Sometimes Being Rich Ain't Everything.

Rich black, in printing, is an ink mixture of solid black over one or more of the other CMYK colors, resulting in a darker tone than black ink alone generates in a printing process. (courtesy of Google.)


Here at PSI we highly encourage the use of rich black. We prefer the formula of C-40%, M-30%, Y-30%, and K-100%. The use of it can come in handy across a variety of jobs, and not only does it help the pressmen out a lot and makes for a smoother run, it tends to make the final printed piece look great and "pop" more. 


Now in some cases where there's an image with a lot of black built in (say a Photoshop file or JPEG) laying on top of a black background made in Illustrator...

Things can get kind of tricky if the black of the image and the background don't match and there's a lot of coverage. When I turned separations preview on in Illustrator and turned the Black channel off, this was what I was looking at...

The top left corner is the build (CMYK rich black), and everything else is a placed graphic. This would not be good on press, as there would be noticeable color shifts all over the page (this was a large job).


To alleviate this potential press headache, I had to sample the black in the placed images, copy down the formula of CMYK, then apply that to the background in the Illustrator file. The result now with the Black channel off is...

Beautiful. The pressmen will thank us later.

Y2K11? Really?

Oh, the horror.

iPhone alarms malfunctioning. Gas prices rising. Zsa Zsa Gabor losing a leg.

Is this the apocalypse cometh? Surely not.

While my iPhone alarm has remained unscathed, the new year has indeed brought trouble into my life. Earlier this morning my boss alerted me to look at our server folders on my Mac. Thinking nothing of it, I looked. And to my dismay I saw this...

Apparently we were busy.

Surely all those folders weren't made all at the same time on that day?! I wasn't even here! No one was.

Strange indeed. A system bug obviously, but we're not really sure what to do about it. Luckily all the enclosed folders remained like they were pre-macapocalypse.

Help me, Steve Jobs. You're my only hope.

Be well.

3 Tips to better help you help us help you.

While sitting in the prepress department all day, 5 days a week, we see lots of types of files come in: PDFs, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, EPS. Now if we counted up how many of those files are somehow done "incorrectly", the number would be close to half.

We can understand trying to make a deadline, rushing through multiple titles, and just plain forgetting a step. But there are a few things that are basic that would really help us out in the end to get your product to you faster.



1. ADD BLEED.

• This saves us from the painstaking task of going all around your document and extending all your color boxes and photos.
• And also will prevent accidental movement of images, boxes, etc.
• It's quick and easy on your part too.

2. CONVERT ALL BLACK TYPE, LINE-WORK, ETC. TO 100% BLACK.

• Unless your document requires a rich black (we recommend C-40 M-30 Y-30 K-100)
• This makes it easier during the actual printing of the piece too

3.  MAKE SURE ALL DOCUMENT COLORS ARE CONVERTED TO CMYK

• Unless of course you're wanting a spot color to be used in the art work, in which case leave it and make sure Customer Service knows you're wanting a 5th or 6th color for your job.
• Delete all unused spot colors in the color palette.

So there you have it. Quick little tips I know most artists know how to do, just forget to do from time to time. There's probably a plethora of stuff we could add, just these are the most commonly found mistakes.

Be well.