Typography Poem

Among the millions of youtube or facebook entries, there are sometimes hidden gems. Here is a little video we found. It combines a poem written by Taylor Mali, with Typography animation by Ronnie Bruce. It’s pretty clever, so check it out.

Click here to view

 

Photoshop tip of the week: Shortcuts

When designing, anything that can help make the process easier and faster is always good. That’s where shortcuts come in, as they cut down the design time.

Aside from Adobe Photoshop, this can be used with InDesign and Illustrator as well. The shortcut keys themselves are a bit different from one program to another, as well as from a Mac to a PC.

To find out where and what they are, in the program, go to Edit->Keyboard Shortcuts. There will be drop-down arrows, and you’ll see on the right what the keys are. The shortcuts can be edited, as well you can create new ones in the window.

Here’s some helpful links to help and talk about shortcuts.

Creating Shortcuts (Photoshop)

Best Shortcuts (many programs)

 

Photoshop Tips of the Week: Colour Picker

When selecting a colour to use with the Colour Picker, there’s a little help area on the side, that’s usually overlooked. Beside the box that shows what colour you chose, are two small icons. They don’t show up for every colour though.

An example of what the screen will look like.

Let’s say we’re designing something in RGB, we choose a colour, and the icons & boxes show up. One looks like a ! in a triangle, and the other a cube. Underneath those two icons, are two smaller colour boxes that look similar to the one chosen. This is all to the left of the OK/Cancel buttons.

The ! Option shows up because the colour you chose, is not included in the CMYK colour spectrum, and will not be able to be printed the exact same as shown. It gives you an option for a similar CMYK safe colour in the little colour box.

The cube is similar, it shows up when a colour is not included in a Web colour spectrum, which is used for the Internet. It also gives you an option to choose a Web safe colour.

 

The White Box…

We’ve had various issues with client files not printing properly over the last few months.  We kept getting a white box under some objects that had an effect, such as a drop shadow or outer glow, applied in InDesign and were then made into an X1a PDF. It was becoming a huge headache for us and our clients as it seemed like it started happening on every file we were receiving. We couldn’t find any commonality between the files that might be causing the white box to appear.

I did a few web searches and stumbled on this website – http://indesignsecrets.com (which is a must visit for all designers using this program).  I found a post explaining that the issue occurs when using transparency effects on spot colours.

When InDesign flattens the transparency, it tells the colours to knockout the background, instead of overprinting, which is what creates the white box. So I went back and looked at each file that we had an issue with. Each job had a spot colour used where the white box appeared.

There is a simple way around this – convert the colours to CMYK. But if we are trying to match a specific PMS number, it’s best to keep it as a spot colour (as explained in this previous blog entry). So to create a PDF with spot colours, create a postscript file, making sure that under output, the ‘simulate overprint’ option is checked. Then use Adobe Distiller to create an X1A PDF.

The full post about the white box issue can be found here: http://indesignsecrets.com/eliminating-the-white-box-effect.php

 

Photoshop Tips of the Week: Changing Colour

When designing, choosing colour is important. Make sure you know which colour settings you’re working under, and that it’s the right one for the printer. To check in Photoshop which setting you have, Select Image->Mode, and wherever the checkmark is, that’s the setting you’re under.

Our tip is to start your design in RGB, which is the colour space your monitor uses. Since both CMYK and RGB share similar colours, it’s best to use the colour space of the output device you are using (in this case your monitor) to work with your image. When you are satisfied with your picture, it’s always a good idea to check for any gamut warnings. This can be done by going to View > Gamut Warning. This will grey out any colours that will shift when converting to CMYK. When you are ready to print, convert your image to CMYK.

If you start in another setting and want to change it, go under that same menu option, and just click on something else there. Although the colour might change a little bit to match the spectrum.

Photoshop gives you the option to choose as soon as you open a new document, which colour setting to start with.

For more colour info, visit our previous blog here.

 

It’s always something…

You learn something new every day. After working at Mission Stream for a year and a half, I’m still finding glitches in the programs we work with and new fixes to get around them.

When I started working at Mission Stream, one of the first issues I had was with fonts. Being a new company, we didn’t have any font packages other than the ones that came with Adobe CS3 or Microsoft Office.

I remember on the first business card I created here, I used Century Gothic as the font, saved the file and closed it. A little while later I went back into the file to make a change to the text, only to find that I could not edit any of the text even though I hadn’t locked the text box. I tried recreating a new file and the same issue happened. I spent 2 or 3 days searching the internet before I found that it was a conflict with Adobe InDesign, and Microsoft Office 2007.

The newer version of these fonts were added by Office, but not recognized fully by InDesign.  By adding the font to InDesign Fonts folder, I was able to use the font with no issues.  On Windows computers the folder is located at:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe InDesign CS3\Fonts.

This should help with any font issues you encounter down the road.

 

What’s up with Bindery?

When it comes to printing, the design and the finished printed product are important. But what happens to a job after it’s printed on the machine, before it leaves a shop?

That’s where Bindery comes in. Bindery is adding the final touches to complete a job, sometimes known as Finishing. There’s different aspects of bindery, ranging from coiling to folding. So depending on the finished job, certain methods of bindery need to be used.

Here’s a little look into what goes on in the Bindery room here at Mission Stream:

Trimming- Simply, it’s cutting paper on a guillotine knife. Here’s a description of it. Ours is a bigger electronic machine. We jog the paper, place it against the back and side of the inside of the machine, so it’s straight. Then we use the crop marks printed with the job and line them up with the laser guide on the machine. The laser guide is an accurate way of showing us where the knife will cut through the paper. Then we press two buttons, and any excess paper is cut away, leaving only the final piece.

