• We can not stress proper planning enough. Know ahead of time what you are trying to accomplish and know how you wish to accomplish it. Use scans where scans are needed (usually only in photos or continuous tone art) and line art as logos and flat art.
  
• Always work with your printer at the inception of a project. Consulting a printer at the early part of a job will usually save you time, money & frustration.
  
• Most printers have a set of "standard" inks that they order premixed to PMS standard colors. Using one of these standards can save the cost of the printer having to mix inks to a precise formula to achieve an exact specified PMS color.
  
• If the final electronic file you give to the printer is too large for a 1.44 floppy -- MAKE sure that the storage device you use will be compatible at the printer / service bureau. Nothing like getting the whole project on a 200Mb Syquest Disk and finding out your printer can handle only up to 88Mb's. Or, worst yet, has scrapped the Syquest for Optical or Zip Drives. Check out your compatibility first -- if you have to work around it, it's nice to know it while you have the time to.
  
• Be aware of folding panels. Do your work at 100% the size of the printed piece and allow for proper margins where you want it to fold!
  
• Plan what program is best to accomplish your goal. QuarkXpress or Pagemaker are the programs best designed for page layout. Illustrator is great for line art, but is limited in page sizes. Freehand is usually best to overcome this page size limitation.
  
• Single page layouts should be built at trim size with bleeds.
  
• Resize ALL halftone and four color scans in PhotoShop or any other paint program. Resizing in the page programs or draw programs can lead to long imaging (RIP) time (and therefore cost more money). DO NOT compress the scans in PhotoShop! Export scans or graphics at the size they will print.
  
• When using colors, plan on what the colors will be and how they will print -- spot or process. If you use spot colors, specify colors in PMS (Pantone Matching System). If the colors are built out of process, please specify them as CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow & black) or Separations within the color pallet. A quick check to see how many plates (or negatives for making the plates) will be printed is to bring up the "Print" menu and select "Separations." The colors will be listed (note: "Registration" is NOT a true color or plate).
  
• The term "Gripper" refers to the space at the edge of the sheet where it is "gripped" and pulled through the press. This area is not printable and each press can have a different requirement on the amount of gripper it needs. Check with your printer to find out which press (and thus how much gripper to allow for in laying out your job. If you need to print within the gripper (or want to bleed an ink off the sheet) -- let the printer know. They will usually have to print on a larger sheet and then do a final trim to the desired finished size. This will cost more and can sometimes be avoided by changing your layout slightly during the planning stage.
  
• Prepare Text For Translation: If you're creating a publication that will be translated into another language, create a second black (spot color) called Text Black for your QuarkXPress or PageMaker color palette and apply that color, either manually or by including it in style sheets, to all text that will be translated. That way, the translators will only have to create one new set of film, which can be stripped together with the previous color separations for the new print run.

COLOR:

• Use CMYK colors, with separation ON, if you want 4-color process printing. You will be amazed at what you get if you send a file in RGB and the printer doesn't catch it and change it to CMYK.
  
• Use spot colors, separation OFF, if you want spot colors.
  
• Some Color Tips:
  For better print reproduction, use a two-color combination rather than a three- or four-color combination. This is particuarly important in the lighter shades where a small amount of density change or register shift can alter the appearance of the color dramatically.
  
• Clean oranges, violets and greens are very difficult to match in four-color process printing. To get a vibrant, clean and matching color (such as a specific logo color) you should strongly consider using a fifth SPOT color to achieve really decent results. The increase in cost can be well worth it!
  
• Colors that closely resemble the four primary process colors and dirty, muted colors reproduce well in four-color process printing.
  
• Fluorescent and Metallic colors CANNOT be achieved using four-color process printing. Again, if you have to have one of these colors, try adding a fifth spot color.
  
• Avoid using RGB when printing -- always convert to CMYK before output. (I've seen a pretty purple background come out on a color proof when the client wanted a very blue background!!)
  
• When using color in a document or graphic, be sure to delete all unused colors in your pallet -- i.e. Blue, Green, Red, 10% Gray, Proof-1, My Color, Rover's Ears, etc. These only serve to confuse and may cause printing problems with EPA's.
  
• In ANY program, list all colors used in placed graphics EXACTLY AS WRITTEN IN THE GRAPHIC!! Printing problems occur due to correct colors being left out of the pallet. Also, if the graphic has a red labeled "Pantone 032 RED" and you define and use a red you call "032 RED the postscript rip will see these as two distinctly different inks and make a separate negative for each -- remember: time & money!
  
