\nIt\u2019s\n been a growing trend these days that designers are only creating for \n(or only being trained how to design for) electronic media, such as \nwebsites and emails. The problem is their clients then hand us those \nsame files and are unhappy when what we print doesn\u2019t look good. There \nare several different things that can cause this problem, we will cover \nthem and show you how to fix them without making extra work for \nyourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This\n is the biggest one of the lot. Quite often we will be given a \npowerpoint presentation and be asked to print it. The problem is that \nscreens use to be 4×3 ratio and now have a 14×9 or 16×9 ratio. Printed \npages on the other hand have a ratio a\/b = \u221a2 and specialty things like \nbanners, business cards and signage work on other ratios. Generally \nspeaking for simple fixes we just scale the supplied images down to best\n fit the printed page as in most cases with a white margin around the \noutside. If you need to fill the page then printers will cut to size but\n you will end up paying for the custom page size. We at Copy Express \nwill do our best to accommodate your custom sizing at minimal costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The\n simple fact is that screens still operate at far lower resolutions than\n printed pages, about about one 1\/9th number dots in fact. If you design\n for the screen first, then the file is printed on the page the dots are\n going to be much more obvious to the viewer and make it look of poorer \nquality. A better way is to work with this most detail you can and when \nit\u2019s time to generate the screen documents, most image\/design software \nwill let you drop the dpi in the saved file for screen use, then you can\n save a second version with the high detail you need for print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Following\n on from the Dots Per Inch point, for a computer screen you just don\u2019t \nneed so much detail for it to be useable, detail that will make the \nfiles so much larger to store send. Programs like Adobe\u2019s inDesign and \neven Microsoft Publisher have the ability to save pdf in different \nquality levels to let you trade it off for file size. If you design for \nprint first and save that as one version then it\u2019s just a few option \ntoggles to save a second version dropping the quality a bit to give you a\n much smaller file. These same features allow you to setup the bleeds \nand printing marks a printer requires to be able to print the documents,\n and have them all turned off when generating the pdf to be used on the \nweb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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One\n of the most common problems we\u2019ve had printing files designed for the \nscreen, is that they say we\u2019ve printed them darker. It\u2019s not the case, \nin fact our print systems try to match the colours in the file as \naccurately as it can. What is happening is that the eye is seeing it as \nlight reflected off the image, instead of being projected by the image, \nso there is going to be less light reaching the eye so it will look \ndarker. It also doesn\u2019t help that a lot of people do have their screens \noverly bright so what they see isn\u2019t actually how the file looks to the \ncomputer\/printer. If you consider this to be a problem, just lighten the\n problem areas by 5-10% and that should minimise the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Most\n modern print systems can handle mixed colour profiles with little \nissue. However there are a couple of things to be wary of. When colours \nare converted from RGB to CMYK, there\u2019s going to be a slight drift in \nthe colours. It can\u2019t be helped as there is a limit of how colours can \nbe rendered by a printer. If it\u2019s going to be a very big issue, then \nconvert your RGB images to CMYK before generating a printing PDF. Spot \ncolours can also be a problem depending on what is being used to print \nit. Our print systems are able to deal with it normally but depending on\n the nature of the spot colour, it could become \u2018invisible\u2019 to a printer\n even though you can see it in the PDF. If you think there might be \nproblems then give your printer a call and they can guide you on how to \ndeal it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Printing\n equipment, while a lot smarter than it use to be, can be easily \nconfused by complex multi layer designs. Especially if there is special \neffects beyond simple stuff like transparency and shadowing. When faced \nwith layers it can\u2019t untangle, it will look at them in the order the \ndocument has them stacked on the page and make the best guess it can. So\n sometimes graphics and text might vanish or become distorted because \nanother bit of artwork over it has confused the printer. While at Copy \nExpress we will try and catch these problems before we print, we don\u2019t \nalways know how the finished look should be so can miss it. If you have a\n complex multilayer design, and the printing company has a problem with \nit, try when generating the PDF: flattening the layers, removing the \nability to edit the pdf (which helps greatly reducing the file size), or\n saving as a series of 300dpi tiffs or pngs then using a program like \nAdobe Acrobat DC to combine and convert the graphics into a new PDF.
And\n naturally this article has only been skimming the surface of what you \ncan do to make sure that anything you design will look great on both a \nscreen and on a page. If you want to learn more then give a call at Copy\n Express and we will be glad to help you out with it.\n\n<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s been a growing trend these days that designers are only creating for (or only being trained how to design for) electronic media, such as websites and emails. The problem is their clients then hand us those same files and are unhappy when what we print doesn\u2019t look good. There are several different things that … Continue reading “Tips to simplify designing for both screen and print”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,101,77],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":954,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions\/954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}