CVMG - Printing Knowledge Flashcards
Laser
Advantages?
- One of highest quality printing available
- Very accurate to original image/design
Laser
Disadvantages?
- Extremely high start-up costs
- Colour laser printers are even more expensive
- Unviable for home printing
Inkjet
Advantages?
- Affordable
- Increasing quality as technology develops
- Suitable for home printing
Inkjet
Disadvantages?
- Not suitable for long runs
- High cost of ink
- Long time to print
- Not suitable for commercial
Wide Format
Advantages?
- Produces very large, high quality prints
- Adaptable for various purposes due to large range of inks/materials used
- Fit for purpose, e.g. advertisements, banners
Wide Format
Disadvantages?
- Ineffective for home printing or small scale commercial prints
- Long lead-time
- Various inks could be costly
Screen Printing
Advantages?`
- Adaptable as one screen can be used over and over again
- No limits on colours
- Dark colours can easily be covered by light colours
- Fit for purpose, highly effective at printing on fabric
Screen Printing
Disadvantages?
- Much slower than other commercial printers
- Isn’t suitable for long runs making it less viable for commercial use
Offset Lithography
Advantages?
- Cost-efficient for long runs
- Fastest method of printing
- Highly effective for commercial printing
Offset Lithography
Disadvantages?
- Large start-up costs
- Not viable for small print runs, hence only used commercially
What is the RGB colour space used for?
- Web images
- Any design used online or on a device
What is the CYMK colour space used for?
- Printing
- Any design that will be viewed physically rather than on a device
What are Pantone colours?
- Used to specifically match colours in a design to ink being used to print
- Ensures accuracy for colours being used
- Limits mistakes while translating from RGB to CYMK
What is colour separation?
- Occurs before printing
- Allows for a design to be printed on separate layers
- Commonly seen for offset lithography
What are spot colours?
- Element of Pantone colours
- Specific colours chosen to have inks mixed specially for required colour
- Usually done for colours key to a brand or logo
- Typically more expensive so only done for special colours
What are half-tones?
- Collection of dots which blend to create one image
- Commonly used in newspapers
Registration Marks
- Used to align printing plates in pre-flight
- Should be clear, dark and sharp if properly aligned
- Checked carefully often with magnifying glasses
Bleed Margins
- Used to show size of paper and where is should be cropped
- Show design where the page ends and printer where excess paper begins
Crop Lines
- Show printer where page is supposed to be cropped after printing
Colour bar
- Used for colour calibration in pre-flight
- Ensures colours are being mixed accurately by the printer
Densitometer
- Checks grey-scale is properly mixed and dark enough for the design
- Ensures the printer is mixing and dispensing ink properly
What quality should images be for printing?
- At least 300-600 dpi
What file types are best for printing?
- Vector file types so that resizing does not effect the print, especially for text
- AI/EPS
- PNG if using raster to ensure little to no compression and loss of quality
What is a gutter and why is it important for printing?
- A gutter is space between, text, images, or the edge of the page in a design
- Ensures the page is easy to read and the design can be followed
- Also ensures no important part of the design can be lost due to cropping
Why are DPI/PPI important?
- Dots per inch
- Pixels per inch
- Ensures quality of pictures are high and that it won’t appear fuzzy after printing
74 gsm
Everyday home printing paper
35-55 gsm
Newspaper
105 gsm
Brochures
175 gsm
- Post cards
- Menus
- Posters
215 gsm
Business cards
180-230 gsm
Magazine covers
What is gsm? How does it effect printing?
- Grammes per square meter
- Higher gsm leads to better quality paper
- Represents the weight of the paper
Why is paper opacity important?
- Some prints may be double sided, such as magazines
- Printers need to ensure that the ink will not bleed through to the other side of the page
- Both sides must be legible
What is calendared paper?
- Smooth, high quality paper
- Primarily used for magazines
- Process of smoothing paper to create higher quality surface for printing
Solid Ink
Advantages?
- Extremely high quality prints
- No cartridge for ink so more environmentally friendly
- Really nice finish due to special ink
Solid Ink
Disadvantages?
- Printer is very expensive, especially colour
- Inks can be expensive
- Can take longer to print and dry
Why is colour calibration important?
- Designs made on a device are typically in RGB colour space
- To print, the design must be changed to CYMK colour space
- Calibration done poorly can lead to inaccurate colours in print due to the change from CYMK to RGB
What is photo reduction?
- Where files/images are compressed, reducing image quality but also reducing file size
- Done to fit purpose of file, e.g. files being emailed can be reduced in quality as the quality of the image on device can be lower than in printing
What is duplex printing?
- A printer capable of printing double sided without manual input
- Reduces print lead time and is very useful for commercial printing
- Home printers can still print double-sided but the paper must be flipped, increasing time + decreasing accuracy
What is a camera ready copy?
- Final state of publication before a design is printing
- All pre-flight is complete and image is ready to be sent straight to printer
What is edge to edge printing and how is it achieved?
- Printer needs to grip edge of paper to allow for it to be moved during printing process, meaning edges of page aren’t printed on
- Instead, oversized paper is used and then cropped to size
