Beef up your black and whites

27th November 2024 Nigel Kerr

Yes, Make It Pop

“Make it pop,” they say. Designers are not especially fond of this term. If you’re in any doubt, search up “make it pop design meme”. It’s sometimes an opening gambit when a client hands over an image to their studio.

This also applies to grayscale images. But black is all there is, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t be mono? Well, there can be more to this more than, ahem, ‘meets the eye’.

It’s mono but it’s colour.

By adding Cyan, Magenta and Yellow to grayscale images to increase contrast levels, you can make them more impactful, but [spoiler alert] you need to tread carefully because this can cause colour balance problems.

Why? Because the colours are all so finely balanced.

Typically, a colour picture will be converted to grayscale to remove the colour information, then converted back to colour using the CMYK space in Photoshop®

The trouble with defaults

minor variations in inking can produce disproportionate shifts in colour cast

Photoshop® then reproduces the ‘mono’ picture by creating the greys from all 4 colours. More specifically, a majority of CMY and a minority of K. It’s here that the danger lurks. Because a neutral grey relies on a perfect balance of CMY, any slight shift will change the hue of the grey. So a slight reduction in C will create a warm grey [opposite, bottom left], a slight increase in C a ‘bluey’ grey [top right] and so on. On a printing press, fluctuations of 1-2% are not uncommon and within tolerance, yet they could change the hue of a black and white feature across multiple spreads quite significantly.

Let the black do the work and give colours the supporting role

To counter this, we need to do some more manual editing. By selecting your preferred CMYK channel for greyscale, you can retain this and remove the others. Now paste this channel into the black channel and edit the other channels to roughly 50-60% of the black strength. That way the C, M and Y are boosting the depth of the shadows without ‘dictating’ the colour. This makes the image much more resilient and less susceptible to minor changes in inking. For maximum effect, aim for a colour split in the darkest areas somewhere just below your maximum TAC and work backwards from there using your preferred tools – Curves works for us because it helps to maintain colour balance by channel.

This is only an intro

Image retouching is not the simplest thing to deal with in a one-way article. By all means play around with images to your heart’s content based on the above, but make sure you speak to your print provider way before deadline day. They’ll be happy to look at your images and advise on suitability. Our studio folk are always happy to help, so drop us a note on the chat at the bottom right and we’ll be delighted to help you get the maximum impact from your images.

How does it feel? Weight vs Thickness

29th August 2024 Nigel Kerr
magazine reader

Paper. It’s a real thing and it’s a feel thing.

And that’s a huge part of the printed publication experience. There’s an oft-quoted saying that It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it and that holds true with how you present your content as a printed product.

magazine reader

paper has a fundamental impact on reader perception

What choices do I have?

Your choices are boundless. As long as your budget is too. And, let’s be honest, most budgets aren’t. We publication printers tend to settle on a ‘house stock’ which falls within mainstream parameters. Being able to buy from the mill by the lorry load, gets us stand-out value for money in this competitive market. Opting for a specific stock, therefore, you’ll find the price increases disproportionately due to reduced volumes [less efficient logistics], higher waste [set sizes and imprecise usage which can’t be rolled into another order]. Finally, flexibility will be compromised, so you may need to fix pagination and print run much earlier than you otherwise would.

Heavier is thicker though, right?

On a like-for-like basis, yes. But it’s more complicated than that depending on the finish of the paper and a thing called Bulk.

Bulk?

Yes, Bulk is a technical parameter used to describe the relationship between the weight (GSM) of a paper and its thickness (microns).

A 100gsm paper with a bulk of 1.0 is 100 microns thick. Simple eh?

Taking the Rough with the Smooth

Papers with a rough surface tend to be thicker (more bulky). Smooth papers tend to be thinner (less bulky). There are exceptions to this, such as fine papers which are calendered (a kind of polishing using brushes) but basically, coating is heavy. On gloss stocks, a large amount of [dense] coating is needed which leaves a smaller amount of ‘filler’ in the substrate.

How bulky are your stocks?

Here are some approximations to help with your calculations:

woodfree gloss coated 0.75

woodfree silk coated 0.92

LWC [light weight coated] bulk 1.2

uncoated [offset] 1.2

What does all this mean?

Let’s imagine you have a magazine with 128pp of text on 100gsm

on woodfree gloss, 64 leaves of 75 microns = 4.8mm

on uncoated, the same pages would measure 7.68mm, an increase of 60% thickness for the same weight

Opportunity!

It certainly can be for some. If you reduce the GSM but increase the bulk, you may be able to reduce your distribution costs whilst making your publication thicker

Why isn’t everyone doing it?

