Design for print- creative suite session 3

Indesign
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.

Tint swatches are created when selecting a colour and selecting the new tint swatch menu.

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.

When hovering over each little bit of detail in the photograph it actually tells you the percentage of each individual colour.

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

Red square shows the print limit, similar to gamut warning it warns when there is too much ink that will be applied, warning depending on what stock you're using. If using thin stock it is more relevant than if you were using thick 350gsm paper. 

Creative suite session 2

The first part of the session was about how when working in photoshop we must always work in RGB but there are ways to work in CMYK without changing the mode. These are things we learnt last year and are already up on my blog. We learnt about gamut which basically means colour range and how we can check if and RGB is in gamut range for printing CMYK and how we can make adjustments so the RGB image we see on screen is what we'll see when printed in CMYK by changing the levels and saturation. Again this wasn't new but what we learnt after the break was extremely useful.

Next we learnt about using spot colours in photoshop, when applying spot colours in photoshop one can only work in a single colour mode and there is no specific spot colour mode, therefore when printing commercially the document will just be printed in CMYK. There is a special way of printing in spot colours though, first of all one must greyscale the image then select duotone in the modes menu (duotone only works on greyscale images) Once duotone is selected a window like the ones below appear, this allows us to select up to four tones to add to the image, allowing us to edit the picture with with individual colours applied through the curves square next to the colour swatch. Once a spot colour has been selected the pantone code will then appear which allows the printer to print that exact colour through the name provided.  

This is an example of what the image looks like with the colour applied without editing with the curves, it allows us to create cover overlays easily. This is something I've always been interested in and wanted to know, this would have helped with quite a few projects last year and it'll definitely be used a substantial amount this year because I don't like using full colour images in my work.

Below is just an example of the window that appears when editing the colours with the levels option, it allows you to individually edit each colour overlay, affecting what colour is applied to the blacks and which is applied to the whites, meaning you can easily create inverted coloured pictures

Another technique of using spot colours within a photoshop document is through the channels tool bar on the right. On any greyscale image right click and select the 'new spot channel', the channels reflect the colour mode of an image, therefore you're in fact adding another colour overlay on top just a different way. When the spot channel window appears you can change the colours through this, again it names the channel the pantone colour indicating to the printer the exact colour. There is also another option on the window that opens, this one is called solidity, this basically means opacity. It affects how easy the greyscaled image can be seen through the new colour channel.

Below is just an example of playing around with the spot colour channel, it allows you to apply shaped and text over the original image through that channel.

Creative suite workshop session 1

For this session we are focussing solely on working with colour in illustrator

When first opening the document consider the 2 different colour modes; CMYK and RGB

CMYK for print, the inks are transparent so multiple tones can be created by layering different tints of the colours. The key (K) consolidates the combination of CMY. Whereas RGB is for screen.

Focusing on the swatch palette, swatches allow us to add the exact same colour to any object. 

Colour spectrum allows us to select colour offering us another option to select colour without using the slider options.

To add a new swatch go to the swatch menu in the top right and select new swatch, alternatively you can select the piece of folded paper next to the bin symbol.

This is what appears when creating a new swatch, there is also a preview option if you have something selected which enables you to see what the colour s going to look like, the name of the swatch is also theCMYK code.

When you select a colour from the spectrum it isn't automatically added to your swatch menu so to add it to the swatch menu you must drag the square over on the left onto the swatch palette. Or alternatively you can use the colour selection tool as opposed to selecting the shape. Once the colour has been added to your swatch menu it'll look something like the image below, it'll have a small corner missing out of it. This means it is a global colour, global colours mean you can make changes in the swatch menu and it'll change all the things that are that colour without selecting the objects. 

Global colours enables us to create tints which isn't possible with normal colours.

Whenever you change colour all the tints change that are associated with this colour change as well because it's global.

Spot colours

This is a solid colour meaning it hasn't been printed using a mixture of CMYK, it's a colour printed using its own ink. It is chosen over CMYK because it can be cheaper to print as you only need a single plate per colour, whereas a single colour in CMYK could use up to four plates. Spot colours allow consistency, for example major corporate branding such as sainsbury's always have the same orange so spot colours mean the colour will always be consistent. Spot colours also enable you to print colours that aren't available in CMYK such as metallic or fluorescent.

Pantone is an example of spot ink, each colour has its own unique reference number allowing you to consistently match up. To access these;

Change the pantone swatch menu into a list like we did previously to make easier to navigate, at the top of the menu there is a search bar that allows us to search for a reference without spending time manually searching. 

whenever you click on a pantone colour it is automatically added to the swatch palette. Do not change the name because when printing commercially the printer will not know the reference number and won't be able to print the exact colour for you. Because it's a global colour you are still able to set up tints with pantone colours. 

Halftone is used to print tints with a single plate spot colour.

When we open a new illustrator document the swatches reset because the swatches are unique to the document they're used in. To save swatches so that they can be used in other documents go to go to swatch menu and 'save swatch library as AI' this means they can be opened in multiple documents through the swatch library and user swatches.

ASE (adobe swatch exchange) allows us to export our swatches so that they can also be used in photoshop and indesign.