PTA: Proof copy

[Matt Wilson]

On Friday, as the movers were bringing our stuff in (I just moved to Milwaukee), the proof copy of Primetime Adventures arrived via FedEx.

I chose Offset Paperback Mfrs., Inc. to do the print run, as they actually responded to me in a timely manner. And they quoted me a great price.

So far they've been decent at getting back to me about my many questions. Not great, but not awful.

So the proof. It's pretty good quality as far as I'm concerned. The only place I notice a difference is in the artwork, which doesn't handle grayscale as nicely as I'd like. Halftones are accomplished as with the comics in the Sunday paper, with patterns of little tiny dots. Also, some of the lines that should be extra crisp look a little jagged.

The cover turned out fantastic. I did a four-color wraparound and they did a really nice job with it. You can take a look at the front cover here.

Can't wait to get this puppy on the shelves. Once I send in the proof corrections, it should be less than a week before they ship.

[Andy Kitkowski]

I understand these comments are pretty worthless unless I offer advice or criticism, but here goes:

Ohhh, that's Pretty!

[madelf]

So the proof. It's pretty good quality as far as I'm concerned. The only place I notice a difference is in the artwork, which doesn't handle grayscale as nicely as I'd like. Halftones are accomplished as with the comics in the Sunday paper, with patterns of little tiny dots.

To the best of my knowledge all grayscale printing is done that way. The quality is in the size and number of dots.
You might try talking to the printer about how to obtain a tighter dot pattern to get the quality up. It might be an easy fix.

[JSDiamond]

Matt,
Printers use LPI --which translates to Lines Per Inch.  The basic failsafe way to get your b&w art sharp is to scan it at 300 dpi and as a TIFF.
You can save it at 100% actual size, or a bit larger --maybe 110%.

Also know that all ink bleeds a little bit making half-tones look darker than on the original.  You can compensate for this by reducing the intensity by around 5% depending on how much darker the proof looks.

Talk to your layout guy (or girl).  Then talk to the printer as the madelf suggested.  Between the two parties you will get it straightened out, no problem.

[Alex Johnson]

Printers use LPI --which translates to Lines Per Inch.  The basic failsafe way to get your b&w art sharp is to scan it at 300 dpi and as a TIFF.

I realize this is the standard quote from everyone around here.  I'm not an expert on the subject but I did work for a magazine for a few months back in 1991 or so.  300dpi sounds very conservative.  Sure you are doing the best most home printers can do, but we did our work on a drum scanner at 2400dpi because that's what the printer they used did natively.  And that was just a color community magazine for the Army done on good old Macintoshes in Quark.

I'm just going to mention that while it will eat up your hard drive, you won't get worse results by having higher resolution images than you think the printer needs.  Go ahead and put your artwork in 600, 1200, or 2400dpi.

[Chris Passeno]

300dpi sounds very conservative.  Sure you are doing the best most home printers can do, but we did our work on a drum scanner at 2400dpi because that's what the printer they used did natively.

Actually, both are correct.

The standard rule of thumb is to scan artwork at twice the LPI for photo's and twice the DPI for lineart or text.  In the old days, everything was being sent to service bureau's for negs and the metal plates were burned inhouse.  Those service bureau's and type houses used Linotype imagesetters which usually ran ~1250dpi and 150lpi.  It's kind of an industry standard for high end commercial printers.  The common printer (garage printer) uses 600 dpi and usually runs 85lpi.

This pretty much only has to do with a printing press.  If you go POD (Print on Demand) they use a digital process, which uses a mock/pseudo LPI and runs around 600dpi.

Though it seems counter-intuitive, to get a better image off a digital machine, try lowering the LPI some.  Most are set to force as many lines as they can, but if you lower the lpi, it'll open it up some and give you a cleanner image.

[Matt Wilson]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Proof markups and file updates are shipping out to the printer this morning.