Our ultimate graphics guide for printers.

The Web is WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get. What you see on the monitors and via the connections - and what you use for beta testing - is what your work will look like to all those who check out your URL. What's on your screen will be pretty close to what's on their screens. The formats are simple (either JPG or GIF) in most cases, and the resolution for monitor display never need exceed 72 dpi.

Print is a different matter altogether. Once your files leave your computer, there's a whole wonderful road they have to journey along to make it into print. You do everything you can to make sure they're ready for their adventure, but just as you're likely to forget your toothbrush or your favorite socks when you take a trip, your files often go to print missing a vital item. You can only hope that the thing you forgot about is easy to correct and not a big expensive mistake that blows your deadline and your budget. Getting your files through your service bureau (where your files are turned into negatives so that your negatives ultimately become the finished product) and to the printer is like taking up the gauntlet. Best case scenario, you'll be winded; worst case, you'll be pounded to a bloody pulp. I fear I'm showing my bias toward the Web.

Probably the biggest mistake that Web designers make when doing print is trying to do the whole job in Photoshop. Because the Web has been dominated by pixels (until the advent of Flash), Web designers have never had to break down projects into their pixel parts and vector parts the way print designers do. Doing the vector part of your project with vector software can get rid of 90 percent of your problems.

So you'll probably need to do your print job using three different types of software. You'll need a page layout program like QuarkXPress or PageMaker, you'll need a pixel program like Photoshop or Painter, and you'll need a vector program like Illustrator or FreeHand. For this article, I'll be referring to Quark, Photoshop, and Illustrator. And I know this might be blasphemy to some of you PC Web folks out there, but if you have a Mac around with all the requisite software, you might want to use it. The people who will be outputting your film are probably hooked up to a Mac or something Mac compatible. Platform conflicts can be a big headache and can also cause font problems. You can't assume that your PC file, which uses a copy of the PC font Ocra, will look the same when it's opened up on Mac using a Mac version of the same font.

The page layout program is the place where you put your document together. It's also vector based like Illustrator, but unlike Illustrator, it's set up to deal with multiple-page documents, from catalogs to two-sided fliers. It's also helpful in managing Photoshop and Illustrator files when you're getting ready to send your document out to the service bureau. This is home base. Some would say it's unnecessary - that you can do all your vector chores and layout in Illustrator - but they'll be easier in Quark.

Illustrator is what you want to be using to create illustrations, logos, and really precise typographic tidbits (such as type set on a curve). Because it is a vector format, whatever you create in Illustrator is infinitely scalable and can be blown up to billboard size or squeezed on to a business card. For something to be infinitely scalable is a good thing. One size fits all.

Photoshop files aren't scalable. So before you start doing anything, remember that you might have to go back and rebuild anything you create in Photoshop if you don't have enough resolution for your final output device. I'd recommend that you start your design project by scanning your images at 100 percent of the size that you think you might want them, at a screen resolution of 72 pixels per inch. Use those files as working documents (they'll be your FPOs - "for position only"). Then it'll be fast and easy to place them into and work with them in Illustrator and Quark. Once you've finished designing, you can go back and scan in the final images at the appropriate resolution for your final output device (something between 120 and 300 pixels per inch), at 100 percent of the size you're using, cropped exactly as they will be in your final Quark file. But we can talk more about that later.

Unless you're a print production wiz, you should be using only Photoshop for photos. If you want to do some really cool, blurry type of effect or some tricky image compositing, make sure you have room in your budget for a print-production guru. What you produce will look different on the printed page than it does on screen - and missing that point is an easy way to make yourself look like a chump. So set your type in Quark or Illustrator and use Photoshop for the pictures.

You're ready to get going. It's time to define the parameters of your project. The first stop is budget. How much money do you have to play with? In print, cost drives everything. Do you have money for four-color printing plus a spot color and a varnish on a six-color press? Or will this be Xeroxed at Kinko's? What's your print run? Fifty thousand pieces of direct mail or 20 hand-crafted party invites made in-house on the color printer? Two thousand silk-screened posters or 500 postcards ripped direct to press from file on a digital press? Or is it your company's first full-page ad in The New York Times? All these different projects will demand slightly different executions and file preparations because of their different final outputs.

