Page 139 - Graphic Design and Print Production Fundamentals

5.1 Introduction

Wayne Collins

Learning Objectives

• Explain why raster image processing requires so much data for print imaging
• Compare resolutions required for digital media and print media

• Compare and contrast the positive and negative attributes between using process and spot colours
• Discuss why Pantone colours are more accurate on a printed swatch than on screen.
• List a number of different industry standard spot colour systems

• Describe trapping issues that occur when adjacent colours are imaged independently
• Analyze different imaging technologies for trapping requirements
• Interpret how black ink is to be used in overprint and boost situations
• Define transparency within the context of prepress workflow management

• Differentiate between flattening transparency on the desktop, or at raster image processing
• Describe the most common press sheet imposition styles
• Analyze different binding styles to select the correct imposition required

• Identify opportunities for nesting multiple images to save materials
• Explain the importance of preflight within the context of pre-press workflow

North America’s fifth-largest manufacturing sector is graphic communications technologies. We can
become aware of just how huge this industry is by listing all the manufactured images we see in our day.
Your list might include the morning paper or magazine you read, the graphic on the side of the bus you
ride to work, and the labels on the grocery shelf where you select your evening meal. Increasingly, more
of the graphics that are driving that massive industry are produced with computer graphics software on
personal computers. Most of the graphics software used to create the images for reproduction is designed
to create images for electronic media — primarily the Internet. Computer graphics designers are not
aware of, or concerned with, optimizing their designs for the manufacturing process they are driving.
This problem is a root cause of less profitability in most sectors of the graphic communications industry.
To tackle this problem, we must become aware of all that happens to a computer graphic from the time it
leaves the picture created on the computer screen to the image on the label on the package on the grocery
shelf, or the photograph on the side of a bus.

We must first distinguish between traditional pre-press technologies and the pre-imaging processes
that are relevant in today’s graphic communications industry. Pre-press processes are different from

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