding the color book up to the monitor and guessing? Oh, you don't have a color book? Don't fret, once you discover what the CMYK breakdown of your mystery color is, the rest is easy! No color book necessary!

(This way is not the only way, but it's easy and, as an added bonus, free, if you already have Photoshop.)

So, first, launch Photoshop. And you have now completed the longest, most time consuming, step in this process. From here on out, it's quick! You don't even need to have a picture open. 

Move your mouse over to the foreground color swatch at the bottom of the tool panel which is usually along the far right of your screen.

Click on the foreground swatch, and the Color Picker will come up:

Type in your CMYK values in the appropriate C, M, Y, and K boxes in the Color Picker for the color in which you are interested in finding a Pantone match. In this case, this morning, it was a medium blue for which I wanted to find a close Pantone match. See the image below.

Then click on the Color Libraries button, highlighted in the image below.

A Color Libraries palette then comes up. See the image below. My Color Libraries palette was already set to the color book PANTONE Solid Coated, and it automatically selected (with a thin black box around the color) PANTONE 2915 C as the closest match in that color book. Voila, there's my answer. 

It's not perfect, but it's as close as it can get for that CMYK breakdown. (Note the color difference between the top and bottom swatches in the color sample box to see how far different the two colors are.) If your color book wasn't already set to  PANTONE solid coated, continue reading!

To select a different color book, or to set your menu to PANTONE solid coated, go to the drop down menu at the top of the Color Libraries box.

Click to select whatever color collection you are interested in having a closest match to your CMYK color. As you can see in the image below, there are myriad choices!

And that is it. Now you have the power to convert CMYK values to their closest matching Pantone colors quickly and easily, wowing your co-workers and clients!

A Tour of the Post Office

Last week, courtesy of the Printing Industries of Utah, a group of designers and printers were able to tour behind the scenes at the Post Office Sorting Center in Salt Lake City. Several of us from Lorraine Press went along to see what exactly goes on behind the scenes.

We were taken through the process a letter experiences between a mailbox and its final destination. Our tour started off in the delivery bay where mail carriers bring back the mail they have collected during their routes. Then the fun started.

A letter is first individually examined by a sorting machine. No matter how the letter went into the machine (upside down, backwards, etc.), a sensor can find the stamp and then tumble the letter through the machine to correctly place the address in front of the OCR software, so the OCR software can read the address. As if that wasn't cool enough, the OCR software can correctly identify the addressee (compared to a database of all mailing addresses in the United States) within 3 seconds over 90% of the time.

Then letters are sorted into categories. If the letter stays in Utah, it goes to one machine that then sorts it to the Utah Post Office that it belongs to. If the letter is to leave Utah, it goes to a different sorting machine. If the letter goes to some one on the Move/Forwarding database, it goes to a different area. The whole system of sorters and holding areas and organization of mail was astounding. There were even little trains overhead carrying bins of mail to the correct place, and fun twirly slides for the bins to slide down to the correct machine. The entire operation is a miracle in organization and computerization.

All mail is eventually moved from that first incoming bay, to the other side of the building where trucks are waiting to deliver mail to its destination, whether that be a local post office branch or the airport. By that time, it is organized not only by mail carrier route, but also in the order of the houses/addresses within that route.

The tour was entertaining, but also educational. The reasons behind the regulations on addressing mail, especially when dealing with mass mailings became clear when one could actually see the machines that were "reading" the addresses. We saw letters of all sizes being sorted, as well as larger flats. The new regulations of the locations of the address on magazines and large envelopes allow the machine locate the address and then sort it. The Post Office saves large amounts of money when the machines are able to handle the mail.

Overall it was a great tour, and we learned a lot. Thank you to the USPS employees who took time out of their day to show us around!

A Quick Selection in Photoshop

Sometimes, (okay, most of the time) when working in Photoshop, you have the need to select stuff. There are myriad ways to do so: multiple tools, different techniques, and also varied results. Some selections are better than others and some techniques work better in specific situations. Here we are only going to cover one quick and painless way to select all the stuff on one layer.

First of all, for this selection to work, an image needs to have a layer with a transparent background. The image below (from the Samples folder in Photoshop) has 8 layers, 7 of which have stuff on them with transparent backgrounds. 

Let's say you wanted to select all the nontransparent stuff on a specific layer, the "ColorfulFish" layer for example. That's the layer with the big yellow fish on it (The layer is highlighted in the image below. You don't have to have the layer you want to do your selection on highlighted, I just did that to show which layer my cursor is going to be on.) When your mouse cursor hovers over the layer thumbnail, it turns into a hand. The big black arrow in the image below is pointing to the cursor (now a hand) hovering over the thumbnail.

When the cursor is hovering over the layer thumbnail, hold down the command key (the key with the apple on it for the Mac folks). Then a selection square appears on your cursor hand, just like in the image below.

Now with the command key held down, click the mouse. And ta-da! You have now selected everything on that layer that isn't transparent. The cursor just has to be over the layer thumbnail, it doesn't matter where on the thumbnail you command-click.

Okay the image above with the three black arrows is showing which fish were magically selected with just one click, but it's pretty hard to see at that small size. Here is a close-up. Only the three fish that were on the "ColorfulFish" layer were selected.

