Optimize your Artwork for Digital Printing, Tips and Tricks for New Designers

[@lenzielenski3276]

I know this is an old video and this will likely never be read but you touched on so many points that are ignored or glossed over until after the sale of printing equipment that I just can't resist. First off, let me touch on my experience level. I started in the industry just a few years post the advent of digital color printing (laser). My very first job was setting up a Canon CLC with Fiery in an all Mac environment. No one, even the local (Los Angeles) dealer knew what they were doing. When I finally got it working and called to ask the dealer what I thought was a simple question his response was a job offer. From there I was hired by KM (then Minolta) as a printing software and color expert based on my previous experience with photography, color and traditional printing. I spent the next decade explaining to customers the difference between RGB and CMYK (it doesn't look like my screen!) Well, no, and it never will. RGB is light shining directly into your eye from the source. CMYK is light reflecting off something back to your eye. There is always loss, it will never, ever be as bright. Which leads me to topic 1, if you are going to try to print something designed on a monitor, TURN THE BRIGHTNESS DOWN. Way down. Like 30-40%. At the time virtually everyone had Photoshop and circa v3 through 5 had a nifty little Adobe Gamma utility that would let you visually calibrate a monitor so you could come close to matching the eventual print. Run that then compare a print to the screen and most arguments were over. Next up always comes the color rendition style as selected in the print driver. Most manufacturers, Creo, Fiery/EFI and (then)Micropress usually have 4 choices, Photographic, Presentation, Absolute and Relative Colormetric. I'll stick with the first two as in all my years the only time I could justify recommending Relative Colormetric was when troubleshooting for one of the big name athletic shoe manufacturers. At the most down and dirty level, Photographic rendering yields better blends or gradations, with a possible slight bias toward warm colors (portraits/skin tones). Presentation is just as the name implies, for presentations like Powerpoint where contrast, "punch" and saturation are the desired result. For any digital printer that hasn't done side by side tests, I strongly recommend you do so, the experience gained will surprise you. I can't tell you the number of printers (and their customers) that complain about lack of "color" or saturation in finished jobs. If you haven't experienced this, you're not a digital printer. Rule 1, when ever possible, print a sample and get a sign-off before running large jobs. Yes, its a PITA but will save you time and material costs when you don't have to rerun jobs for free to satisfy a regular customer. The solution is often one simple driver change, print 5% darker. Its a mouse click and usually all that's necessary to turn a critical customer into a happy customer. Temperature makes a difference. A lot of print shops have minimal or no climate control. This really does have a significant affect on color. Ask EFI how often you need to calibrate your device, the answer is always the same (its actually in the book), calibrate as often as necessary. The more stable your environment, the more stable your color, the less frequently you will need to calibrate to maintain consistency. With identical equipment I know some shops that calibrate only after a PM. I know others that have to calibrate 3 or 4x a day to maintain consistency. The difference is all in the environment. Want the secret to selling a digital press to a print shop? Print 500 of a good quality file in front of them. Pull the first and last copy and show them side by side right in front of them. When they are virtually identical you've pretty much made the sale. Back to graphic design for digital printing. Every digital press manufacturer and associated RIP manufacturer knows the gamut of their machine. One easy way to compare is to ask how many of Pantone colors the given combination can hit. Bear in mind, this is still a subjective number. Quite often I find the Pantone match unacceptable though it is listed as a "match". Hence, never, ever let a customer pick a custom color, especially a company logo color in RGB. You'll never make them happy. Require they reselect a Pantone (or DIC)or Toyo equivalent unless you are prepared to experiment and enter a custom call-out in your RIP. Fair warning, even professionals with a degree in graphic design only know how to do a proper call-out in their own design software. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard, "well it was fine on pages 1-10 but then on page 22 its completely different" only to discover that the "call-out" is now an RGB mix from a color picker! Bear in mind, this is all from experience and by the time I was called in, everyone else had given up, and the obvious was STILL being overlooked. Assume the designer has no clue and you'll never live to regret it. Let's just say, the experience trying to match things like McDonald's Red, Coke red and Hunts Tomato red give me nightmares. The video is absolutely correct about crop marks sometimes making B/W pages click as color.

