Hi guys,
I have to send out of few jobs and have been in contact with the people at the other end, asked them questions etc..
So, I have a little double sided image and graphic to be printed , that is going to be printed in mone or black and white through a commercial printer its a franchise!, so the printing isn't actually done there.
Originally this was send to them by a self proclaimed "Designer", but I doubt that he packaged the Indesign file properly. We had supplied one of the images. According to the "printer" the fonts were missing and images were in low res...so from the outset we are behind. Files were swapped back and forth between the "Designers" and one of the parties who's job it is. A proof was send via email as a PDF, looked great on screen! Some one OK'ed it! 30000 of these beasts came a week or so later, but they were looking very very dark. The business logo, which was light gray on black were no where to be seen, the two images on the other side look like an chimney (well, at least the highlights weren't blown :-) )
Obviously not what was expected.
Ok, so I call up the lovely and very helpful lady and owner of the printing franchise, who is a designer by trade, this I learned later. She agreed to do a re-print, which is fine and great for the client. I asked her, if she had any icc profiles for their press, which she declined, so I asked again and asked if she knew what the blackest black the printer was able to print and what the white point was. She told me she would have to get back to me, but said she had this swatch book, which the printer was capable of printing. Cool, they were all CMYK and this job was a mono/BW job, so it didn't contain any detail or information relating to the job.
She called back later and told me that the printer had just told her that the blackest black was 80% black and white point was within 2%...great!! I thought.
Ok, given this information - how should I prepare my images or graphics to have this printed so that I retain details in my images and that the black text and graphics look black, and everything within...grays stays gray and white, stays white?
Ok, correct me if I am wrong, cos I don't send a lot of stuff out, usually we print in house but they are images, and are RGB based.
So i loaded up my image (RGB) and converted it to gray scale, I checked the black point or what I wanted to appear the darkest black on the image using threshold and placed my eye-dropper there and did the same with my white point, so I had the two points in my info pallet. Then I added a Level's adjustment layer and moved my output slider so that my blackest back was equal to 80% and my white point 2%.
Ok, flat looking file on screen, but in my mind all that had happened was that I had defined the constrains. - file is not printed - job has been canceled, due to time constraints.
but would that file have printed within spec's ? If not what should I have done different.
My second scenario, preparing images for CMYK printing, through a publisher. Almost all parties are distant to each other, geographically. Printer in Hong Kong, Publisher on the other side of the country.
Proposed work flow is to have another local company to a press check using the overseas printers profile - No profile is supplied to me, but I am told that the TIL is 280, and I think the publisher recommended to use Coated FOGRA39 as the intended color space for the printing.
How would I best prepare my files so that I have good color, images popping off the pages in all their glory :-) ?
My experience says to work the files in aRGB, as my working space but to use the Coated FOGRA39 as my soft proofing space, and check for out of gamut colors...
How can I best ensure basically the same as above, that my blacks don't block up and the whites don't blow out? When I print normally on my HPZ3100 and my trusty Epson, I print a gray scale step wedge and check it to see when I see details and when I don't and that becomes my constrains. This works very well, but I am doing this because I have my screen calibrated to a standard, my printer is calibrated and profiled to a standard, and I have made a few test prints to confirm it. Here I am not so lucky, as I can't test my theory.
I will start another thread on monitor to print calibration shortly.
I appreciate everyone comments, as I am sure there are many beside myself who would find this information useful and I would like to thank in advance to those who so generously share their knowledge here.
thanks
Henrik