Punching & coiling- For coiled books, like manuals, the pages need to be punched after they’re printed. A Coil Puncher is used. We take a small pile of the sheets, which are already in order, place them in the slot, and press the button on the floor.

After they’re all punched, a book is taken, and a piece of coil is woven through the first 3 holes on the edge. Then the coil is placed against a machine that spins, which is used to quickly wrap the coil around the whole side of the book. The excess of the coil edges are cut by hand, using a crimper.
Click here for more info.

Folding & Scoring- Jobs like brochures and pamphlets are finished on a Folder. Our folder has 5 different folding setups such as a half fold, accordion, roll, gate, and half-half. The machine can fold any size under 12” wide and 18” long. Having a good template always helps ensure the fold(s) will be in the proper spot.

Scoring is done by hand, on a Scoring machine. It’s used for cards, or other jobs that need to be folded, or just creased. Sheets that have thicker card-like stock, that can’t be run on the folder are used on here as well. There is a dial that moves to keep track of where the score will be, and also where the sheet lines up against to keep it straight. Then the handle gets pushed down, making a score in the paper.

Padding- Used for making notepads. After the paper is cut, cardboard is also cut down to the size that the notepads will be, and placed at the bottom of the sheets. The notepads are placed against something like a wall or corner, to keep the pads straight. Then a weight is placed on the top of the pile, so they don’t move around. Glue is brushed on the edge, and then they just need to dry.
There is a small section on it here , just scroll down to the binding area.

Saddle-stitching- Used to make booklets or magazines, it has two staples along the spine of the book to keep the pages together. Here, we can do it straight off of the printing machine. Each page gathers together in place, is jogged, stapled, inside the machine. Sometimes it’s even trimmed on the outside edge, depending on if it bleeds or not. It also accounts for creep automatically, or it can be adjusted manually.
The business section here describes it a bit more.

 

Printing Basics – RGB vs CMYK

Computer monitors and other light emitting screens (televisions, your iPod’s LCD screen) emit colour as Red Green and Blue (RGB) pixels. Computer monitors are only able to display a limited gamut (range) of the visible spectrum.

Red, Green, Blue - Additive Colours

Instead of emitting light like a screen, inked paper absorbs or reflects light, depending on the wavelengths. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Back (CMYK) pigments act as a filter, allowing different levels of red, green, and blue light to reflect from the paper. Like monitors, printing inks and toner produce a colour gamut.

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow - Subtractive Colours

The RGB colour gamut and the CMYK colour gamut are not identical, in fact, the RGB spectrum can produce more colours than the CMYK equivalent,  so it is quite possible for something designed in RGB to look different when printed in CMYK.

Comparison of various gamuts.

If you are designing something that will only be reproduced on a screen, perhaps a banner ad for web, or an iPhone application, then designing and saving the artwork as RGB colour mode is obvious. However if there is a possibility of the artwork being reproduced in print, it is necessary to have CMYK versions of the files. A file can be easily converted from RGB to CMYK in digital imaging software such as Adobe Photoshop, simply access the image>mode settings. Be careful, though, many features in Photoshop are only supported by RGB images, therefore, it is a good idea to design in RGB even if you are going to print, and convert it once you have the design finalized, keeping all your Photoshop mechanics available throughout the process. Another thing to keep in mind is that many documents will have files imbedded in them, usually an .eps logo file or something similar. Remember to convert any embedded RGB files in the CMYK document as well.

To summarize:

RGB: Red Green Blue

Additive colour spectrum used in on-screen display

CMYK: Cyan Magenta Yellow Black

Subtractive colour spectrum used in printing

Gamut: Range of reproducible colours. RGB’s gamut is larger than CMYK’s

 

Photoshop Tips of the Week:Dust & Scratches

If you have an old photograph in Photoshop, and you want to get rid of some of the dust and other minor things in it, without having to do too much, here’s a simple and quick way.

Go under Filters->Noise-> Dust and Scratches.

Not all the imperfections will be gone, like creases from the original copy, but it will help clean up that picture.

 

Keep it a spot!

Back in less simpler times, before Digital Printing was an available technology, companies had to use offset printing for all of their business cards, letterheads and envelopes. Now for those if you who may not be familiar with offset printing, each colour used requires a sheet of metal called a plate. The ink sticks to the areas on the plate where the colour is required and is then pressed onto a rubber roller which then transfers the ink onto the paper. Meaning that for a full colour job you would need 4 different plates – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black for each side of the sheet that needed printing. This could become quite costly for smaller companies, which is where Pantone colours come in.

The Pantone Matching System is made up of 14 base colours that are mixed together to create a system of 1,114 different combinations which are all identified by a Pantone Matching System (PMS) number. On an offset press only one plate is required for each PMS colour which makes it easy to add colour to any job without using an expensive 4 colour process. Companies would choose specific PMS colours that would be used in all of their branding and logos.

Now that Digital Printing has become more affordable, more people are using it to print their stationary items. This becomes a problem if the company has a specific PMS colour they want to match since digital presses can only use the 4 CMYK colours to print… which is a lot less than the 14 that PMS colours use!

At Mission Stream, our digital presses are run by Colour Management Servers that very closely match most PMS colours. Each server can identify when a PMS colour is used within a file and pull up their “recipe” of CMYK to use to get close to the required PMS colour. It’s not perfect, and some colours match better than others, but we think it’s better than paying more for offset!

In order for our equipment to do this, it’s important that the PMS colours are identified as “Spot” colours in the native files used to create the document. If they are converted to their CMYK equivalent, our servers won’t properly identify them which may produce less than desirable results.

How colours are handled by our presses has been illustrated in our new Marketing Brochure. If you don’t have one yet, you can request one by sending us an email at info@missionstream.ca.
If you are concerned about how your company’s specific PMS colours will print, we will be more than happy to help you by doing some test prints and working with you to get the colour you desire!