[@justaprinter]

I read it all. Wow. There is a lot of information in your head. Thanks for sharing!

[@lenzielenski3276]

@@justaprinter Thank you for the compliment, good sir. I attribute 'what I know' to being in the right place, at the right time and having a good memory. There's better training, but a crash courses at EFI for a week at a time, being flown in for special one-of-a kind training, repeated seminars, and a great personal relationship with CREO, EFI and other RIP makers yields more info than any static book. I was just lucky. Seriously lucky. For instance, one of the KM trainers that I consider a friend was an ex NASA engineer. When a board would fail, he'd break out the oscilloscope and test meter, go to Radio Shack, buy components and solder fixes to the boards. No joke. Having someone like that hand you the 'quick and dirty tech mode settings' to get better results than factory spec isn't something everyone can access. Like my mentors, I believe in passing it on and am always happy to do so.

[@Khalidiax]

I'm a graphic designer.. Thanks for your time sharing all that with us!

[@kleinartworks]

Dan, you just produced the video I've been thinking should be made years ago. In my opinion, today's graphic designers are being taught for online design only. In almost every instance, when I receive a file for printing it never includes a bleed area. Or the resolution is too low for sharp printing. The simple idea of doubling the margins between panels of a folded brochure is beyond their comprehension. I'll be sharing your video for future educational purposes. 😉Thanks.

[@user-jt5vm3mi1w]

The local university cancelled all the print part of their education last year, crazy

[@miketheprintman]

Preach on. I hate that 90% of jobs I get, I have to figure out how to add bleed, because they never add it.

[@shigrathFX]

@@miketheprintman Good thing is whenever it's not a raster-file. Sometimes I get PDFs that I can just open in Illustrator and easily edit to fit my needs. But most of the time...hard work in photoshop.

[@shigrathFX]

When I was learning, we actually still had some sort of pre-print-knowledge teached. But in hindsight, it was all terrible information, way too little and outdated. 3 mm (0,12 inch) of bleed was told to be the standard, but most big printing companies use 1 to 2 mm max. Also adding marks was a terrible advice. Luckily I went to the best place to learn: Into a printing company.

[@ukprintshop]

@@shigrathFX 3mm bleed would likely have been because older machines were terrible at front to back registration. Our first digital press was that bad that we actually never printed double sided business cards on it because it was that difficult to get them registered. Newer machines are much better so you only need 1 or 2mm but we do still ask customers for a 3mm bleed as standard.

[@richardbarrell7314]

This should be taught at College, too many would be Designers and Printers just don't understand the basics, keep up the good work.

[@justaprinter]

Thats where I learned it! :)

[@aaronbart87]

Great video! Missing fonts are the bane of my existence. I love it when they are outlined or we get sent the font files. Such a treat.

[@justaprinter]

Totally agree! Fonts can be a real headache!

[@JevoUK]

In Illustrator If you have a missing font you can place the PDF in a blank document centralise it make your art board the same size as your placed PDF then chose flatten image make sure you tick convert text to outlines before clicking ok. I then create a box that is the size of the document making sure it is centralised ungroup & unclip everything, select all your text group that together then group the box you created with the text, copy it open the original file then paste the outlined text & box into the original file and centralise it, then delete all the text with the missing font. Ungroup the box and text you pasted in then delete the box. You can then save the original file with the newly outlined text. I use this method all the time at work. Hope I’ve explained this correctly.

[@RobbieDigglers3rdEye]

I’m with you on the marks. No marks! Just a well output pdf with bleed at press quality.

[@justaprinter]

Right! I should have stressed that a few more times in the video!

[@elncalls]

I provide to my customers a pre-defined PDF export preset that can be imported into most Adobe Products. The preset contains proper tweaks for my Fiery. I also provide a tutorial for PDF export out of MS product as well. My workflow is 100% PDF and as long as my customers use these settings I have no trouble. PDF preflight in Acrobat Pro is a must as well. Pitstop is a great tool that will even allow for more tweaks.

[@justaprinter]

Agreed, Acrobat Pro is a must. Thats a great idea to have a PDF export tutorial for customers!

[@LoriCall-n3i]

You give such helpful information!!! Thank you for your videos!