High bulk papers usually have a rougher surface. For some, this can be a desirable by-product. Rougher surfaces feel more natural; more ‘organic’ as we’ve heard it described. For others, the ‘Low-fi’ feel means that reproduction of images can be compromised, particularly with shadow areas on darker images filling in leading to loss of detail.

How do I decide?

We can’t decide for you but we can help! Use our instant chat to tell us what you’re looking for and we can advise on a shortlist of options. We’re always happy to provide samples and even mock-ups on white paper to give you a clear idea of how your end product will feel.

Acknowledgments

And apologies to Bob Dylan for the shameless use of his venerable song title.

Back to Black: Sharper, Clearer, Darker

23rd May 2023 Nigel Kerr
Black is black, right?
No. Look out for body text made up of all four process colours. Instead of solid black, it’s made up of a mix of tints. It often happens when text is created using RGB based colour spaces
How did that happen?
Instead of 100% black linework, text is output using a combination of black, cyan, magenta and yellow.
image to show what black text looks like when it is composed of 4 colour process elements

4 colour black text shows ‘fringing’ in cyan, magenta and yellow under a magnifier – it’s not pretty

Swatch out: Creating text using RGB swatches is the primary cause. Even in established industry apps such as InDesign™, we regularly see documents which have mistakenly defaulted to web or mobile output settings.
But I often use rich blacks in headlines: Yes, this is different. We’re talking body text. Using more than one process colour to build small black text can result in text that appears heavier and/or softer than intended. Normal, slight variations in registration of the 4 colours on press can cause other colours to show around the edges of the text that was intended to appear as black.
OK, get rid of it for me then:
Happily, it’s really not that difficult. Two steps and you’re there:

setting output intent in Adobe InDesign

check your output intent in InDesign is set to “print”

  1. Make sure your document colour space (or output intent) is CMYK. If your doc is made for web or mobile, you need to change it to print.

  2. Check your colour selector / swatches and change the colour to 100% process black.

Which Cover Coating is the Most Environmentally Friendly?

11th May 2023 Nigel Kerr

When specifying cover coatings for such applications as perfect-bound book covers, which option do you choose for the least harmful effect on the environment? With UV coating, lamination, aqueous coating, and varnish as the choices, which is best?

First of all, varnish, like ink, usually has a petroleum base (varnish is basically the vehicle of an ink mixture without the pigment), and during the drying process, the petroleum enters the atmosphere as toxic VOCs (volatile organic compounds). If your printer can use soy-based products for your project, of course, such a varnish would be far less harmful to the environment. (That is, it would be less toxic to humans and wildlife, it would cause less air pollution, and it would be less prone to contaminate the soil and groundwater.)

Laminates, such as the liquid, lay-flat, or film laminates used to coat the covers of perfect-bound books, are essentially plastics applied to the paper stock.

In general, this would be problematic, due to the petroleum base of most plastics.  However, less harmful options are becoming available, such as laminates made from soy polymers, which are manufactured from soybean proteins. (Keep in mind, however, that although soy polymers are biodegradable, they do require land and water for growing the crops from which they are made. In addition, carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, is released during their manufacture. Soy polymers are also expensive. So while they are better for the environment than petroleum based materials, they are not without their problems.)

UV coatings are prized for their deep and lustrous sheen Newer UV materials are not classified by the EPA as hazardous substances. Workers’ exposure to these materials therefore does not pose the health risks of some other technologies. Also, new UV technologies are not carcinogenic. Happily, UV coatings can now be included in the “mixed waste” category of recycled stock.

UV coatings also have the following benefits:

1. They don’t release VOCs into the atmosphere, as solvent-based coatings do.

2. Because they don’t require the application of heat for the drying process and are cured through the application of UV light, less energy is used in their application.

3. They are less flammable than solvent-based materials.

Water-based coatings, on the other hand, called aqueous coatings, can be a good option but are also energy-hungry. They come in gloss, satin, and matte finishes, providing variety in paper surface coating. Unfortunately, they are not as shiny or deep as their UV counterparts, so there is significant sacrifice in choosing this option. They also require the application of energy-intensive heat to cure which adds to their Carbon footprint.

Spot the difference

After processing of Gloss UV coating or Lamination it is generally difficult to find which  process is done as both will look very similar. If, however, you try to tear the substrate you’ll quickly identify that on a laminated product, the plastic stretches and refuses to break as the paper tears away.

For a non-destructive test, try folding the UV coating or Laminated sheet and press thoroughly with fingers at folded area. You’ll find Cracks in the folded area if it is UV coated or a Smooth Surface if it is Laminated.

