Expert: Glen Demers - 8/16/2008

Question
Hello Glen,

I work with a newspaper publication as a novice graphic designer. My question is relating to camera ready artwork that some advertisers send in. To my understanding, it is always best that when camera ready artwork is submitted, any black text and/or images should be pure blacks (C:0, M:0, Y:0, K:100). However, when they send in their artwork many times the text is in rich text format for example: c:60, m:50, y:60, k:60 or so. I would like to know how to adjust the artwork so that the values as as desired so that we dont get any fuzziness on the text when we go to print, especially fine text. Keep in mind, these ads are in full color so I still want to maintain the surrounding colors. I understand this probably has to do with isolating certain areas of the images and working carefully on certain sections. Any advice would be much appreciated!

Answer
Hi Marwin,

The best way to eliminate this problem is to educate your advertisers. Ask them to make their type as 100% Black only. Many may not realize that the default black in photoshop is not the one to use for type.
Once you have a flattened image and rasterized type, it's hard to change the type to black only without affecting the shadows in the picture. Any black type the prints over a colored area should overprint so changing all type to 0C, 0M, 0Y, 100K may create problems in these areas as well. It's best to have them supply a layered file so you can edit the color of the text without affecting the image but this may not always be possible. Try selecting the black type with the magic wand tool set to a low(2 - 6) tolerance, and use selective color or levels to carefully increase the black and decrease the other colors. This is very tricky and care must be taken to keep fine text from looking bloated.
Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more Photoshop tips please visit our help pages <a href="http://www.bestprintingonline.com/photoshop.htm">here</a>