Tanya Sokolovskaya's blog: posts tagged Printing

How to prepare monochrome photos for print

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 21:24:00 +0100

Following the post about preparing images for offset printing, I want to show how to prepare monochrome photos to get a beautiful rich black colour in print.

I have a picture in the RGB colour model:

Let’s convert it from RGB to CMYK and compare:

First — RGB
Second — CMYK

We can see that the black colour has become paler, but it’s okay, the main problem lies in the channels.
Let’s look at the Triad and Black channels separately:

The triad colours kept all the details of the photo

The black colour gets a ‘skeleton’ of the darkest shades

The problem here is that there is always the possibility of colour variations when printing, which will result in a corresponding shade. Let’s look at an example using curves. I moved the Cyan and Magenta curve up and down:

More blue paint
Less blue paint
More purple paint
Less purple paint

Any jump in colour will tint the picture, and to avoid this, you need to transfer most of the detail in the photo to the Black channel. To do this, go into Photoshop and duplicate the image, as we will perform colour separation twice in different channels and then merge them.

We’re working with the first copy now. Convert the picture to CMYK and create a Channel Mixer adjustment layer to move the Triad colours into the Black:

The values I have set are average and may vary. They can be tweaked at the end

Turn off the Black channel and see what we get at the Triad:

The first photo — before, second — after

The Triad underlay became lighter and less detailed.

Open a second copy of the image and convert it to CMYK but with maximum black generation. To do this, you need to create an appropriate colour profile — go to Edit → Color Settings and create a new CMYK profile with the settings:

Convert the picture to CMYK with maximum black generation — Edit → Convert to Profile → select the created profile and look at the picture in the black channel:

You can see that the entire picture has gone into the black channel. Now we need to merge it with the already prepared triad substrate. Open the first file and create a new layer there. Go to Image → Apply Image and copy only the black channel from the second file:

The result is a black mess, and to fix it, you have to enable this layer to be displayed in the black channel only:

Let’s compare the result with the RGB picture:

The first is RGB, the second CMYK

You can see that in CMYK, the picture has a brownish tint, but this can easily be corrected in the Channel Mixer adjustment layer that has already been created:

I reduced Magenta and Yellow slightly and added a little Cyan

For interest, I move the curve to see how the picture changes with paint fluctuation:

The prepared picture hardly changes its hue, and I move the curve quite a lot — in printing it’s unlikely that such a fluctuation of colours will happen. To compare it with the second picture, which I simply converted from RGB to CMYK

So, you get an image with saturated black that looks as good in print as it does on the screen.

Some may decide to print monochrome in one colour with pure black but do not do so. The result will be a pale and most likely grainy image.

This treatment is appropriate for monochrome and mixed images with a colour part and a large monochrome area. In that case, combine the Channel Mixer adjustment layer and the Black Channel layer into a single folder and set it to only display a mask on the monochrome parts of the image.

How I prepare magazine images for offset printing

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 11:26:00 +0100

This video contains updated and more relevant information on preparing images for offset printing. The post itself needs an update, so make sure to check out the video for the latest tips and techniques.

Images in a multi-page publication must be prepared to look good when printed. Typically, print shops have different requirements for offset printing, but the general principle of preparation is pretty much the same for all of them. I’ll give you an example of my work for Agroinvestor magazine so that the print shop accepts the layout for the first time and the images remain high quality.

There are four essential points in image preparation: the resolution (300 dpi), the colour model (CMYK), the colour profile (for our print shop, this is ISO Coated v2 300 % (ECI)) and the sum of the colours (no more than 300 %). At first glance, nothing complicated: take a picture of a suitable resolution, do colour separation in the right profile, and that’s it. However, apart from these points, there is an essential aspect of offset printing that I want to talk about, but let’s go through it one by one.

layout stage

During the layout stage, I use low-resolution photos. Most of them even have the watermarks of photobanks, and it doesn’t matter at this stage. This is what the linked files look like in the document:

The two right-hand columns show the actual resolution (left) and the effective resolution (right)

As you can see, all the images are in an RGB colour scheme, and most have a resolution of 72 dpi. This resolution is optimal for screens but very low for printing. And the effective resolution, in general, jumps around a lot. Let me explain, the actual resolution is the actual size of the picture, while the effective resolution is the size of the picture in the layout. If the actual resolution is 72 dpi and the effective one is 117, the layout picture is reduced by half. And vice versa, the picture is enlarged if the actual resolution is higher than the effective one. In the finished layout, their values should be the same.