Spreads, Spines and Headlines

6th June 2022 Nigel Kerr

Quick question: What’s the width of an A4 perfect bound portrait page?

OK, OK, it’s 210mm but what’s the visible width?

“It depends” is the simple catch all answer. As with many things in print, it’s not that simple.

On the outer cover, it is indeed 210mm.

But take a closer look at page 1 of text and you’ll see that approximately 204mm is visible.

So where’s the rest gone?

It’s been lost to the spine of the publication. And as you thumb through the pages, you’ll notice that this phenomenon affects pages right the way through.

It’s more obvious on some pages than others. Diagonal lines and text reading across spreads are particularly susceptible. Some designers accept it as as part of the deal with perfect binding but some are positively infuriated by it.

Significantly, some magazine advertisers don’t design for it and expect that a 420x297mm double page spread will appear the same in print as on their screen.

It doesn’t.

The severity varies significantly depending on location within the publication and materials used, but there are things you can do to help reduce the effect.

Firstly, try this checklist:

1. Do you have text near the edge of the page? It’s also known as a ‘critical matter’ margin. This can be particularly noticeable where a publication transitions from saddlestitched to perfect bound.

2. Is there a headline running across the spread? If so, you may risk losing part of your words.

3. Are there diagonal lines or curves straddling the spread? If so, the spine is very likely to create a ‘step’ effect.

If the answer to any of the above is ‘yes’, you’ll probably want to look closely at pushing the content out from the spine to make it visible. “But what goes in the spine when it’s pushed out,” you may well ask.

The answer is to ‘borrow’ some image from the opposite page.

read across on perfect bound publications

Let’s say we have a DPS A4 portrait ad with read across text supplied as 2x A4 pages. Firstly, you’ll need to ‘stitch’ the 2 pages together to recreate the spread as 420 width and save as an eps for import into your page layout application. Secondly, import that spread into each of the left and right hand page so that the image ranges from the original crop marks. Next, move the image 6mm away from the spine. You’ll now see the 6mm on the spine repeating itself but because that will fall in the spine, it won’t be visible on the finished product.

What about the 6mm that gets pushed off the other edge then?

That’s right. It gets pushed off the fore edge. Many DPS ads have plenty of ‘float’ margin but herein lies the most important part of this topic. One solution will not remove all problems. The safest thing to do is speak to your print partner about what you’re trying to achieve with the spread and we’ll point you in the right direction. We understand how important high impact double page spreads are and we’ll make sure we all achieve the outcome you’re looking for.

Beware the Blade!

17th February 2022 Nigel Kerr — No Comments

Are you new to design for print? One of the things you may not be familiar with are the dimensions we attribute to artwork. In this short article, we’ll explain what they mean and how we use them in the world of printed publications.

  • Trim – this is the exact size of the publication. The 2 most frequently used sizes are A4 = 297mm x 210mm and A5 = 210mm x 148mm. Note that in the world of print, we use the Y axis before the X axis, which is the opposite of cartography, but we usually confirm the orientation with either ‘landscape’ or ‘portrait’ following on.
  • Bleed – we need 3mm added all round your page so for A4, our bleed dimensions are 303mm x 216mm
  • Critical Matter – we also refer to this as the ‘type area’ . We mean the area where you can safely place text within the page – for A4 we use 285mm x 198

Designers who are new to print often question why we need these considerations. It can be quite difficult to describe without the benefit of a print factory on hand, but we’ll try!

Production involves 3 principal processes: printing, folding and binding. All are executed with high precision, but there is always variation, however small. This variation translates into movement of the trim which is rarely obvious, but nevertheless means that there is potential for unsightly results.

  1. where text is placed close to the edge, there is risk that it may ‘move’ right up to the trim, or even partially cut off
  2. where there is no bleed, there is a risk that a white ‘line’ may appear on the edge of a page where the intention was to have a colour panel right up to the trim

There’s more to these margins where perfect bound work requires additional treatment in the spine but we’ll leave that for another post. If you need any support with your artwork prep, our studio team are always happy to help. Just give them a call on 01727 733263 or chat at tmgp.uk/chat 

Renewable Energy is here

16th November 2021 Nigel Kerr

You can now enjoy an extra warm glow of satisfaction when you print with The Manson Group!

wind turbines provide renewable energy

We’re delighted to announce that since November 1st our factory electricity is provided from 100% renewable sources.

Using a Zero Carbon Tariff is a big step forward in our drive for sustainability and our mission to reduce the environmental impact of our activities. Find out more about our environmental journey here

Ad copy – PDF OK?