[@gtone339]

Thanks mate! I am a junior digital print room Operator/graphic designer, I need more guidance on numerous print jobs since I use Fuji Xerox 80 Press and Epsom Surecolor TS200 (for wide-format print). I know most of the print jobs need CMYK colors but for the print jobs that is a poster with a photograph it might be a RGB. I still have troubles trimming off 10 to 20-up artworks like bookmarks and business cards. Do you have an advice on trimming out a 20-up business card or a 10-up book mark on a SRA3? We use a electric Guillotine at work.

[@e6ink948]

A fun trick with digital printing, if you mix 100% black and 4 color black, you can create almost a raised spot gloss effect. (The 4 color will appear thicker and shinier) I did this with a wood grain pattern, rich black on top of black and you could even feel the texture. Only really works on uncoated stock though.

[@justaprinter]

Yes, I have done that before and it is fun! I should make a video about that.

[@popitanbogdan]

Great tips in this video. Did somebody find/make a design course for the printing industry? There are a lot of designers who make graphics, but most of them don't make any difference between digital/web and printed graphics.

[@МайклАртурович]

Dan, this is worldwide important theme. I’ve started my prepress training course. In Russia it has no analogues. it can only be done by the owner of the printing business, I advise you to continue this. I'm sure a lot of people will be interested

[@justaprinter]

Thanks for the advice. I need to put more time into more educational videos like this.

[@MarkFisher-mg9rm]

Thanks for all your videos! I love them! Could you recommend imposing software for a budget price? I am a startup printer about 1 hour from your shop and would love to hear your suggestions.

[@captainkeyboard1007]

Your show gives me an appreciation for graphical and artistic work. As a keyboard specialist, I, Captain Keyboard, do lots of business productivity and light graphics. I like the way you work.

[@justaprinter]

Thanks!

[@captainkeyboard1007]

@@justaprinter 🙂From a typewriter to a printing press, you are welcome.

[@printshoptalk]

Some times i bleed trying to add bleed to customers artwork. That status beacon is legit, i need one for my 230. Great video!

[@justaprinter]

Yes, often quicker to just add bleed instead of asking for it!

[@rebeccasprague5750]

For sure include bleed with no crops (no crops makes cutting easier if you let me do it), don't put artwork closer than .25 to the edge, please no boxes or out lines that make border on the piece, don't try to step it out yourself, and please don't use a bright orange (digitals just can't do it. you really need a pantone to get what you are looking for). Also cool tip, if you are scoring and you want a nice fold don't use uncoated, it cracks just use matte or gloss and if you must write on the inside I would suggest a c1s.

[@arthurzhang9731]

Totally agreed. I had to explain what is and why we need bleed settings for a thousand times a day.

[@justaprinter]

Yes, it does get old!

[@miketheprintman]

Do you have some sort of formula to calculate the spine widths for your books? You do a lot of them, just curious if had some kind of cheat sheet you use.

[@justaprinter]

Spine thickness = Page count divided by 435 is what I use for 60lb text. So this means that there are 435 pages in one inch of paper.

[@miketheprintman]

@@justaprinter you pretty much stick with 60# text though, right? I don’t do a ton of perfect bound books, but it’s always a different stock, so I’m trying to find a nice excel formula or something to use.

[@QR_Code]

bro, i was checking your channel before you got 1k... congrats on the channel growth

[@justaprinter]

Awesome! That was back in the day!

[@daleatkinson3453]

One other thing I thought of is the normal persons monitor will also not produce the same as the final printed project. Every monitor is going to be different on how display the image. Don't believe me look at the TV isle in walmart and you will see all kinds of differences. Same with computer monitors.

[@chrisbarton1517]

You made me remember back when I got my first Heidelberg QMDI 4 color printing press...we had a super expensive Epson printer for proofs and we used to calibrate our monitors. Had a spectro thing that you'd place on the monitor and everything. Boy things sure have gotten easier.

[@shigrathFX]

Pretty much, a lot of people have set their screens way too bright, so their prints come out way darker than they expected.

[@justaprinter]

Yes, I also forgot to mention that screens are backlit vs paper where the light shines from behind you. I need to do a video on additive vs. subtractive color.