Exporting images

I prefer to prepare the images for printing once the layout of the whole issue has been approved. That has its advantages:

Things can change in the process: an article is replaced, strips are removed or added, pictures are sent in differently, ads are unexpectedly up, and so on.
The original images are collected and sent to the photo editor, so it’s more convenient for me to get all the pictures at once rather than after each approved article. Also, if a photo from a photobank is suddenly replaced and has already been bought, then the money is spent for nothing.
At any time, the chief editor can remove or add a piece of text within an article, which means that the size of an image will have to be changed because space on the page is limited. If the images were already ready to be printed, this work would have to be done again.

When all the articles are collapsed, I proceed to process the images. As you may remember, the images are of poor quality, and to send them to the photo editor for redemption, I need to gather all the images of the issue into one folder. To do this, I pack the files in print:

Next, check Copy Linked Graphics. No other checkboxes are needed:

The result is a Links folder with all the images, which I hand over to the photo editor, who sends me the original high-resolution images.

I also create three additional folders: PSD RGB, TIF Lab, and TIF CMYK.

Links contain all the images in the issue; Photos — the images to be redeemed; Photos Original — their originals. The PSD RGB, TIF Lab and TIF CMYK folders are needed so that I can return to them at each stage of processing the photo and, if necessary, make changes. I’ll go into more detail about these stages next.

Resolution

Next, pay attention to the resolution. There are several sources of images: for example, pictures from photobanks are of high quality, but pictures from agro-companies or their websites are often in low resolution, and it’s almost impossible to get the originals.

Let’s say I was sent a photo at 72 dpi, but the picture itself is quite large 67×38 cm:

I unchecked Resample and changed the resolution from 72 to 300. The image size is now considerably smaller — 16×9 cm:

Ideally, this picture at 100% should be no larger than 16×9 cm in a layout. But what if I need it in a larger format? In such a situation, I enlarge the image by 15-20%. If an even larger format is required, the photo editor asks for the source, and if it’s not available, we look for a replacement image.

It may also be that an image is sent with a dpi value between 200 and 300. In that case, I increase the dpi value to 300, which will also not appear in the printout. When the dpi is less than 200, it’s not worth enlarging the picture, we will not see pixels in print, but there will be some graininess.

Colour profile and ink sum

Our print shop has a requirement to use the ISO Coated v2 300 % (ECI) colour profile. This profile makes my job easier: by running the images through it, the sum of the colours in the overprints automatically becomes less than 300 %. The ink sum is the amount of ink applied to the paper. The image will be pale if the value is less than 300%. If the ink sum exceeds 300%, the sheet risks soaking through and staining the adjacent pages.

You can determine the amount of colour in an image in several ways in Photoshop, but I find it much more convenient to do it through Indesign. Go to Window → Output → Separations Preview:

And in Ink Limit mode, select the desired percentage:

Red spots in the image indicate that the colour limit has been exceeded in these areas. This way, even at the layout stage, I can quickly check all the images in the article.

I have the required CMYK profile in Photoshop by default. This is done in the settings: Edit → Colour Settings:

I downloaded the profile online beforehand

From RGB to CMYK

All images can be divided into simple and complicated.

Simple— converts from RGB to CMYK with no problems:

The first picture is RGB, and the second one is CMYK. There is practically no difference between them.

Complicated — includes unprintable colours that are lost in offset printing:

The first picture is RGB, and the second is CMYK. As you can see, the bright green and red are “eaten away” in the second one, and the detail and volume in these areas are lost. You can solve this problem by contaminating the colours.

Open our photo in Photoshop and work in the RGB colour model. To quickly see if there are any unprintable colours in the picture, go to View → Proof Setup and select Working CMYK (you already have the right colour profile for it):

And with the Proof Colours command, we can switch between modes:

Reminder: work in RGB. To get rid of the unprintable colour, create a Selective Colour adjustment layer:

We have two unprintable colours — red and green, so it’s these that we will “pollute”. And we do it with opposite colours — for red, we raise Cyan, and in green, we increase Magenta:

Let’s compare the three pictures now:

The first picture is RGB.
The second is direct conversion to CMYK.
The third one is converted to CMYK with an adjustment layer Selective Colour. Our picture is a bit darker, you can fix it if you want, but the tomatoes are still rich, and the leaves show details.

Let’s look at another example:

This is where I contaminated yellow and red:

The first picture is the original.
The second picture is the Proof Colours view. You can see how the brightest areas get soapy, and the smallest details disappear.
The third picture is corrected. It’s not as colourful and bright now, but printing such colours is impossible. I think it’s more critical to preserve details.

