how do i get the rght proof for exoprting for litho?

[Martin Pearson]

I don’t know much about printing so Im probably not much help but if it were me I think I would phone the printer and ask his advice. Have you designed the brochure in CMYK which you will need to do for litho print? If you have it might be something as simple as the printer then printing it in RGB.
If I do any of this sort of work I tend to use illustrator and photoshop where you can export it for print.

[Alan Drury]

Is this a cmyk leaflet or spot colour? How does it look in print preview, looking at the separated plates. A desktop inkjet is not the best proofing device especially if not postscript.
Alan

[Vitor Brito]

I’ll try to help in, altought i’m bit busy if you can’t solve the problem till the end of the day then e-mail me at: britchenko@hotmail.com and i’ll solve the problem for you with no doubts.

My guess they’ll look fine on print if they’re set properly but when you ask the printer for a color proof then you’ll have your doubts vanished.

This advice is based on my experience and how i prepare the files, remember always check everything (and i mean it) before sending.

First of all, you really should ask the printer what kind of file fits he’s needs best, my guess Corel won’t be he’s first choice 🙂 .

Set all the colors as CMYK go to File/Document Info to see if there’s any RGB left behind.

If this is the case than you should export it as EPS (note EPS won’t accept spot colors they be converted to CMYK) or PDF maybe, for EPS you should go to /File/Export/ Save as type…choose EPS, export text as curves (best, if you don’t wanna send the fonts to the printer), choose apply ICC profile with separations printer profile, check auto increase foountain steps, send bitmaps as CMYK in advanced tab choose always postscript 1, fits them all :wink:; then check objects, always overprint black, autospreading (Carefull with this one depends on your leaflet purposes, lettering size etc…) check also Bleed set it at least with 5mm better more than less (Remenber always if you have color on the edges that it should bleed to be cut otherwise when cut misses 0,01 you will see the white paper and that’s not good 😉 check Crop Marks and there you go.

For PDF you should go to: File/Publish to PDF/PDF style, and set it to pre-press goto settings and choose all settings as explained to EPS, Tabs are diferent but you’ll find all of them there (and a few more) in doubt leave as default.

Don’t provide a sample copy if you are not sure if everything it’s ok, ask them to do it, 2 sample copies before print, one that you probably have to autenticate and one for you to keep, this way they will have to make sure it’s ok before print 😉

This is basically it: but in a nutshell there are a lot of other things that need to be completely correct. As i said b4 if you still not sure e-mail me and we’ll arrange one way to solve the problem.

Cheers
Britchenko

[Gary Davis]

martin, it is all in cmyk
alan, it is a full colour leaflet it looks fine in print preview and all plates look ok in preview, the inkjet isnt postscript but i have no other option currently, it seems to have extended the tints of the drop shadow instead of maybe 2 or 3 % at the edges it looks more like 8 to 10%.

[Alan Drury]

Britchenko is right it will probably print ok and his advice of getting the printer to supply a print is sound. From my experience the Corel print preview is not bad in displaying the separations but make sure the colour manager is set right, mine is set for professional output and viewing the separations printer which is set for Euroscale coated. I usually send pdf but prefere to print to the Distiller in full Acrobat rather than Corel’s publish to pdf.
Alan

[Gary Davis]

thanks britchenko, i was aware of how to output the job to litho its just these drop shadows causin problems, do you know what the
“Rasterize entire page 400dpi” option in corel does as it seems to have solved it partly

alan where is colour manager?

in any case i have found one solution, under “MISC” in the corel print options i ticked the box “Rasterize entire page 400dpi”
I also found another fountain steps settings within there which was at 64 i have changed it to 256 and it has cured the problems……..

HOWEVER it has printed the radial fill part of the document darker??

my concern is these settings obvioulsy wont be sent with the file, as i have tweaked them within the printer options in corel and thus wont be embedded in the file.

[RobGF]

Around here, most printers will not run any process colour job here without getting their client to sign off on a “contract” proof. In the days of old, this was most often something like a Chromalin (ColorArt, Matchprint, etc.) and was made from separated film. These days it’s often off of, at the very least, a very accurate Epson 9600 with great colour management. You should be talking to your printer about the contract proof first and foremost. Ideally, the printer would take your file and process it with the same RIP used for the film or CTP (computer-to-plate) device and then re-purpose this rasterized data to the contract proofer. This way you know that the way the file was RIPped is consistent. This is very important as we all know that if they use two different RIP’s (one for CTP, one for digital proof) little things can change.