[@radix-coop]

I have to explain all these things to someone new every single day. The thing with me is that in general I don't like to just fix something without telling the client because then they're under the illusion that their file setup was correct. Yes, it's a lot of back and forth and annoying for everyone involved. But by not saying anything to them, all I'm doing is giving the next printer they work with a big headache. We once had a client who swore that their multi-page booklet with no bleed was "fine for the other printer" but in fact that printer had scaled it down and printed a different size. We did the job and it came out fine but it was hell. Communication is key here. Some people will bail on jobs or be annoyed, but to me I'd rather have a smaller pool of higher quality clients.

[@justaprinter]

Thats smart, I agree!

[@raghuarmani8341]

Thanks. Very good. You made it simple and practical

[@justaprinter]

You bet!

[@malcolmpillay5922]

Hi Dan. Congratulations on your boy. All the best to you and your family. Keep up the good work you are doing on the channel. Very helpful stuff. I'm hoping I can save you guys some money with toner going forward for your C1070/ C2070 models. If you can purchase a bottle of C14000 toner, you will be able to get 3 bottles of C1060/C2060 toner out of 1 bottle. The price for 1 bottle of C14000 toner is about the same price of a bottle of C1070/C2070 toner. I hope this helps you with your toner issues. Take care

[@justaprinter]

Awesome. I'll have to try that!

[@TonyRush]

A lot of stuff here I wish I'd known when I first started designing for print. Great video! Question: what are your thoughts on using PNG for black-and-white images? I knew to avoid JPGs but I was under the impression that PNG was a good file type for digital printing. Thoughts?

[@justaprinter]

I don't know much about PNG's. I was never taught to use them for any sort of print. But its been 15 years since I was in the classroom and things may have changed.

[@colinstables]

Just a great video, I learnt a lot, I printed photos with rgb light/crystal halides/dyes for years, then rgb lazers and now cmyk, I. Never considered erred the difference and it’s hard to argue that Inkjet doesn’t look better, if you need a magnifier, it’s probably going to make sane people happy, I would never switch to cmyk in ps but toggling cmyk/rgb to have a look is a great idea

[@miketheprintman]

Another grind my gears moment is the crop marks in InDesign. By default they go like .03” or something like that away from the trim area. Why InDesign doesn’t make that .125” by default is beyond me. Every time I have to remove the crop marks before printing. At least it was easy to make a pre-press setting in Acrobat to automatically delete them. Saves time.

[@printshoptalk]

Yessss this kills me lol 😂

[@justaprinter]

Yes, can you automatically delete color bars in Acrobat? That would be great!

[@miketheprintman]

@@justaprinter I’ll see if I can make a video and post it. It’s simple.

[@miketheprintman]

@@justaprinter I created a video for this. Please see here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/apythGqGn7ChqcU

[@LarrySteiner]

Good stuff. Older toner printers seemed to have trouble with dark, solid colors. It made roller marks easier to notice. A little bit of noise or texture was a good idea. We still tend to do that even though newer printers don't seem as bothered by solid colors. We run digital press and a traditional silver-halide photo printe (RGB)r. The traditional photo printers really struggle with bright, pure yellows. They cant' do it. The only tech that seems to handle everything are multi-ink, high end inkjet printers. Big gamut and every pure color you need is available it seems on our Epson. I wish there was a simple, intutive way to explain bleed to non-designers - and some actual designers as well. They often don't get it. We've had the conversation a thousand times.

[@Mtonazzi]

As a designer of sorts, I'd say go for a "Want an ugly white line when the machine cuts with a margin of error of .5mm? Didn't think so" xD

[@justaprinter]

Ah yes, back in the day solid colors were always a no and textures for everything!

[@richardlowe4751]

Surely your costs are far greater printing RGB as you won't have any purely K pages? Do you factor that in to your pricing?

[@copyshop7867]

Thanks again, Dan! Regarding color printing, do you typically just use the default color settings with your Fiery or do you adjust them based on the job or something else?

[@justaprinter]

I mostly use default, however I have slightly adjusted some color settings with rgb overprint.