• Mac default black is 100%. For large solid areas of black, we suggest a mixture of 60% C, 50% M, 40% Y & 100% K: "Rich Black", if you are printing four color process.
  
• Use a printed "built tint" swatch guide, like the Pantone Process Guide, TruMatch, or FocolTone systems, to visualize built colors. You will probably be disappointed in the built approximation of most Pantone colors. In fact, only about 50% of PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM Colors can be closely simulated in four-color process printing. (See if your printer has a book by Pantone that shows all PMS colors with each side by side with the four-color simulation -- you will be amazed!)
  
• There is no guarantee the Pantone tints will match between applications. ALWAYS check the built-in percentages.
  
• NEVER trust the color fidelity of any monitor, anywhere. Period. Transmitted additive images can never "match" reflected subtractive images. Use the "numbers", the information box in Photoshop, and printed swatch guides.

• Be sure that the vendor and client agree beforehand who is responsible for trapping. In most cases it is better for the vendor to apply the trap. Occasionally the client may have some more skill in this area, or may attempt to save money by doing the trapping. The important thing is to agree beforehand who is responsible for what. Only the most generous (and soon to be insolvent) vendor repeatedly takes responsibility for a client's trapping mistakes.
  
• Note whether black is to OVERPRINT or DROP OUT, unless you want to rely on the vendor's judgment. Note any special overprint/drop out requirements for other colors.
  
• If you're not sure whether to trap or not (or if you don't know what trapping is and when it is needed -- ASK your printer or service bureau -- everyone has to learn trapping sooner or later. Sooner is much better than later!! Trapping is a process that compensates for minor misregistration that can occur on a printing press. It us compensated for usually by overlapping adjacent colors ( the lighter color into the darker) slightly so no paper color will show if the inked areas don't quite touch everywhere. Typically light colors are either spread (enlarged) or choked (reduced) into darker colors. When the printer performs this work, it's expensive. That's why many designers and desktop publishers do it themselves.
  
• To set your own traps, you can work within the applications program or you can use a dedicated trapping program. Many applications -- QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator, Aldus Freehand -- offer tools for trapping, but you need to understand how the tools work and how the applications interact. For instance, if you import an Illustrator drawing into your Quark file, you cannot use the Quark tools to trap objects in the drawing. You must perform the trapping within the original Illustrator file. And Quark will not take the graphic's color content or boundaries into account when trapping native Quark elements to it.
  
  First, see if your printer has a dedicated program that will perform the necessary trapping and can handle all the work from the finished job file. This is the best solution, producing more professional results, and avoids some pitfalls caused by manual trapping within the application program.

Brochure Printing Tips!
Brochure printing tips and the other related printing tips sites will allow you to maximize the power of your messages to prospects and customers for all your brochure printing, flyer printing, post card printing, catalog printing and other promotional printing needs. Brochure printing tips is the right place to find help for all your brochure printing needs from creation through folding and cutting options. Brochures, flyers, sell sheets and data/product sheets are among todays most powerful and frequently used print communications. Brochures are extremely versatile in both content and use. Hand your brochures out at trade shows or provide them to your sales reps as selling aids. Letter fold them and they make a great substitute for postcards in a direct mail campaign. Use the 11' x 17' format and they make a great mini catalog.

About Brochures - Flyers - Sell Sheets - Data/Product Sheets
Make your first impression a powerful and lasting one with high quality, full color brochures, flyers, sell sheets or data/product sheets. Great looking, promotional brochures can create a compelling image of your company and its products and services. Whether your promotional need is a real estate listing, product flyer or catalog, trade show handout, data sheet, or other application, a brochure format can be just the answer. Your creativity and the use of full color in your brochure can project your organization's image and its product or services that will achieve the impact you need and want.

Brochure Design Tips
Brochures typically are a flat size of 8 1/2" x11" or 11"x17". The number and types of folds selected in your layout enable you to create a variety of print communications in terms of look and function. For instance, tri-fold an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet to create a 6 panel or page (3 front and 3 back) brochure which can also be designed as a self-mailer. Fold an 11" x 17" sheet in half and you have a terrific 4-page brochure or catalog. As a result, your design concept begins with the amount of information to display within the constraints of the size and layout. Start with a layout that includes the text and images you will need to convey your message. Brochure design can be a challenge, so you might consider using a professional designer or the in house design department of your printer. For more brochure design tips, click here.

