Brian P. Lawler - Official Adobe Print Publishing Guide, Second Edition: The Essential Resource for Design, Production, and Prepress

THE OFFICIAL ADOBE'

*rint Publishing Guide

Second Edition

THE ESSENTIAL RESOURCE FOR DESIGN. PRODUCTION, AND PREPRESS

Brian P. Lawler

The Official Adobe

Print Publishing Guide

Second Edition

Brian P. Lawler

Adobe

The Official Adobe Print Publishing Guide, Second Edition

Brian P. Lawler

Adobe Press 1249 Eighth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 510/524-2178 800/283-9444 510/524-2221 (fax)

Find us on the Web at www.adobepress.com.

To report errors, please send a note to .

Adobe Press is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson Education.

Copyright 2006 by Brian P. Lawler

Editor: Rebecca Gulick

Production Editor: Connie Jeung-Mills

Copy Editor: Tiffany Taylor

Proofreader: Alison Kelley

Compositor: Owen Wolfson

Illustrators: Brian P. Lawler and Julie Brockmeyer

Indexer: James Minkin

Cover Design: Charlene Will

Interior Design: Owen Wolfson

Cover and Interior Photography: Brian P. Lawler, Corbis, Getty Images Notice of Rights

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact .

Notice of Liability

The information in this book is distributed on an As Is basis, without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.

Trademarks

Acrobat, Adobe, Bridge, Camera Raw, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, and Postscript are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book.

ISBN 0-321-30466-7 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in the United States of America

Thank you to Ellis Myers, who gave me a chance and a lot of education in the graphic arts; to my favorite graphic artist, Ashala; my favorite illustrator, Patrick; all of my instructors and mentors at Cal Poly; Harvey Levenson and Mike Blum, who promised it would be just one class they wanted me to teach; to my colleagues Lorraine Donegan, Penny Osmond, Ken Macro, Malcolm Keif, Tom Goglio, Kevin Cooper and Melanie Kronemann; and to Korla McFall, Bob Pinkin and Sabra Scott, staff members par excellence.

Brian P. Lawler

Contents

Introduction

Until recently, most prepress taskssuch as scanning color photographs, trapping, imposition, color correction, and halftone screeningwere performed exclusively by skilled specialists working manually or on expensive proprietary systems. Today many of these tasks can be accomplished on the desktop.

The flexibility and direct control offered by this new technology have blurred the traditional roles of designer and prepress professionals. Designers who have the knowledge and the equipment can do their own prepress work. The prepress industry has changed to support the new requirements of the desktop publisher. Most commercial print shops are now equipped to image a file directly onto lithographic plates without requiring film as an intermediary, or even directly from a digital file to press.

Managing these changing relationships to achieve output of professional quality requires a knowledge of the processes and relevant issues. As a guide to the preparation of electronic files for commercial printing, this book addresses these issues and supplies the information you will need in deciding whether to perform a particular task yourself or to leave that task in the hands of a prepress professional.

1 Color and Commercial Printing

Describing Color

Prepress Terms

Computer Graphics

Image Resolution and Line Screen

Printing Technologies

Offset Lithography

Other Printing Processes

Printing Terms

Imposition and Binding

Binding and Finishing Terms

Color and Commercial Printing

One of the greatest challenges designers and publishers face is ensuring that the color in their printed artwork looks the way they intend. Accurate color reproduction requires a solid understanding of color basics and how color is displayed and printed on different devices, as well as good communication between the designer, the prepress provider, and the commercial printer.

This chapter introduces fundamental printing concepts and terminology and describes several processes that are commonly used to produce commercial printing.

Describing Color

Objects appear to be certain colors because of their ability to reflect, absorb, or transmit light; we perceive this light as color. Our eyes are sensitive enough to perceive a nearly infinite range of colors in the spectrum of visible lightincluding many colors that cant be displayed on a computer screen or printed on a commercial printing press.