[@darrengad6493]

Dan, Been watching your channel for a while now. Love it. Since you purchase your own consumable how do you calculate true toner, consumable consumption per a page. Especially if you arent' printing text but instead full coverage flyers or photobooks etc? I am in sunny Aruba and I purchase own machine (no lease options) and pay for everything a la carte. But not sure really how to cost as when I run the #s based 100% coverage I get cost as high as 50¢ a page based on 5% or 8.75% coverage etc..increased to 100%

[@justaprinter]

I add up all my consumables and divide by click count to get an average. Works well for me.

[@darrengad6493]

@@justaprinter Thank you. I made a spreadsheet & found some software that calculates coverage in the end. I found average coverage in toner to be about 40% (as opposed to 8.75% for Ricoh). Came out to a click cost of about 11¢ a page vs 4¢ for standard coverage.

[@alexheadley1164]

Thanks for the quick response, to go a bit further, i am using Coreldraw to print and number the pages. eg a 4 part NCR pg numbered #001 will have to print on all 4 colured pgs and be collated at the delivery. so will the machine pull each colour from each tray and number it #001 and then start over for #002 do the same for till be book is completed. we do not have access to pre-collated NCR

[@justaprinter]

Hope you were able to figure something out!

[@avishgimhan]

Great and very helpful contents thank You

[@justaprinter]

Glad it was helpful!

[@JamesAtkinsonThompson]

Nice video. I wish people would start by thinking about their final printed page size. I see way too many business cards and flyers designed in PowerPoint at 338mm by 190mm

[@thetwohundred5213]

You know you're gonna have a bad day when you get sent an A5 document with a lo-res photo and the customer requests you print a 3 metre by 1 metre banner by the end of the day!

[@justaprinter]

Uggg Powerpoint!

[@socsimplified]

Keep posting such pre-press tips videos

[@justaprinter]

Will do!

[@orestes29]

Hi Dan, do you think you can talk about color management settings for exporting .pdf files as well as on the DFE in a future video?

[@proudimages1839]

Very critical for anyone to understand the color management at the RIP side. RIPs have gotten so much better that they can greatly reproduce colors regardless what you throw at them.

[@justaprinter]

I might not be the best for that. I do so little color management now. Back in school it was taught a lot, but in the real world for me, as long as my customer is happy thats all that counts.

[@tal121966]

crop marks in full color or ALL are really costy, so we use PitStop to convert them to grey before print. helps to reduce costs.

[@justaprinter]

Nice, I often convert in Acrobat Pro, but still, who in the world would want crop marks as CMYK? Ugh!

[@tal121966]

@@justaprinter Offset guys want to have the marks on every plate so they love 100/100/100/100 marks.

[@gib412]

Try explaining to most people what the difference is between a file created for web viewing and a file that is created with bleeds for printing; and why you will not be able to print that web file FB without loosing the text in the header, and or, footer after trimming. BTW, I have been running the Accuriopress 6085 for 2 years now and loving it so far. I have the IQ function and that has made for some really tight registration with little effort.

[@justaprinter]

I've gave up about explaining that to people. :)

[@davefreed8755]

Dan, thanks as usual. Wish I could force every designer that sends me files that don't ever do it correctly to this video.

[@justaprinter]

Give me their email, I'll let them know. :)

[@bobi_rancic]

Nice video. Regards from MBR Press, Nis, Serbia.

[@justaprinter]

Many thanks!

[@Mtonazzi]

Moss of this I new, and nowadays I only go to the print job for personal projects. But anything that helps me make my printer dude happier, I'll welcome

[@justaprinter]

Great to hear!

[@lucamarinoorg]

Good man! I need to translate this and send it to each of my customers 😅

[@justaprinter]

Please do!

[@mastergraphicsnyc4640]

Sorry for this input. Just want to know if you would recommend Boggs?

[@justaprinter]

Absolutely! They are great. I have bought most of my equipment from them.

[@mastergraphicsnyc4640]

@@justaprinter I thank you sir. We are in need of a cutter. Our mbm needs to go to the pasture. Thanks again

[@mapede1]

What's your opinion about Adobe suits is not gonna include Pantene color library for free. It will have a separate cost.

[@justaprinter]

Really? I didn't hear that. That would be fine with me, I stay away from Pnatones as much as possible since I not longer have my offset presses. Thats silly that they would sell it separate.

[@brenoulitska5390]

What is the thing (light rgb) that you put on the Konica?

[@justaprinter]

The lights turn on if it needs paper or jams.

