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If you are specific about the colours to be achieved in a job, you will need to have an understanding of the two main types of printing we produce, namely 4 colour Process and PANTONE® Spot Colours, as this is very important to the method in which your artwork is created and how the final document will be produced. A brief explanation is set out below, however if you are in any way unsure please call and talk to one of our team who will be happy to give advice and guidance.
4 Colour Process printing is when dots of 4 colours are combined to give a very large colour range (e.g. photographic colour images) a similar technique that used with red, green & blue (RGB) dots on a television screen. The colours used are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & BlacK (CMYK). You do not need to use all of these 4 colours to produce your artwork, you can create a one colour job by using only one of these colours, but you'd need to ensure that the colour you choose isn't made up of a combination of any of the other colours (i.e. if it's black it needs to be only a percentage of black, and not 100% black and 10% cyan).
The PANTONE® MATCHING SYSTEM (PMS) is the definitive international reference for selecting, specifying, matching and controlling ink colors. Colours (and their corresponding reference numbers i.e. PMS 072) are chosen from a pallate book, and the inks are created as a specific single 'spot' colour rather than being made up of a mixture of CMYK dots. PMS colours are normally found on company logos where colour matching and consistency is essential.
BEWARE you computer screen uses RGB colour so it is not a good match for colour. In the industry we specify a CMYK or PANTONE® colour, all printers understand this and can therefore achieve colour consistency and matching. We have PANTONE® colour books available on site or they can be purchased.
Preparing Publisher artwork:
1. PAGE SIZE - Check you are using the correct page size (this is usually from the 'A' size range e.g. A4 etc)
2. PRINTING PREFERENCES - Go to 'tools' and select 'commercial printing tools'. Choose spot colour (Pantone) or process colour (CMYK). If using spot colour choose the pantone colours you require the job to be printed with from your colour palette. IF THIS IS NOT DONE AT THE BEGINING YOU CANNOT CHANGE TO SPOT COLOUR LATER WITHOUT HAVING TO RE-COLOUR ALL YOUR ARTWORK. (not necessary when converting to 4 colour process).
3. CLIP ART AND IMAGES - If using clipart or pictures they must be recoloured within publisher. If using colour pictures be wary of the resolution, as below 300dpi quality may be poorer than you anticipate. ENSURE they are CMYK not RGB, as well as saved as uncompressed tiff - not jpeg's.
4. BLEED - If you need to use bleed make your page size 3mm larger on all edges and work to this (i.e. A4 with bleed will be 216 x 303mm)
5. SEPARATIONS - Before sending the file to Platinum, please test the separations from your printer. If it's a single page, 2 colour job when you ask your printer to print separations only two pages should print (one for each colour used) when combined on the printing press they will produce the job. If you get more than 2 pages printing you must be using more than 2 colours, you'll need to resolve this problem before supplying your files.
PLEASE SUPPLY SEPARATED AND COMPOSITE HARD COPY PROOFS TO PLATINUM TO AVOID PROOFING COSTS
6. PACK & GO - When complete you must use Publisher's 'Pack and Go' facility. This collects all information, files, fonts and pictures and compressed them to a file that can be saved to disk or emailed to Platinum. Please call for information on how to do this correctly.
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