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Art Specifications & Tips
Here is where you will find the various specifications needed for creating artwork for print. There are also tips for creating more print ready files.
Specifications
Specifications vary from press to press. Be sure to check which press your job will be run on first. This will ensure proper specifications are used when creating your artwork. Below are the specifications for our Quickmaster.
Press - Quickmaster 46-2
| Max. Sheet Size: | 12 x 18 |
| Gripper required: | Minimum 5/16" |
| Trapping: | Knock out all |
| Numbers of Colours: | 2 (at one time, common blanket) |
| Lpi & Dpi Capabilities: | 133 lpi, 1200 dpi output |
Tips
Creating Spot Colours: How to create spot colours through in the following page layout software. The most common problem found in files are colours, cmyk or rgb are used instead of spot colours.
| Adobe Illustrator: | 1) Double click on a colour swatch or create a new colour, a window will open allowing you to change the swatch name as well as shows the cmyk breakdown. Under the drop down menu choose spot colour, click OK. The swatch should now have a white triangle in the corner with a black dot in the middle.
2) Open any of the PANTONE swatch libraries and choose a colour from there. All these swatches are already spot colours. |
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| Adobe InDesign: | See Adobe Illustrator. |
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| Adobe Page Maker: | From the colour palette create a new colour, give it a name. Choose a colour type, (spot), and click OK. To use a PANTONE colour, select a colour library name from Libraries, and select your colour by clicking on it. |
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| Corel Draw: | Double click on a colour, this should bring up a colour selection window. Click the palettes tab. Under the palette drop down menu pick the fixed palette folder and the one of the PANTONE palettes. The coloures in these pallets are all spot colours. Spot colours will also have a dot in the colour indicator box. |
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| Publisher 2000: | Under tools go to Commercial Printing Tools. Choose colour printing. In the print All colours box click spot colours and then choose change spot colours. In the spot colours dialog box select to arrow next to the spot colour 1 and then pick a colour. To choose a second spot colour, do as per spot colour 1 to spot colour 2. To chose a colour currently not in the document click more colours. To specify a custom colour, click all colours.
To choose a PANTONE spot colour: Select your spot colour, then click change spot. In the spot colour 1 box select to arrow next to the spot colour 1 and then choose more colours. Select all colours and under colour models choose PANTONE. Pick out the colour and click OK. |
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| Quark Xpress: | Under the Edit menu choose colours.
Creating a new colour - Create your colour using the sliders and check the spot colour box or chose one of the PANTONE colours. When editing a existing colour - check the spot colour box. Note The default Red, Green and Blue swatches are already spot colours. |
*note: I am not including Word, Power Point or other such programs since they DO NOT support spot colour. Adobe PhotoShop is a whole page unto itself, so I will not be mentioning it here but will include a page about it at a later date.*
When working with spot colours be sure that colours have the same name. Each name represents a NEW colour. If you print separations (this is always a good idea,) there will be a separation for each different name you have chosen. Use percentages of the colour to create lighter tones. It is always safest to work with PANTONE palettes and swatches when using spot colours since we require PANTONE numbers when running the job.
If you have questions, e-mail Trina.