[@elloh77]

For any client that complains about the print not matching their screen, I would say to them: Since your monitor is not profiled to match any given printer in my fleet, what we produce for you will never be an exact match to your screen. As for the light tints and other printer issues - sounds like maintenance issue. Keep the heads clean (if inkjet) and re-linearize as needed. Sometimes a complete re-profile might be needed as well. Any print provider not doing the maintenance of machine and profiles is doing themselves and their customers a disservice.

[@hgpsale7605]

What is the right temperature level for c3070 and humidity

[@justaprinter]

I've never had problems with mine, its typically 80 ish degrees, unsure of humidity.

[@zijinzhang20]

looking forword for konica minolta to shrink their km1 to A3 machine, so that everything's gonna turn out perfect

[@justaprinter]

Yes! I would buy one pretty quick when they make an affordable K1

[@nunnki2122]

Hi Dan, hi community. I’m looking for a (quick) method to count BW vs Color page on (long) PDF for estimating ? I work on Acrobat Pro and Fiery Command Workstation. Fiery can count but after printing (on history), someone’s got tips ?

[@stephenroberts9121]

My pet hate is the colour bars which end up overlaying into the bleed.. Why default settings in the likes of indesign put these so close and also put the crop marks into the bleed areas instead of stepped back outside the defined bleed astounds me.

[@justaprinter]

Agree!! No printer anywhere would ever want those color bars!

[@Klokopf52]

As someone who comes from a world with 6, 8, or even 10 Color Printers your struggle with Color gamuts amuses me :) But in all seriousness, i get why adding a custom color to a laser press ain't easy because making toner is a much bigger process then making ink, but that is also why i'm wondering why you do pretty much everything on a Laser press. From my experience Laser just ain't good for anything photo realistic, even if its an illustration. That being said i haven't seen anything that came out of your press, maybe all the prints i have seen were just made on bad equipment or by people who did not know what they are doing :)

[@aljames171]

Great Video!!!

[@justaprinter]

Thank you!

[@dilshodmahmadaminov4818]

I'm using the Corel Draw program, and I'm having problems displaying colors on the monitor. that is, the program displays colors that are completely different from real CMYK colors. I have a monitor calibrator, but I could not set up a color display profile in the Corel Draw program. how do you solve such problems

[@justaprinter]

Stop using Corel draw. I have never used it but I only use Adobe products. They work well.

[@thegrimmperspective]

I've been a Prepress Special for over 25 year now and feel your pain. I don't know if you've ever heard this but too many designers unknowingly believe in the acronym of WYSIWYG or What You See Is What You Get! They don't know how to look at separations or understand Overprint Preview. Most of what I do is Pantone work on offset and flexo presses. I can't tell you how many times I will get a document with 3-6 different shades of black. It will have Process Black, Pantone Black C, Pantone Black U, Pantone Black 6 C, a four color build of black (probably copied from an RGB document) and then add Registration color. Kills me. Don't get me started on the need to overprint small type over a background color or image. I hate PDF documents. There are just too many ways for to make a PDF and what they do is usually wrong. With every job requiring some level of repair, please send me your Illustrator documents. The dieline is probably a process black instead of a technical color set to knockout instead of overprint. I could go on and on. Our company wants to automate this process but I'm just not sure how we're going to accomplish this??

[@justaprinter]

Ah yes, WYSIWYG. I don't think there is any way to automate this, unfortunately.

[@rebeccasprague5750]

You want to upset an offset pressman, make text registration.... that will do it!

[@Music-yw2kd]

Crop Marks to you Dan.....!

[@justaprinter]

Thanks!

[@sciwiz55]

Package your designs so the typefaces, colors, and attached images are included in the pdf file.

[@justaprinter]

YES!

[@sciwiz55]

@@justaprinter Thanks for the reply. I am not a printer, but I did graduate with BA in Graphic Design. That being said I had a great professor. She even took us on a field trip to a print shop, it was very fun and educational. My professor also works with real clients/ companies and she always told us to make our stuff easy for our clients to understand i.e. send stuff as pdf’s, and make it easy for your printer so they want to work with you again. Always package your files it’s just good practice, especially when sending your work to someone else who has to work on or with your design files. If the file will be used for print you should use high resolution graphics such as 300 DPI, always use a bleed of .125 or 1/8 of an inch, and use the correct color mode. P.S. I have always found the technical side of printing very fascinating.