23rd May 2021 Dave — No Comments

Ad copy – PDF OK?

Ad copy – PDF OK?

If you’re producing a magazine, you will almost certainly be dealing with finished pages in PDF format from advertisers. Firstly, beware! PDF is a format, not a standard. PDF files can be created from almost any desktop application, so just because it looks OK on screen, doesn’t mean it will look good when printed on a commercial press.

screenshot-2014-10-08-15-44-54

One of the misconceptions about PDF ad copy is that it can be inserted into the layout document and then ‘PDFd’ again to create the finished press-ready document without any problems. Whilst this is possible, it can create a number of hidden defects in the artwork, many of which may not be visible before the finished product is printed.
How can that happen?
When most PDF files are created, a layer of compression is added to improve the ‘portability’ of the final document. If you check your settings, you will see that jpeg compression will probably be applied on halftone images for example. No problem in small doses, but…
Where you create your final document ready for press, you may be applying a second layer of compression on top of the first which already existed. This seond layer can start to remove important ‘structural’ information from the document which can be detrimental to its appearnce. We’ve seen blends turn solid, colour pictures turn to mono and certain components just disappear. Rare, but scary nevertheless.
So how do you eliminate this risk?
Decompress the ‘ingredient’ file by turning it from a PDF format into eps format.
Open the original ad file in Acrobat®, then go to…
File>export>Postscript>Encapsulated PostScript then in the browse window, hit Settings
General Binary // Font Inclusion – Embedded and Referenced Fonts // PostScript Level3 // tick Convert TrueType to Type1 // tick Include Preview
Output tick Simulate Overprinting
Colour Management Colour Handling – Acrobat Colour Management // Color Profile Coated FOGRA39
Save and you’ll have an eps with preview ready to import into your layout document. It’ll be a good deal bigger than the PDF original because it contains more information, but will be absolutely reliable.
Don’t be tempted to use Illustrator or Photoshop to convert. Illustrator tends to create huge file sizes with lots of superfluous information, whilst Photoshop will rasterise all your vector graphics and text, making them look fuzzy / pixelated.

Bulking

24th May 2017 Dave — No Comments

Forget protein shakes and bodybuilding – in print, bulking is a very different phenomenon. And much more important!

If you’re designing a saddlestitched booklet of significant pagination, you’ll need to deal with it. The main symptom of bulking [also known as creep] is that the pages in the centre of your publication actually turn out a couple of mm narrower than those on the outer reaches.

This is simply due to the bulk of the inset pages of the spine.

thick spines mean smaller page area

Bulking occurs in large saddle-stitched products, since each section is progressively stitched inside the previous section. It varies according to pagination and paper thickness, but the inescapable fact is that when the spine is 3mm thick, the centre pages will be pushed out 3mm. Thus, a 210mm wide page will be 207mm in the centre. The 3mm is invariably lost from the fore-edge of the publication which can have dramatic consequences if you, for example, designed a bleed panel 4mm from the edge. When 4mm is cut to 1mm and we factor in machinery movement within industry tolerance, there’s not much left to play with.

So, if you have a thick saddlestitched publication on the go, give us a call to discuss before you finalise your layouts. We can help you avoid this, and many other pitfalls!

Hitting the Target: Colour Management

23rd May 2016 Dave — No Comments

Hitting the Target: Colour Management

Our presses are regularly serviced to make sure that we achieve the most consistent results possible but how do you know that we’ll achieve the colour you’re looking for?

A commonly used standard where ink densities are concerned is ISO12647. That standard alone warrants a few paragraphs, but to keep it simple, let’s just say that over years of

target-e1412781988155producing magazines, we have found that these densities are a touch too heavy for images that have not been through post production and retouching. And a large proportion of the pages we handle haven’t.

The most important point here is do not rely on your monitor unless you have undertaken some form of calibration and you have sufficient previous experience of sending work to press and therefore have acquired an ‘interpretative eye’.

The simplest, cheapest way of checking colour before sending to us is to take an eyedropper sample in Photoshop® of the CMYK percentages in the given area on your page and compare these numbers with those in our colour selector (drop us a note and we’ll send you one). This will tell you (a) how close your monitor is to the printed result and (b)what you need to do to your image (usually in ‘curves’ in Photoshop®) to achieve your desired objective.

If you do a lot of colour retouching or find this too long winded, we have colour specialists who can spend a day with you and help you calibrate your equipment to reasonable tolerances so that you can use your screen as a guide. It may cost extra but we have lots of happy customers who concluded it was a great investment.