Disappointing print results

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3 total messages Started by LanceBellers Sat, 26 Jun 2004 06:23

#203

Author: LanceBellers
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 06:23

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I have been experiencing disappointing printed results from various documents lately and I wonder if anyone can offer any advice.

My anxiety is that whereas before I would complete a job in Quark and then hand it over to a repro company to make film (or more recently pdf) for the printer, in recent months I am now creating jobs in InDesign (2.0) and making the high-res pdfs myself (using the industry-standard 'press' settings) and am slightly worried that I am not tuning everything quite correctly.

What I am finding is that jobs are coming back from the printer (three different) with a 'chalky' look to the finish, like a slight grey mist across images and lacking in punch.

I am pretty confident my Photoshop files are fine as I have worked with it for several years, use Euroscale Coated as my standard colour management and am pretty adept at tuning images to maximise their colour values and clarity etc. I retain the Euroscale coated throughout my InDesign and pdf files and think that is working as a controlled workflow OK.

A contact who is very good on these matters advised opening the final high-res pdfs created from the InDesign files (the pdfs supplied to the printers) by rasterising them into Photoshop and then examining the values. This I have done and they are exactly as I expected, matching those on graphic elements within the InDesign layouts (like panels, heading etc) and also values in the original Photoshop image files.

Which suggests that the pdfs I am creating are fine, there doesn't appear to be any shift.

One thing I am suspicious of is simply how well the printers are handling the jobs.I am not trying to make myself feel better, honest, I just want to get to the bottom of it! For example, on one front cover the panel background for the main logo was a rich black, made up of 100 black/50c/50m/50y and yet once printed has a slightly off-black feel, a bit like looking at something set up at 95% black. This would, of course, apply to the whole page and therefore perhaps take the punch out the pictures as well? All three 'problem' jobs have been on satin paper, incidentally, which I think has less punch than gloss generally, but this is fairly standard for the king of reasonably posh annual reports etc I am working on here in the UK so it is something I have to get on top of.

I am in the process of discussing this with each printer and I hope this might make some improvement as I assume they can control the final values to some extent. But in the meanwhile, does anyone have any thoughts on this? Has anyone experienced similar issues from InDesign's pdf engine perhaps?

Any thoughts whatsovever much appreciated...

Re: Disappointing print results

#204

Author: Dov Isaacs
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 14:03

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Quite frankly, you do need to speak with your printer and find out exactly what he is doing with your PDF files, i.e, how is he producing plates (or film) from them. He may be putting them through some process in which their is undercolor removal and/or other unexpected color transformations.

There is no good reason why a properly prepared PDF via export from InDesign should not yield predictable results in print workflows based on our own experience and the feedback we have gotten from a wide array of InDesign users.

Please let us know what you find out from your printer and maybe we can further assist you.

- Dov

Re: Disappointing print results

#205

Author: LanceBellers
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 19:34

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Thanks, I think after much pondering that is the best approach. My problem is that as a freelance designer I can be dealing with up to half a dozen different printers at any given time but as I have effectively become the repro house (!) these days it has become much more part of my job.

I did speak to two on Friday and will be following up those calls next week, will keep you posted.

Undercolour removal sounds a likely culprit too - the results I'm seeing have the look of, frankly, not enough ink, does that sound like it matches with undercolour removal at work?

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