[@ibrahimabduljelleel3911]

i have a Konica Minolta 3070 i remove paper jam and is still display envelope mode i change d Fuser unit is still display it pls how can i clear it

[@justaprinter]

Thats a good question. I have no idea.

[@bkotakpos9639]

Juat yesterday, got complaint because the color is different than what it looks like on the screen. So i explained the difference between screen and printing color, RGB vs CMYK and etc. After long debate the problem solved, he said "oh, i sent the wrong file"

[@justaprinter]

Wow, glad to hear others have the same types of customers as me!

[@alexheadley1164]

i do alot of NCR books, up to 4part, can the Konica pull different colousr from each tray and have it collated at the delivery

[@chrisbarton1517]

Any good production level copier should be able to do this.

[@miketheprintman]

Yes they can. Confirmed.

[@jamesmartin7855]

Or you can buy 4 part precollated.

[@chrisbarton1517]

@@jamesmartin7855 No… Because he's running each sheet with different copy

[@ukprintshop]

I too can confirm this is possible, we’ve done it before. The only thing our machine struggled with is page curl. We don’t have the decurler unfortunately and found that printing on larger sheets was much better.

[@polyrythmical]

Lots of good stuff here, but (as Dan knows) is only scratching the surface. Designers for web are the biggest culprits because they are unfamiliar with composing for print. I encourage bleed extensions and trim marks all the time. But they need to know the difference in the "live" area and the extension area that is meant to be thrown in the barrel. Another amateur design faux pax is the creation of a barrel fold brochure where every fold point needs to trap to the fold ON BOTH SIDES, UGG! The amount of knowledge this takes to complete correctly is definitely beyond the scope of most current day designers. Anything like this I request the native packaged files as well and will automatically build in design time to manipulate the panel sizes. Not to mention the extra setup time to get both sides to register.

[@justaprinter]

Yes, native files come in hand when changes need to be made. Hopefully this video will help a few people out!

[@goranstankovic6054]

Did he mention to add bleeds?

[@justaprinter]

You bet!

[@DEVIL-tb8xt]

Love you dan uncle from kanpur uttar pradesh india

[@justaprinter]

Awesome! Thanks for watching!

[@Imxtoeknee]

Hi Dan! What do you do for files that include .png images? It produces the yucky transparency box when I let my fiery rip it. The only workaround I have is to print it from pdf (as an image) but for something large like a book, it can take a very long time. Also, thank you for being so kind with sharing information. Not many people (myself included) are willing to share their trade methods like you are.

[@justaprinter]

You could try flattening the transparencies in Adobe Acrobat. Or save it as a postscript file and then distill it.

[@christopherabdulla4053]

Great channel Dan! I’ll follow up on Berti’s comments to say that it is often much better to print from RGB than CMYK. It is true that the digital presses cannot replicate very vibrant colors from the RGB gamut, but you do get a wider spectrum of colors when you print from RGB than from CMYK. This is because Adobe and other programs reduce or “dull” the colors somewhat when you convert the file to CMYK. This is visible on your monitor. There are technical reasons for this concerning offset printing equipment, but the point is that leaving it in RGB renders still a better digital output. A simple test print of the same image in both formats will usually demonstrate this. Again, keep up the good work Dan! Appreciate it!

[@Mtonazzi]

Yes, been making tests at my home printer and at a couple print shops with the same image in CYMK and RGB, and the RGB one comes out more vibrant on the newer printers.

[@justaprinter]

Interesting, this is the first I'm hearing that. I'll have to do a test. Thanks for sharing!

[@robinbd8009]

I never send file to machine if file is unfiit ready for print. I suffer 90%+ files have no bleed, no mark, no margine, no guatter, no spine , no crease mark, no preparation mark, no resolution, wrong saddle, wrong fold mark, wrong size, pantone file, rgb file, no adobe system export, no page number or wrong page number, file isn't opening, font is missing, design is invisible, transparency, B2B wrong layout, wrong die line and so many things. when I work in solving time of the files, I always pray to God if God make the designers understand about the next steps after he completed design.