To get started, you first need to decide how many colors you will use. Here are your choices:

• One color, usually black: This is the cheapest way to go.
• Two colors, usually black plus one other color: Most corner print shops have a two-color press.
• Four colors (three colors won't really save you anything, because if it's run on a two-color press, it'll have to go through the press twice, and if it runs on a four-color press, it'll run with an empty ink well, so settle on two or four colors): This can be either four-color process (CMYK for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black), which is best for reproducing a photo, or four PMS colors (Pantone Matching System), which gives you any four colors you want.
• Six colors: You're getting kinda fancy with a six-color press. Usually this means using a four-color process plus two other colors or a varnish.

Remember that the more complicated you get with the color, the more expensive it'll be. Fluorescent and metallic inks are harder to work with than standard inks, and they're more expensive. Four PMS colors will cost more than the four-color process, because the printer will have to clean the press before and after your job. If you stick with CMYK, the printer might be able to roll right into another four-color process job, saving you set up and cleaning time. Remember, you're paying for the time they're using the press for your job, whether it's running or not. So on a large run, changing ink and other set-up tasks won't impact your unit cost the way they will on a short run.

What kind of a printer will you use? Kinko's will be cheaper than the ma-and-pa print shop on the corner, and it'll be cheaper than a high-end press that does fancy projects (like a six-color run). This decision will determine how tricky you get with the design. If you're using lots of inks and you want to do a diecut (a circular cut, a card with rounded corners, or say, a catalog in the shape of your butt) or if the registration is tight (that is, if some areas of color butt up precisely against other areas of color), you may have to go with the fancy print shop. High quality jobs such as magazine looking gloss style projects will also rquire a fancier shop. Miller-Johnson is someone I trust and have used extensivley.If you talk to their sales team, please mention that Jeff at ImageWorks passed along another customer.

If you want a lot of ink coverage (if you're using large fields of ink), the job gets a little trickier than printing plain text. Does any special binding, collating, or envelope-stuffing need to happen? The printer will need to farm out this stuff and any diecuts, so you'll want a printer with good resources, someone you really trust not to screw it up. Remember, the more complicated it gets, the more that can go wrong.

What kind of paper do you want? Coated, uncoated, matte, gloss, cover stock, text weight, or whatever the print shop has on hand (like a restaurant and its house wine - glass of red anyone)? Or do you need a special order from those cool paper-swatch books that the mills send to designers? Be aware that special paper orders can really slow down your job. The mill might be out, the company might need to cut paper down to the right size for the press you're running your job on, it might take three months for the paper to be converted into the envelopes for your letterhead project, or you might be required to buy a minimum amount, which could be a lot more than you need. The printer can probably find you a good alternative that'll be cheaper and available (remember, the printer is your friend). You need to decide just how picky you can afford to be. Sometimes a little detail like the paper can be the thing that makes or breaks a whole project.

When asking for bids, you should spec out the job a few different ways: exactly the way you want it with no compromises, lots of different colors, and special diecuts and papers; a more practical alternative with some compromises that will be cheaper to produce; and the most bare-bones way to go. Try not to think about it as compromising your design if you need to go the dirt-cheap route. Remember that sometimes the best work comes from having constraints, and because you're defining your limitations before you start to design, you won't be crushed when you find out you can't afford the strawberry scratch-and-sniff ink.

Once you've dealt with your printer, paper, and ink decisions, you need to figure out what you need to deliver and when you need to have it there. Can the printer handle electronic files or do you need to give it negatives and color keys? This detail can mean the difference of a day or so in a tight deadline situation.

If you're not familiar with negatives and color keys, here's the deal: The printer needs negatives in order to print your job. It's just like going to a photo lab: If you want prints, you bring the negatives. Color keys are the positives of your negatives, with each of the four CMYK colors printed on a separate piece of acetate so that you can look at each color individually and see how they work together. Color keys help you see if there's too much black or if that flesh looks way too green.