Brochure Printing Tips
Brochures are typically printed in more than one color. Research shows that people respond more positively and remember longer full color promotional brochures. For more detailed tips on color, click here. Picking the right paper can also have a significant effect on the impact of your brochure. Most people choose a heavier weight, coated paper to achieve a more vibrant upscale look and feel. For more information on paper alternatives,

Top 10 Color Printing Tips
From PCPhoto Magazine
by Graeme Fordyce

Photographic-quality printing has become a mainstay of the desktop computer system. All the tools are fun, fast, and easy to use, and for a very reasonable price you can buy an ink-jet printer and special paper to produce amazing images that rival continuous-tone photos. Here are a few tips and techniques to help you get the best results from your ink-jet printer every time.

1. Start with a well-exposed, sharp photograph scanned to perfection. No surprises here. Printing blowups of blurry, lifeless photos only accentuates any inherent image problems. Choose a good, sharp photo, and make careful work of the scanning process. Stay within the range of your scanner's optical resolution to get the best results. You can't get something for nothing--interpolated resolution can look a bit dodgy if pushed too far. As soon as you've got the image in the computer, start visualizing how you want your print to look. It helps to have a goal, a previsualized concept of color and composition you wish to present on paper.
   
2. Use special software to dial in color. You want your monitor to display an image as close as possible to your printed image. This is very challenging to make happen--there's no way, strictly speaking, to perfectly match the additive colors you see on your screen with the subtractive colors of reflective art. Even service bureaus make multiple prints to produce a final product. There are programs that aim to help your screen and output match a bit better, but it's still a good idea to learn what to expect and how your particular printer treats color.
   
   In essence, you can calibrate with a program like Vivid Details's Test Strip 2.0 before you make your final print. This program displays and lets you print actual proofing test strips, so you can see exactly how much of a difference the changes in color and tonality will make to your final print. In color balance, the most useful option, you can add cyan, magenta, yellow, red, blue, and green in any percentage increment you want in a nine-up display. Other options are to change one color at a time, exposure (brightness and contrast), and saturation, in three-up and five-up displays that let you compare the alterations right next to one another. It can be amazingly helpful to have a printed test strip in your hand, so you can see exactly how a 10 percent change in each color really looks when fed through your printer. After you find the exact look you want, Test Strip will effect any change to your image that you set it to make.
   
3. Make a small test print to save consumables for 11-by-17 prints. When you get that big, ledger-sized paper in your hands, it's tempting to dive right in and start printing those big blowups. That paper gets pricey, though, and you can fly through consumables by following the trial-and-error route. Because printing your own large photos can be time- and paper-intensive, try outputting a small version of your image to make sure you have the colors, sharpness, and tonality to make a big print worth the time and expense.
   
   For instance, a good letter-sized, photo-quality ink-jet paper is considerably less expensive than 11-by-17-inch glossy paper. A 3-by-5-inch or 4-by-6-inch print is large enough to see a detailed photo's highlights, shadows, and range of colors, and it's also large enough to pluck out any problem areas in your print that might need more processing, like dodging, burning, cloning, etc. A small print like this only takes a minute or two, and once you're confident you have a final image, you can start the ink-jet printer on the 11-by-17-inch image and go away to do something else in the time it takes to finish.
   
4. Use the recommended highest-quality media. There are so many options coming out now that this isn't really any kind of a hindrance. All of the major manufacturers make numerous kinds of paper, from supergloss to watercolor, from heavy matte to canvas, from transfers to transparency film. When you're printing photos, though, be sure to use photographic-quality paper--it's formulated to take the ink the best and make the image last the longest. Feeding strange papers through your printer can leave fibers behind in the printhead works, and there's no guarantee the ink will take well to the surface. Also, use the manufacturer's suggested inks--clogged printheads will leave you stymied.
   
5. Handle your ink-jet prints carefully. Treat your ink-jet prints in the same manner you'd handle traditionally printed photos. Try not to get fingerprints on the paper surface, both before and after you print. The grease from your fingers could affect the way the ink adheres to the paper surface. Avoid moisture, high temperature, and direct sunlight, both in paper storage and print presentation. Also, allow your prints some time to dry face-up before handling them. Certain combinations of ink, paper, and environment can make your photo tacky for a little while after it's freshly printed. If you plan to file or stack the prints, put a piece of plain paper between them to prevent the printed surface from sticking to anything.
   
6. Keep the printer as dust-free as possible. Lint, mysterious spindles, dust, threads, and pet hair can all ruin an otherwise perfect print. Alien particles like these can trap ink and make ugly streaks along your image. If lint gets caught in the rollers, it can trap ink and deposit it on print after print. And believe me, these printers can be tricky to clean.
   It's very hard to keep computer areas dust-free, but a cover for your printer can help a lot. Keep unused paper in plastic folders or clean envelopes, not just stacked on a shelf where it can gather dust. A can of compressed air can be a useful item, but be careful not to blow the evil particles further into the printer's mechanisms!
   