[@justaprinter]

You need to either educate the people that are sending you artwork or get other customers. I try to rarely intervene with any changes and only print.

[@thegrimmperspective]

Our customer service reps hate to educate our customers. They will remove several of my comments in trying to educate customers because they feel as though I'm insulting their work. Sigh.

[@robinbd8009]

I think if any designer designs templates for printing, designer should keep in memory what is going on the next steps after he designs. For the social media web pages, no need to follow rules, system and about next steps. but, for the printing templetes must be thought about next steps. 1. For a book It needs to put bleed because b2b snapping distantance. At least 3 mm bleed can solve the tiny difference. For a cutting this bleedless book is uncomfortable. for the design if it's cut 1mm inside of cutting mark is logically bad. 2. the book is A4. Ok the book he correctly design A4. But he should think about binding man. for the binding man must be kept at least 1cm guatter. after guatter from binding side he he will take marging as he wants his margine. If margin goes inside guatter it's uncomfortable for the binding man. 2. If the book is 1000 pages will print in wooddree 80 gsm, eaither he should calculate spine if he has paper 500 sheets or he should call to printer what spine may come and also think if the book has hard cover, supporting pages, page numbers, stump and emboss files. Why I'm telling this topic here because a digital printer employee is hired. employer never listen argument from employee. employer will say I pay you and you have to solve your problem. if you can't solve problem, then leave the job. I think aalmost all the digital printers around world suffer same problems and solve the problems working again on the ready file. solving problems are not so big deal, but somtimes time is so important for digital printers because they have always hurry tendency to finish all the jobs in time. sometimes for a job clicks consume deadline times for the other jobs. for the last 5 years I'm suffering the problems and solving with myself without asking any person.

[@aungkyawkyaw7338]

how to learn digital printing

[@justaprinter]

There are some books out there, but they are likely outdated by now.

[@proudimages1839]

Dan, with nowadays RIP including the one you have, you can replicate that beautiful drawing with ZERO need to convert it to CMYK. I do all the time with hand drawn yearbook covers schools we print their stuff sent us. Great work as always Dan! Berti

[@michaelduke4500]

Yeah, sure you can do it in RGB and have the fiery rip convert it, but when the client gets the product and there is a color shift they always say that's not what it looks like on the screen. Facepalm, I have gone through this for years with clients. I have been in digital pre-press for more years than I care to remember and am still having to teach people how to prep files for print everyone thinks online is the same.

[@proudimages3874]

@@michaelduke4500 quite honestly I barely remember any complaints from customers about the color. Maybe because we make sure customers get their expectations straight? We mostly do photographic printing and CMYK conversion at the computer screws the skintones big time. Our RIPs handle a lot better but I see your point. Good talk!

[@justaprinter]

Good point!

[@rvv9483]

This is a perfect example of where the tension lies between designer and printer. This was always a topic of discussion in our print shop. As a designer and print operator I understand your arguments, but a modern printer has to be able to handle certain things and it is a reason for me to call in the help of the print technician to solve certain imperfections. For us it is not acceptable if light colors are not printed stably. I am a bit maniacal in print profiles and color calibration. We try to avoid RGB to avoid unrealistic expectations about color reproduction.

[@HenryLoenwind]

If you're willing to pay extra to print on a machine that is maintained so it can print that stuff perfectly at any time, sure, why not. But most people go for the cheapest price they can get. You can try to reject that 10.000 brochures print job you're not happy with, but it is easier to know which features are problematic and avoid them if possible.

[@justaprinter]

Every printer is different. Some printers have higher expectations and others lower. Designers are the same way. What is best is for each designer to find a printer that meets their expectations and vice versa.

[@rvv9483]

@@HenryLoenwind The question is what then is the profit margin of those 10,000 brochures. As a small printing company it is difficult to compete purely on price and customer service and quality are decisive in terms of award.

[@bassamsherif8529]

keep up the good work mate, if you got a better microphone this will be fantastic

[@justaprinter]

Yes, I need to upgrade audio and video. That should be a goal of mine this year,

[@user-jt5vm3mi1w]

First

[@justaprinter]

You da man!

[@clemmiedales9764]

✨ ???????

[@justaprinter]

???!!!