Oct
4
The Rundown on Resolution
If your image is high resolution, it’s fine for print, right? Not necessarily. Here are some rules of thumb on image resolution: Photos • Photos need to be high resolution at the size (dimensions) they will be printed to look good on paper — typically, 300 dpi. A postage-stamp sized image won’t look good printed at 3 x 5 inches even if it’s hi-res. If printing on a digital press or using images that are ghosted back, you can get away with a slightly lower resolution. • When using a digital camera, make sure it is set to shoot the photos…
Mar
15
Color Matching Systems
Great background info to understand using color in design. Thanks Print Magazine! http://www.printmag.com/color/visual-culture-color-matching-systems/?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pr-nbo-tw-160315
Mar
10
For Process Colors, Look Beyond Pantone
Of course, if your project is printing in spot color inks (2 or 3 color for example), spot colors like Pantone are what you want. But for 4-color process jobs (CMYK inks), not so much. In that case, we have one piece of advice: Step away from the Pantones! Most people default to the Pantone (PMS) library because it’s very familiar and the most well-known color system. Some PMS colors render fairly accurately when converted to CMYK equivalents, but most don’t. A better option is the process color-based TRUMATCH® system. We see several advantages to TRUMATCH: • It’s more accurate.…
Feb
25
Why Does My Logo Look Fuzzy?
When creating or working with a logo — or any other non-photographic line art — a vector image will almost always look sharper on press than a raster (or bitmap) image. Why is this? • A raster image is made up of pixels or little dots. A pixel is the smallest element that can be individually processed on a display screen. Once an image is created in pixels, its resolution is set. So a raster image at 300 dpi, which works great for photographs, will not print cleanly and sharply (see above right). Even when imaged on a printing plate…
Feb
12
How the Heck Do I Type an Accent?
Need an em dash in your document? If you’re a fan of keyboard shortcuts, you could probably tap out Shift + Option + Hyphen in your sleep. A registered trademark symbol? Option + R, of course. Or maybe you prefer the Type > Insert Special Character flyout menu, which displays a handful of such commonly used marks. But what if you need an accent, a fraction or an umlaut (as in Mötley Crüe)? These special characters — or glyphs, as they are technically known — are needed for everything from financial documents to cookbooks. And there’s an easy way to…
Feb
4
How to Trim Your Postage Costs
Postal budgets aren’t what they used to be. But many messages are better received in a mailbox than an inbox. What to do? Think Standard Mail rather than First-Class Mail. Standard postage costs run about half of First-Class. This can generate significant savings, especially on large print runs. Of course, as with anything in life, there’s no free lunch. With Standard Mail, you need to build in a little extra time for your piece to be delivered — up to a week to be safe. USPS offers no guaranteed delivery schedule because Standard Mail is processed on a “time…
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