This is a good time to find out the size of the press sheet (the piece of paper that goes through the printer) and the live (printable) area of that sheet. You might have room on the press sheet to gang on another project or fit two of what you're making on one sheet. Two on a sheet is known as "two-up"; three on a sheet is "three-up." Business cards sometimes run eight-up or 10-up. If you're putting more than one thing on a sheet, the printer might want you to build the page with crop and cut marks. Crop (also called trim) marks denote the final page size. Cut marks are the lines that indicate where to cut if there are, say, four handbills on a sheet or eight business cards on a single page. They're the lines in between the documents.

If you're taking care of all the prepress, these things are not difficult, but they take time. Be sure to give the printer everything it tells you it needs as well as a dummy (a printed-out, trimmed-down, taped-together model of your finished product) so it'll know just what it's expected to deliver. It's even a good idea to include a dummy for a project as simple as a two-sided flier. What's obviously the top to you might not be so obvious to the printer.

For more complicated projects, plan on spending more time than you planned on the dummy. You will make it more than once. All that cutting and pasting is time consuming, and once it's built, you'll see something you want to change, because it always looks different on screen than it does printed out. You'll be able to head off a lot of problems with black-and-white laser copies, but if you have a color printer, it'll be better to do the dummy in color. One last thing: If you're working on an ad for a magazine or newspaper, just pretend the publication's production manager is your printer. He or she is also your friend. Like your friendly printer, production managers can spot something you missed before it gets to the press, where mistakes get expensive and embarrassing. Like the Web, how well others execute your designs greatly affects the final product. It's part of your job as the designer to give them everything they need to do a great job. You're really relying on them to make you look good. Remember that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and all that other stuff they told you in Scouts about teamwork.

Now I guess it's time to start designing. You've defined the parameters of your project. You know how many colors and what kind of paper you'll use. You know what type of press it's going on, and you've discussed with the printer just what you can expect from that press. For the sake of argument, let's say that you're designing a two-color handbill for a trade show and an accompanying full-page, four-color ad in the show's program. You'll be using the same information to create two different files for two different types of output.

Start by creating two files in your page layout software, one for each project. The first file for your handbills will be run on standard letter-sized paper, so you can fit four 4.25-by-5.5-inch handbills on a sheet if an image doesn't bleed off the edge or four 3.75-by-5-inch handbills if the image bleeds. A bleed is when an image is printed larger than the finished size, and then the printed piece is trimmed down so the image goes right up to the edge (magazines often bleed; newspapers don't). When setting up a bleed, you need the picture to be .125 inch larger on all sides to allow for trimming.

For your handbills to be printed four-up, you'll need registration marks so the printer can line up the two plates (remember, there's a plate for each color, so you'll have one negative for the black ink and one negative for the red ink - and they'll need to end up aligned together on the finished, printed page). Adding the registration marks is easy: You'll just turn on that option in the Print dialog box in Quark. The program will also put crop marks on the 8.5-by-11-inch page you're printing on, but you'll have to add marks to show the printer where to cut the page into quarters and where to trim off the bleed on the inside edges. This will be easier to understand if I show you. Check out this diagram:

One reason I love Quark is that it has a special color in its palette called "registration," which is the color you want to use for all print-and-trim cut or fold marks. The color registration isn't a real color, but it puts anything specified as "registration" on all color plates when the file is output (this is one way in which Quark is much easier to use than Illustrator). So the same marks are on all sheets of the film. This part of the setup is a pain, but we're almost to the fun design part.

Now you need to prepare your Quark file for the trade show magazine DorkWorld '99. You called the production manager, and he gave you a bunch of specs. He said that you have a right-hand page, the magazine is perfect bound, it's being printed at a resolution of 120 dpi, the live area is 9.75 by 7 inches, the trim is 10.75 by 8 inches, and the bleed is 11.25 by 8.5 inches.

You need to incorporate this information into your Quark document. Save the tidbit at about 120 dpi for later, since you'll need that when you build your final Photoshop file. These instructions sound more complicated than they are: Create a new Quark document and make the document size the trim size of 10.75 by 8 inches. This way, Quark will put the trim marks on for you. Then create two rectangles with the Picture Box tool, one the size of the live area, the other the size of the trim area. Line up the center points of the boxes with each other and center them over the page. Create guides at the edges of these boxes, lock the guides so you can't move them, and delete the boxes.

