Format: Printing tips
These are extracts from the FORMAT NEWSLETTER.
PAPER -- AND ITS VARIATIONS
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Paper is alive, or at least, as a product of a natural substance, it behaves as if it is. In a recent email on the PrintShare List (a list populated by practical printers -- mostly those with the smaller kind of printshop), Buck Cowley made the following comments about paper and humidity.
RULES OF THUMB:
Paper has about 5% water. This means if you were to microwave it and drive all the water out, it would weigh 5% less. (This is how you test paper moisture)
For every 10% change in relative humidity, paper changes 1%.
For every 1% change in moisture in paper, it changes overall dimension by 1/1000 (at right angles to the grain direction, 1/3 that in the grain direction.) Example: 11" changes to 11.011 inch.
When one side of paper is a different dimension than the other side, it causes curl.
Here is how to see this at your place:
1) Buy a cheap humidity gauge from Radio Shack.
2) Tape two long strips of paper (newsprint is most dramatic) from the ceiling. One strip being with the grain and the other being opposite.
3) Record the daily length change and the relative humidity.
PANTONE'S NEW COLOR SYSTEM
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In Format59 we wrote: "If you lift some artwork from an old file, was it done according to the new Pantone Solid to Process book or the old? What happens if a publication includes new and old artwork?"
Brian Pylant, electronic prepress manager at Disc Makers, replied:
This entire issue should be a non-issue, and is easily resolved by using proper work habits. The only time to ever specify a color in a document as a Pantone Matching System color is when you intend it to be printed that way (which negates the whole process equivalent issue).
If you are specifying colors for a document that you know is to be printed CMYK you should NOT be placing a PMS color in your color list; either use the Pantone Process book (preferred), or rename the PMS color to reflect the actual CMYK values rather than the PMS name. Adding a color called Pantone 485CV to the color list, but specifying that it print as process, is just sloppy working methods and causes undue confusion at the output stage.
Additionally, the CMYK numbers as supplied by Pantone are only suggested values for your convenience, and are based on a general set of press standards. (They are also not meant to suggest to the user that it's OK to specify a process color as Pantone 286CV.)
If you have set up Photoshop's CMYK setup properly configured you will almost always get a closer CMYK match by allowing it to calculate your CMYK for you:
1.) Select a PMS color
2.) Switch to the color picker (note that the CMYK values are the Pantone-suggested ones).
3.) Highlight the L value and retype it.
4.) Photoshop, assuming you were specifying a new color, has recalculated the CMYK based on that L*a*b value (which is closer to the Pantone color than the Pantone-suggested CMYK), using your CMYK settings for the calculation. This results in a CMYK formula that, when printed on your press under your press conditions, will appear closer to the PMS color (although rarely exactly) than the Pantone-suggested version.
This method, of course, relies on your having properly set the CMYK settings in Photoshop for your press conditions, and that's a different subject entirely!
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We have mentioned before the site for info on postscript errors: <http://users.belgacom.net/prepresspanic/database/solveerror.htm>.
There is also now a page for info on the error message "undefined", at <http://users.belgacom.net/prepresspanic/database/undefined.htm>
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Have you tried setting your laser printer density setting to one step lower? You may have to refer to the manual to check how it's done (some older ones have a wheel inside, on most it is done from the buttons). Often it won't reduce quality but it can add hundreds to the number of copies achieved from a cartridge. Also, when it is getting near empty, if there is any sign of streakiness, take the catridge out and shake it from side to side -- again it may go on for hundreds more copies. Another hint from our cartridge supplier -- the density level can usually be reduced on a new or newly refilled cartridge, and then eased back up as the cartridge gets used. The real hint: don't regard the density level as a "set and forget" feature.
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Nadine Glanville wrote from Queensland: "I am in desperate need of help for the following problem: Using PM6.5 on a Mac OS8, I am having troubles printing with linked charts included in the document. An 'error type 2' keeps occurring (what is this?) and no matter what I try, nothing seems to work. I've narrowed it down to the charts as the 'proof' prints out OK.
"The links work fine and do the job but when it comes to printing, it just crashes PM. I've tried just a straight copy and paste and insert new object directly from PM but find the same problem. I've also increased the memory, reloaded PM and saved the Excel files to a lower format."
We replied: It may be worth trying the chart in a different format. For example, if you can create a PDF of the chart from Excel. You may also like to try creating a PDF of a problem page from PageMaker.
These may not be ideal solutions but they may help to isolate the cause of the problem -- PageMaker, Excel, or the printer.
Also, it could be worth making sure that the version of PM you have is 6.52 as the free update of some time ago was supposed to cure some printing problems. The version number should show in small type in the About PageMaker box.
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