And that's it. Easy, right? 

You know what to do from there. You can modify your selection edges, apply an adjustment to just that part of your image, or whatever you want. Just remember that for this trick to work, you have to command-click on a layer with a transparent background. It won't work on a white or solid colored background. 

Gadget Tips You May Not Know

Every once in awhile, I come across a simple little tip or trick that makes life so much easier. Sometimes it involves cleaning something in my house or caring for my yard, something that had taken me tedious hours before, and I just didn't know that someone made a gadget or tool or product that would take care of my problem in seconds.

One of the most recent times involved replacing my car's dead battery. I struggled for a long time trying to get it out, but it just wouldn't budge. I finally called my Dad to ask if he would come help. It turns out that he has a tool especially for doing what I was trying to do that I had no idea even existed. It took him seconds to get the battery removed and replaced. (Thanks Dad!)

Many times, when I come across something new like that, I wonder what other things there are in the world that I don't yet know about. What other holes in my knowledge are there?

Apparently, I am not the only one this happens to. David Pogue, the author of a helpful article from the New York Times, titled "Ins and Outs of Using Gadgetry," writes about simple "how to" stuff for your electronic gadgets that you may have missed in your comings and goings.

He poses the question, "How is the average person supposed to know the essentials of their phones, cameras and computers? There's no government leaflet, no mandatory middle-school class, no state agency that teaches you some core curriculum. Instead, we muddle along, picking up scattershot techniques as we go."

Pogue includes some simple tips involving cellphones, cameras, app phones, web stuff, editing text on a computer, and even some Mac tips. He thinks it is likely that there is going to be something on his list of tips to which you'll say, "I didn't know that!"

So click through to this article and read through Pogue's list. And even if you don't learn something new, you can still pat yourself on the back, knowing that you are very media savvy in this ever-changing world.

Book Review - The Elements of Typographic Style

Although this is really a reference manual, it turns out to be a surprisingly compelling read. This book instructs the reader in the art and craft of typography — mainly for laying out type in books. There is a lot to say (and Robert Bringhurst says it well) about an art form that strives to be beautiful, functional, and when done right, somewhat invisible.

There are sections about the historical development of type and fonts, plus detailed instructions on pleasing and harmonious margins and text blocks on pages. But if you know you aren't going to read this book from cover to cover, try to sample at least Chapters 1 and 2. These present more general ideas and advice about typography and are valuable to one who is interested in setting type well.

One of my favorite pieces of advice comes from Chapter 6, Choosing and Combining Type. He says to "use what there is to the best advantage."

If there is nothing for dinner but beans, one may hunt for an onion, some pepper, salt, cilantro and sour cream to enliven the dish, but it is generally no help to pretend that the beans are really prawns or chanterelles.

When the only font available is Cheltenham or Times Roman, the typographer must make the most of its virtues, limited though they may be ... but there is nothing to gained by pretending that Times Roman is Bembo.

Perhaps because he uses a food analogy here, but that has stuck with me. I also liked Chapter 10 where various fonts are listed by category (serif, san serif, blackletter, script, etc.) with a short history and samples. Plus, throughout the book he uses different fonts to demonstrate his points. And while not all of us will face having to typeset Greek letters in conjunction with English ones, Bringhurst goes into great detail about how to do so successfully in Chapter 6.

You don't have to feel like this book sets out rules in stone, especially if you are a professional typesetter and you are comfortable with the basics already. In fact, I think trying to follow all of the author's suggestions at once would be counterproductive. Instead, use this book to think about the little details in typography, or to pull yourself out of your usual approaches to type and see someone else's perspective for a little while.

This isn't the only book on typography that is a good resource, but it has stood the test of time rather well. I would recommend it to anyone interested in typography.

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.

Lorraine Press's E-waste Drive is a Success!

This week at Lorraine Press, as part of our ongoing efforts to be environmentally responsible, we've been encouraging our employees to bring in their e-waste from home. We wanted everyone to participate in Simply Mac's E-Waste Recycling Event. It is the greenest event in town this weekend, and free, too.

But LP wanted to make it even easier for our employees. We told them that all they had to do was bring in their unwanted, old electronics to work with them, and then we would haul all their stuff for them to the event to be recycled.

And today, after a weeklong accumulation of ancient electronics, we were able to cart it all off to be recycled. We would like to thank our Environmental Committee Chairperson for making this all happen.

Lorraine Press employees were able to collect almost 1500 pounds of e-waste that will now be recycled instead of thrown away into the landfill. We were all happy to see it go, knowing that it would be safely recycled.

Simply Mac did a wonderful job of organizing the event. There were plenty of helpers directing us where to go, when we first pulled up. And then they unloaded everything for us. We didn't even have to leave the truck. Here's some friendly helpers unloading our truck for us:

And here is a photo of the operation at the Maverick Center, one of the places you can drop off your e-waste. Very organized and efficient.

The E-Waste Recycle Event is still going on tomorrow, so you still have time to get rid of those old monitors, televisions, and VCRs. For more information, click here for Simply Mac's website to see where the drop off points are and a list of accepted items.