Design Practice: Design for print

Software workshop- Photoshop

Resolution 300 dots per inch for commercial use

Lab colour

Bitmap- Image that only contains black or white pixels

CMYK- For commercial use

8bits per channel- Measure of information in each pixel

A lot of things you can't do on CMYK setting on photoshop default setting is RGB, same with scanner

RGB is capable of showing a wider range (Gamut) than CMYK

It's best to work in RGB, when changed to CMYK the colour will change and become a lot duller and less vibrant

When working in InDesign it automatically converts to CMYK

View- Gamut warning

A grey layer will appear on the colours that will not print in CMYK mode

Image- Adjustments- Hue and saturation

De saturate will adjust it to be more in gamut range

The grey overlay from the gamut warning will be reduced

or..

Image- Adjustments- Replace colour

Select part of the image, change fuzziness for amount of image

View- Proof colours

Cannot create out of gamut range colours

Best of both RGB/8/CMYK

What ever colour you see on screen is the colour that will be printed

Last thing you do Image- Mode- CMYK

Window- Swatches

On the colour swatches,c lick on the warning triangle to take you to the nearest printable colour

When you put the gamut warning on this colour shouldn't change

To delete swatches hold alt and click on the colour

Press 'D' on the keyboard to switch foreground and background colours back to black and white

Press 'X' to swap them around

Choose colour- Make sure its a printable colour, add to swatches

Eye dropper tool- Top half new colour, bottom half of circle old colour. This colour will become the foreground colour. Click on the background of colour swatch to add to swatches

Save swatch, drop down menu, right of the swatches panel- Save swatches (Same as in Illustrator)

When you use spot colour it is the same on the screen as when it prints. Its cheaper to use as you only use one printing plate rather than four for CMYK.

Swatch palette

Spot colour library

Click on the pantone colour, it is loaded as foreground colour. Document is RGB, change to CMYK, it will now need four printing plates so negates reason for using spot colour.

Duotone image

Image needs to be grayscale

Image- Mode- Duotone

Click on the black square to choose a spot colour to replace the black

Colour libraries to pick a spot colour

Type in pantone ref no.

Save as PSD file

When opened in InDesign the spot colour will be there using its unque ref no.

Duotone options

Type- Duotone

Ink no. 2 becomes activated can change second spot colour

Now have 100% of each colour