About Alyn Expertise 12 years experience with art for screen printing. can answer questions specifically geared toward color seperations, camera ready artwork, and how to translate your artwork for screenprinting. can respond to problems regarding vector vs. bitmap artwork as well as gradients and process.
Question Over the past year, I have designed only for the Web. Now I want to extend my skills into print. I have become quite knowledgable of Macromedia Flash and Fireworks, both vector and raster graphics. Now it`s time for me to learn a prepress layout program. I would love to stay loyal with Macromedia and purchase its latest product, Freehand 9, but I have a few q`s about it first.
Is this software capable of preparing layouts for print? And if so, do you know if it`s as good or better as its competitors such as Adobe Pagemaker and Quark? If not, what features does it lack in? Also, is it as widely accepted with printers as Pagemaker and Quark?
Another question I have regarding prepress layout software is what file formats are they saved as? I searched on the Web about this, and I kept reading "PDF". Is this a standard format for printing like JPEG and GIF`s are for the Web?
Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.
Jason
Answer jason,
all i can do is sing the praises of freehand..i currently work in 8, but i am playing around with 9 quite a bit while i wait for all of our vendors to upgrade as well. the first thing i need to tell you is that it is an entirely different animal than page layout programs, i use vector art for shirts and promotional items such as mugs, pens, etc. most of my vendors take art work in illustrator, freehand, coreldraw, or photoshop(usually the last resort. depending on what type of print process you end up using will dictate what software you use. magazines focus on actual page layout, i know that our local news paper has problems when we attempt to share files.... my first suggestion would be to contact some of the companies you will be creating art for and ask what type of formats they prefer, and accept in a pinch.
as far as drawing programs go, i am strongly biased towards freehand. it has several export function (eps, jpeg, pdf, illustrator to name a few). it also accepts photoshop tiffs and eps to incorporate in designs, if the tiffs are grayscale or b& white you can turn them transparent and lay spot colors behind them, it helps designs look less computer generated. it is more user friendly than either of the other 2 big drawing programs which makes working on a job pleasant.
print formats off the web are generally done in drawing programs(thus avoiding heavy bitmapped edges), pagelay out programs, and jpegs of tiffs at a much higher resolution than you find on the web.