With regard to your specific Corel concerns I can’t offer too much useful. I do know that when we did this type of stuff if a client informed us “I’m concerned about the steps in the blend/shadow” we would check into it for them.

I was confused about your idea to rasterize the page. The plate is probably going to be rasterized at 2400-2540 dpi (could be lower or higher depending on the line screen required or their set-ups) and a 400 dpi rasterized page will not long wonderful if you have detailed type.

You might want to actually create a postscript file and distill it. Acrobat distiller is a full-postscript interpreter. After distilling and things still look weird you know you have Corel problems. I don’t know that exporting a PDF from Corel would provide the same results or offer you the same controls.

Anyhoo, having worked in the print industry with designers for years, I can honestly tell you that you are allowed to ask about your file, there will be techs that have more knowledge about their work-flow than will be offered here (these techs do spend time checking the setup of a file), and don’t go forward without a contract proof that you sign-off on. Lastly, ask these questions of the CSR at the print company that you plan on using… if the CSR can’t help you or refer you to somebody who can within the company you aren’t using the right shop.

Good luck

Rob

[Vitor Brito]

Sry if i misunderstood your problem. 😳
I’ve been on both sides and mispreparation is common here, it happened to me, loads of times, people that said everything is ready to print and when opening the file i had hours of intense labour just to make things right, reason i insist in the printer providing the sample it’s because i tried every single time that it was possible to open the file in front of customer and print it myself. I never liked to explain a customer why he’s paying for something he didn’t asked.

You can find color management in: Tools/Color Management just set it to professional output.

The solution you found is the same that if you just provide the file to the printer as if it was a TIFF, usually that’s the last resource (big file), actually there are a few printers that won’t accept them.

If the shadows disapeared just with increasing fountain steps than i think probably you won’t have any problems with them if you send them in EPS or PDF, but i’d go for a sample from the printer anyway. Another solution might be breakapart shadows from the source this way if you have corel set up properly for output in CMYK, the shadows will be converted in CMYK image with transparent background, instead of being saved in RGB as Corel does when dealing with them, (remember when doing (if you want them grey) this shadows will appear in all 4 colors if you want them to be just in black, easyer way it’s to convert them to grayscale and then to CMYK again otherwise they’ll look bluish. Sometimes helps with sharp edges too.

The reason for printing it darker as to be with embedded profiles, color management and/or printer settings (one more reason to go for the printer to provide the sample), this way if there is any tweaking needed they’ll know what to do before send to separations print.

Once again sry if i didn’t understood your doubts properly if that’s the case then just ignore this post. And (:) me. You couldn’t miss from there could you? 😀

Hope helped you anyway.

I’ve just checked RobGF post after writing my own, and he’s 100% right about what he said, of course i didn’t mention that every printer as he’s own setup and will be able to help when asked too, anyway i just tried to give you my help. 😳

Britchenko

[Gary Davis]

thanks rob and britchenko, you have put my mind at rest, and thanks britchenko for your explanation of converting the shadows to cmyk is very useful. will give those ideas a try and request a proof before the run goes to press. thanks again

[Gary Davis]

i have set colour manager to proffesional output, however do i have to do anything to the profiles?

i havent set any profiles, and it states in the advanced export options it wil embed the profiles? “Embed internal RGB profile” is selected
will this affect the final printed job as i havent set any profiles?

britchenko i did as you advised and broke apart the shadows, convert them to greyscale, then to cmyk, however they still show on all plates, if i leave them as greyscale they only show on the black plate as wanted. how can i convert them to cmyk without them being on all plates?

[Vitor Brito]

You won’t need to embed your profile as it is set to generic RGB probably, anyway when opening file the printer would overule with is own profile, you might wanna try googling a bit to find your monitor, printer, etc… profiles, but if you wanna go that way i can advice it’s longer than u might think. If this is not your day to day job you won’t need tha hassle, if you want to set it 100% about colors than it’s a long way from monitor calibration, trough monitor and printers profiles till printer calibrations.
Just to find that it will be 100% … never.

I’ve been there and i do it all the time i change anything, just because that’s my day to day job, of course it’s annoying thing to do, and maybe you won’t take the advantage from it.

You’ll know better what to do!!

[asifnmalik]

I have been in the litho print industry for over 10 years and I still worry about what work will come out like. You will never get a perfect proof of your job on a home printer. Simply get the printer to send you a proof. You will find that Corel is one of the worst pieces of software for fountain fills and for drop shadows. Make sure that you set fountain fill steps to 256 and BEFORE you do a drop shadow make sure that the resolution of the drop shadow is about 300Dpi (Layout, Page set up, CLick on Workspace, then General and then Rendering Resolution).