Now you'll be able to see the live area and the bleed size by looking at the guides, and the page size will be the trim size or finished size of the ad. Here's an example of what this looks like:

Now remember, DorkWorld '99's production manager said the magazine was perfect bound, which is the way most fat magazines are bound - with a flat spine like a book. (The other common magazine binding method is called saddle stitched, which means being stapled like Rolling Stone.) Knowing that you have a right-hand ad placement in a perfect-bound publication means that nothing important should be anywhere near the left-hand edge of the ad. Anything there will get lost in the gutter, so make sure you keep things you want people to read inside the live area, especially on the left. However, this hard-to-read place is the perfect area in which to stick a photo credit or a copyright notice, because it's definitely out of the way.

You've been told you can design the handbill/ad combo however you want as long as it's got the product shot, the logo, and the copy "see us at booth #666." Don't believe it. Like all design projects, this one will be fraught with multiple changes and last-minute requests. The one difference is that you still have to have negatives made and get it printed instead of just pushing the damn thing live as you would on the Web.

Let's pretend that you just designed the ad and the flyer. Boy, that was fun. Voilà, you're all done, and now it's time to do the production. This is the part of the story where we learn a painful lesson: Never design anything you can't produce. Now you have to build all your files so everything will work when you print out the separations on the office laser printer. Remember, if you can't make it work on the laser printer, it probably won't work when you send it to the service bureau to have the negs made.

Start with the logo. Go to Illustrator and build the file two ways: Make one copy of the logo file as black plus one color for the two-color handbill and another version for the ad, which needs to be set up for four-color process printing. These should definitely be in two separate files (as a general rule, you don't want any extraneous information in your documents).

There are a couple of things you should be aware of here. For the two-color logo, make sure that you use only black and the second color. This color should be named exactly the same thing in the color palette as it is in the Quark color palette. This way, when it's placed in Quark and it comes time to print it out as separations, it won't come out on an extra plate. For the four-color version of the logo, double-check that you haven't specified anything as a Pantone or an RGB color. Remember, it needs to be CMYK. Now you're ready to place these logos into your Quark file.

This would be a good time to make sure your color settings are OK in the Quark files. For your two-color job, in the color palette, click on the Edit menu's Color Dialog box and make sure the checkbox for Process Separation is not checked. This will ensure that your specified color will print out on one separate plate (as opposed to the CMYK version of that color, which, for example, would mix 100 percent yellow with 100 percent magenta on two separate plates to produce red). Check that you've named it the same thing that it's named in the Illustrator file.

In the Quark file for the ad, make sure you have the Process Separation box checked for each color you use. In this case, you want your colors broken down into their cyan, magenta, yellow, and black components and put with the proper screen's values on each of the four plates.

Let's pretend your company logo is red. In the two-color handbill document, the color red is specified as PMS032 (a nice true red - look at the Pantone color specifier and judge for yourself). You don't want the software to separate it, so the Process Separation box isn't checked. You name your color by its Pantone name to remind you and the folks at the print shop that this is the exact shade you want to use. This color will also appear as the name of the plate when the negatives are printed out.

In the four-color ad file, you want to make sure that the Process Separation box is checked, and you can name the color whatever you want as long as it's named the same thing in the Illustrator file. The software will break down the color red into its CMYK components and put the appropriate amount of dots and solid areas on the appropriate plates. In the case of red, it'll be 100 percent magenta ink and 100 percent yellow ink, so the red parts will appear on the yellow negatives and the magenta negatives but not on the black and cyan negatives. So now you have the logo's place in the Quark files.

One other little thing you might want to do is to make sure the type in the logo is saved as Outline in the Type pulldown menu in Illustrator. This will make your file bigger, and it'll make the type look funny on screen, but it should print just fine and it will head off any font/Illustrator problems at the service bureau. If you don't do this, you'll need to remember to send along a copy of all the fonts you used in the Illustrator file when you send out for film. And double-check the color key to make sure no funny font substitutions have occurred.