Feature of offset printing

The sharpness of offset printing decreases quite dramatically, which means it should be compensated technically. This is done in Photoshop with Unsharp Mask and must be done in several steps — separately in the Lab Lightness and CMYK Black channels.

I’ve taken a rather dark picture with a black object to show the impact of the sharpening more clearly.

So, open the picture in Photoshop and create two duplicate layers:

I renamed them Lab and CMYK to make it clearer

Convert the image from RGB to Lab without merging layers. Go to the Lightness channel, apply the Unsharp Mask filter with an impact strength of 100, radius 3 px:

This is what we see:

Next, convert the image from Lab to CMYK without merging the layers again. Go to the Black channel and apply the Unsharp Mask filter with a value of 300% and a radius of 1 px:

The values for Unsharp Mask in the Lightness and Black channels may differ. I have taken the average as an example.

The picture looks like this:

A bright white border surrounds the black details, but you don’t have to be afraid to sharpen the black channel. The triad colours will underlie this white border, and the result will be a soft glow that will accentuate the darker objects:

You can optionally enable the display for Lab layers in triad only and CMYK in black only:

You can add a little transparency to this layer to soften the sharp effect

You may think the picture is heavily sharpened, but in offset printing, the sharpness will drop a lot, and this sharpening will make the picture clear. Also, remember that on the screen, we see an image at 300 dpi, in reality, it will be three times smaller. You can move away from the screen by 1.5–2 metres and look at the image. Everything will be okay in print if it looks good from a distance.

I’ll show you an example of a magazine photo that I processed. Here’s a sharpened photo:

And this is the photo in the magazine:

As another example, I’ll show you a piece of advertising that was sent in ready to print, and I can’t intrude on it:

On the left is a fragment of advertising layout, and on the right is a photo from a magazine. As you can see, the layout was not sharpened, and the output was blurred.

Do not sharpen an RGB image. Otherwise, you risk having white ghosting around dark objects, which will not disappear when printed because there is no triadic backing:

So please don’t do it

Another thing I want to point out is the exposure. The printed image will always be darker than what we see on the screen. So if the picture seems dark, you need to lighten it up a bit. Otherwise, it might turn out to be a completely black nothing. For example, I sent the picture above to print like this:

It’s darker in the magazine, but the grasses are still visible:

This is all about the basics of image preparation. There are nuances in converting monochrome images from RGB to CMYK, but we don’t see those in our magazine, so I’ve written about that separate post.

Stages of work and their automation

Now, point by point, what and in which order I do when I get the original photos from the photo editor, and the layout is approved.

1. Resolution and processing

I open my first image in Photoshop, check its resolution, correct it if needed and start processing. Processing can include anything: clipping, cleaning of unnecessary elements, sometimes I make a collage of several photos or changing the background, somewhere you want to pull the black point and correct the ragged horizon — in general, there are all the necessary aesthetics.

2. Unprintable Colours and Exposure

I use Proof Colours to check my image for unprintable colours and correct it with Selective Colours if necessary. I lighten the image a little. In my experience with our print shop, I prefer to lighten almost all images. Otherwise, even light images in print come out darker than the screen.

I save the Photoshop file in a PSD RGB folder when I am visually happy with everything. Now I have a finished image in full size that I can return to at any time.

3. Image size

In Indesign, I look at the actual size of the previously processed image within the layout:

I go to Photoshop, crop the image and resize it according to the layout:

All the images in the print-ready file must be at 100% scale, and the effective resolution is 300 dpi. Right now, the effective resolution of my picture in Indesign is twice as high:

It shouldn’t be like this

If you skip that step and leave the images at their original size, the resulting file will weigh a lot. It will be hard to work with, and the print shop will scold you :-)

And here is an important point, when the image size fits the layout, I create a new action in Photoshop and call it Sharp:

Now all my actions are recorded. I converted the picture from RGB to Lab, merged all the layers, and saved the file in TIF format in the TIF Lab folder.

4. Sharpness

I go to the Lab Lightness channel and sharpen the picture. Convert from Lab to CMYK, sharpen the black channel, and save the image in TIF format to the TIF CMYK folder. I closed the file and stopped the action recording. Now I have action, which I apply to all further images after their initial processing.

When all the images are ready, I go to Indesign and replace all the images with those in the TIF CMYK folder. At this stage, I review each image, and if I don’t like something, I can always go back to any stage of its processing and correct it. That’s why I save files separately in additional folders.

And this is what the linked files look like after their preparation for printing:

If you have any questions, let me know, I’ll try to help :-)

Designed the Metamorfoza brand clothing catalogue

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:48:28 +0100

Cover and spread with brand ideology

Metamorfoza is a Ukrainian clothing brand that produces exclusive embroidered tunics. Embroidery on tunics is not at all similar to traditional Ukrainian embroidered vyshyvanka. The brand has its own style. Just look at them:

Two versions of the catalogue were required — electronic and print.

