Have discussion with printer before producing the final document, this will help him but also help us, discuss file format, spot colours, finishes, bleeds etc... To print on blurb, there is a plug in called blurb book creator that'll aid in setting up the document to print as it has to be very precise.
Slug area is used for printers marks and crop marks, things that aren't involved or visible in the final design. Can also put fold marks in the slug area, all aids in the printing process and finishing.
Primary text frame automatically adds a text frame to each page, very useful when creating text heavy documents, allows us to just copy and paste straight into the text box.
Applying colour
The way indesign applies colour is the same way illustrator applies colour, to shapes and frames. Swatch menu is different to the swatch menu on illustrator because it doesn't give us a range of default swatches, it's a much more practical swatch palette. The swatches are also automatically global unlike illustrator or photoshop, which means if we edit the colour anything that is that colour automatically changes.
Spot colour swatches- Similar look but completely different print process.
When placing a duotone image to indesign the spot colours used in photoshop are automatically added the swatch palette on indesign. When working in photoshop there are several factors to bare in mind when preparing an image to be placed in Indesign; 300dpi, actual size, CMYK or spot, TIFF/PSD. In illustrator we don't have to worry about the dpi or actual size, we still need to bare in mind CMYK and saving AI. Indesign also allows us to copy and paste our illustrator artwork because the both work using vectors.
Separations
Indesign using the colour channels from photoshop to show how each individual colour is represented, they also remind us of individual screen positive when printing photographs, they're used for creating each individual plate used in commercial printing.
In order to make sure nothing goes wrong in the printing process it's best to delete all unused swatches just so that they aren't used in turn costing a client a lot of money.
Halftone, the smaller the dot the lighter the tint. For high quality print you'd be looking at 150 lines per inch, but a billboard is around 50, screen printing 40-65. The separations process is only available on certain printers, only the mac suite printers work well in uni because they're laser printer.
Attributes, overprint shows the outcome if the two colours were printed on top of each other