Now that everything looks like it's ready to go, this is a good time to do a few things that will save you some grief down the road. Get a few people to proofread the ad/flier combo. If your company employs copy editors, ask them to do it. Copy editors rock; they're the superheroes of publishing. (Warning: You might not want to tell them this, lest it go to their heads.)

Then have whoever's project it is look over it carefully. This way, if the date, address, phone number, or product name is spelled wrong, you can take consolation from the fact that other eyes missed the mistake too. If you don't run it by other people, the first sentence out of someone's mouth after the mistake is found will be about illiterate designers. (I hate that.) This is one of the last things you want to do before the file goes out the door, because, whenever you open a file, there's a chance that something can get messed up.

If you haven't printed out the separation yet, now's the time to do it. Turn on "crop registration marks and separations" in the Print Dialog box, hit Print, and pray to the computer gods. Remember, you want only one plate for each color, and when you look at the page elements stacked on top of one another on a light table, you should be able to see if anything is missing or horribly wrong. You should also trim down a version of both the handbill and the ad to be sure your crop marks and trim marks are in the right places.

If it all looks good, then send it off for film. Pack the Quark, Photoshop, and Illustrator files and any fonts you've used onto a Zip disk, and take it to the service bureau with your paper printouts of the separations. The form at the service bureau will ask you a bunch of questions about things like filenames, file types, and versions as well as which page(s) of the file you want output. Here's how you should answer them:

Size: The usual answer is 100 percent, unless
you're getting something blown up huge.
Line screens: In this case, it's 100 for the handbill,
120 for the ad.
Film or paper: You want film.
Negatives or positives: Unless the printer tells you
otherwise, choose negatives and right-reading,
emulsion-side down (I don't know why, so don't
ask).

Ask for a color key for both projects. The magazine will definitely want one, and it's good to a final sign off from people in the office before the thing goes to the printer. Rerunning film isn't cheap, so you don't want to make frivolous changes now. Nevertheless, it's cheaper to rerun film than to reprint a job, so show your boss the color key and get another sign off.

Send off your film and color key to the magazine. Make sure you pack it well with lots of cardboard - you don't want it to get damaged. And don't scrimp on shipping - send it FedEx. Now cross your fingers. It's out of your hands.

Next, go visit your friendly neighborhood printer. By now, you have the film and the dummy you built (if your project is more than a one-sided job) and the color key. It's time to double-check stuff again. Have the printer look at the film and the color key and reconfirm color, paper, quantity, and deadline. Ask to see bluelines, and tell the printer that you want to do a press check.

Bluelines are a blueprint of your project, another safeguard to help you find potential problems before you go on press (plus they're kinda cool). Go over them with the printer and ask questions. Look and see how things are registered and check the trim. Ask to be shown what you should be looking for. The printer is there to help you.

Next, go to the press check. Think of this as a fun learning experience. A press check might be overkill for your handbill project, but if it's much bigger than that, you definitely gotta go. Go meet the press person. If things are running smoothly, the job will be on the press, the press will be warmed up, and there will be a proof for you to look at and approve. Look for anything strange, although it'll probably look fine. If you don't see any problems, ask the press person what he or she thinks.

What kind of problems might you see? One possibility might be little blotches from having dust or water on the plate. If you see any problems, circle them on the proof with a big black Sharpie, and they'll be fixed. The printer will also want you to sign and date the press sheet, and then everyone can go on their merry ways.

Fast forward. It has all been printed, and your project has just been delivered. You've worked your butt off and invested too much sweat and aggravation in the project to be unhappy with the finished product. But you're unhappy. All you see are the problems: Some idiot compromised your design by making changes at the last minute, the color isn't quite the perfect shade of red you expected, and the paper feels just a little too light.

Well, get over it. You're a designer, and you're being obsessive. After all, that's what you get paid for. Grab a stack of your creations, paste the closest thing to a smile that you can muster across your face, and show the finished product to your boss, the president; the VP of doughnut consumption; and anyone else who has anything to do with your project. Say "thank you" graciously when they tell you it looks nice. Don't tell hem about all the problems you see. Go out and relax on a beach; you deserve it.