Expert: Glen Demers - 11/20/2008

Question
When printed, the black and white newspaper ads I prepare look muddy,
unsharp and lack contrast.  The photos and graphics look outstanding on the
screen and I pride myself on going above beyond to make sure everything is
perfect and probably overworked. Other ads in the same newspaper look
much better than my submissions do, and the answer  I almost always get
from the newspaper's production department is that the other ads were sent
in by big ad agencies.  I might have gone along with that back in the days
when large film houses produced and distributed direct-to-plate film
composites for the big agencies, but today just about everything is done in
Photoshop and e-mailed so I don't buy it.  We're all using the same programs
and we're all using the same internet, so  I'm hoping you can tell me what
makes the ads the agencies submit reproduce better than mine?  After all that
work, I just want my ads to look as good as the next guys.

Answer
Hi Wayo,

With newspaper reproduction you have to compensate for the large dot gain in newsprint. Convert your grayscale images to a profile with dot gain 30% - 40% or gamma 2.2. Converting to these profiles won't change the appearance of the images onscreen but will adjust the images themselves.
Since most publications now want pdf ad submission, it falls on the designer to fix images before preparing the pdf. When you look at a black and white pdf ad, the images should look a little flat and the shadow areas should be a dark gray instead of solid black. Make sure your images are high enough resolution, for newspaper that should be about 170dpi at 100% size. Also try to keep a 5% dot in the highlight areas (except for specular highlights-flashes, light bulbs etc), less than 5% may not image on the plate and the light areas greater than 5% will gain on paper and the results looks blotchy. You may want to lighten up on the midtones as well, in the levels palette, this is the middle slider, move it to the left a little.
Remember, your screen has way more contrast than a newspaper so always evaluate the final results when printed and make adjustments. You may want to create a custom profile for the newspaper or save your settings from curves or levels to use again. Ask the prepress people at the newspaper for help, most big newspapers will know exactly what photoshop settings to use to get good results in their paper, after all, they want to put out a good looking product too.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

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