7. Use adjustment layers during processing. Adjustment layers are extremely useful because they don't commit you to changing the actual pixels in your image, so you still have an editable file if you're not happy with the print. Making repeated edits to color, curves, etc. can draw you along paths that are difficult or impossible to undue, but adjustment layers just sit on top of your base image, not affecting the pixel information until you flatten the image.
   
   If your image-editing program doesn't offer this option, save multiple versions of your image as you go along (hard disk space is cheap these days!) and make sure to catalog them clearly to prevent confusion when you go back to print again. There are few things as digitally frustrating as realizing that you've ruined a good image at the last processing step, and now have to go back and start from scratch.
   
8. Sharpen your image at "actual pixels" view setting. When you're ready to run the unsharp-mask filter on your image before printing, go to the view menu in your image-editing software and select actual pixels, or 100 percent. Select preview in the unsharp-mask dialogue box so you can see the effect on the actual image instead of just on a thumbnail. At 100 percent, you won't be able to see the entire image at once, but you can get a better idea of how much of a change you're really making. It's tempting to view the apparent sharpening results globally, but when the image is displayed smaller, it's easy to oversharpen because the effect only becomes visible with more severe settings.
   
9. Be aware of your resolution settings. Print at an output resolution between 240 and 300 ppi. You don't have limitless latitude for blowing up your images, but anywhere in this range will give you top-quality output. If you're shooting with a 2-megapixel digital camera, this range of settings will let you print from about 3.2 by 4.3 inches to about 4 by 5.3 inches. If you get a 35mm image scanned onto a Photo CD, you'll end up with an approximate image size of 8 by 12 inches (240 ppi) to 7 by 10 inches (300 ppi). The prosumer film scanners like the ones made by Canon, Minolta, and Nikon will give you a print of approximately 10.6 by 16 inches (240 ppi) to 8.5 by 13 inches (300 ppi) when you scan at maximum settings. You can always push things larger either by changing the output resolution settings or interpolating, but it's diminishing returns when ink hits paper the bigger you get.
   
   Check your printer driver to make sure it's set to the highest image-quality output.
   
10. Try something extreme. Images take on attitudes of their own when you see them on paper. Instead of exclusively making straight prints, experiment with something you'd normally never think of doing and see how the final print looks. Whether it's with colors, filters, effects, or whatever, you can often stumble upon interesting and amusing print results when you try something out of the ordinary. Explore your software's capabilities, and check out other artists' prints for inspiration.

• Generally speaking, the best vignettes are created in a program like Photoshop. Vendors often decline responsibility when banding occurs in drawing programs and page make-up programs like QuarkXpress and Pagemaker.
  
• Banding is the problem of optically noticeable bands running through a graduated blend. 1-color PMS blends tend to cause more banding problems than 4-color or multi-tint blends. The "speed" (amount of gradation from one endpoint to another) and distance of blends are variables that impact banding. Too long a distance and too little a gradation or, inversely, too short a distance and too great a gradation will result in banding. (Try to keep blends/gradations under 9 inches.) Rastering an Illustrator, Quark or Freehand blend in PhotoShop to produce a tiff tends to reduce banding somewhat. This also allows you to apply filters to the blend, such as despeckle, blur or noise. Experimenting with lowering resolutions of blends, we've found that even at 72 dpi they look much smoother than higher resolution version. (From Tech Tips @ Pearl Pressman Liberty Comm. Group)
  
• Tired of those nasty stair-stepping problems in your desktop blends? Here's a couple of easy recommendations that can help keep your vignettes smooth.
  There are two types of blends: object-oriented and bitmap. The first, object-oriented, are generated in programs like Adobe Illustrator, Aldus Freehand, or QuarkXPress. These blends can be problematic: their steps are just too perfect. Your eyes are naturally drawn to the transition from one perfect step to another.
  
  The solution?
• For Illustrator or Freehand users, keep your Blends to a net change of no more than 75% from end to end. A blend that starts at 10% and ends at 80% is much less likely to band than one that begins at 0% and ends at 100%.
  
• Additionally, if you are using a service bureau, set your screen angles in spot colors to cyan (15¼) or magenta (75¼). This reduces the banding effect.
  
• The second type of blends is bitmap, which are generated in Photoshop. If you create a bitmap blend, add a pixel or two of noise (found in the filter menu) to the selection to avoid those nasty stairsteps.