The print version of the catalogue is in A5 format:

Back and cover

Product pages

The electronic catalogue is pretty much the same as the printed catalogue. Here are some of the pages:

Event posters of Rave People promotional group

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 11:16:00 +0100

The process of logo design for Rave People promotional group

I had previously made a logo for the Rave People promotional group. They also needed posters for a series of events. The posters are published on the website, tickets and social media pages.

The posters should be in the same style but different simultaneously. I decided to emphasise a specific figure but modify it for each new poster. Penrose’s triangle came to mind, and besides it, there are many other impossible figures, which gives room for variation.

Here are some of the impossible figures

Check out the JOOF Mantra logo design process, it’s interesting there

The first event was dedicated to the artists of the JOOF label, so to maintain the image, I borrowed one of the characters from the covers of the label’s releases.

One of the covers of the JOOF Mantra releases

First poster

I created a master manicurist’s guide

Sun, 16 Aug 2020 10:38:53 +0100

Valeria is a master manicurist and pedicurist. For her newsletter and to attract new clients she needed a guide in which she talks about hand and nail care. The guide needed to be in both electronic and printed form.

I made two versions — A4 format for mailing and A5 format for printing.

Some pages from the printed version of the guide

In the electronic version, I added a bit of interactivity: users can follow a link from the content to any page and back to the content, and I also made the links within the text active.

Some pages from the electronic version of the guide

I designed a brochure and a travel guide to Japan

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 18:33:32 +0100

Design of a series of brochures to help independent travellers.

The guidebook has a rather formulaic material — a paragraph of text and three photos to it. I placed the text blocks on the edges of the pages so that you can quickly flip through the pages to find the city you are looking for. I made three different layouts for the photos on the spreads, and they alternate, which creates a kind of rhythm.

Author of the guide — Roman Mironenko

House of Weddings printed materials for the wedding expo

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 23:29:00 +0100

I created handouts for participation in a wedding expo.

Booklet:

Flyer:

Poster:

Certifications:

Instructions for entering the lottery:

I made a business card for Maria Berezhnaya

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 23:06:00 +0100

Maria decided to update her business cards and wanted to add some gold to them. I suggested painting the sides of the business cards gold and highlighting some parts of the ornament. Here’s how it turned out:

On the front side, the ornament is printed with UV varnish — if you turn the business card, it shimmers with gloss

On the back, we have specially left a space for notes that Maria leaves for each client

And this is how business cards look in real life:

Splendorgel paper with a density of 400 grams

Postcards and posters for the book presentation “On Life, Death and Love”

Sat, 13 Aug 2016 21:39:42 +0100

Task
Design gift materials for the presentation of the book “On Life, Death and Love”.

For the presentation of Lea Wedensky’s book “On Life, Death and Love” I designed promotional and gift materials: flyers, postcards and posters with illustrations and quotes from the stories.

Poster with mainly the project “Living Word”. A3 and A2 format

Invitation flyers for the presentation

I also made a postcard with the image of the Word of Life Project, which you can sign on the back yourself:

Project members

Designer
Tanya Sokolovskaya

Author
Lea Wedensky

Illustrator
Masha Roitman

How I design and layout the book

Wed, 10 Aug 2016 22:44:05 +0100

А тут электронная версия книги

Introducing my first book publication! I am very happy that I had the chance to discover this new direction in design. Working on the design of the book was not easy, but interesting. Here I will show you the process of work and all the behind-the-scenes details.

The task: to layout, design and help publish a fiction book by Israeli author and psychologist Lea Wedensky. The book is called “Of Life, Death and Love”.

From the conversation with the author, I learnt that the book will be bilingual — in Russian and in Hebrew, and according to the idea the text should be divided into two columns. Therefore, for greater convenience, I chose a square format for the book.

The stories were illustrated by artist Masha Roitman. The illustrations are stunning and lively, made in graphic style with pencil on paper:

Almost immediately I had an image of a book with an association on the theme of life and death — a white-coloured cover with dark margins.

Sketch of the cover. The Hebrew text is a rough Google translation of the Russian-language title

At this point, I put the cover aside and proceeded to the book block. Here things turned out to be a bit more complicated. Hebrew is a right-handed writing, so the book opens from left to right. It means that Russian texts will be read backwards, which is not quite convenient.

The first version of the book page was like this:

It didn’t seem bad. But the more I got into the book design, the more I realised the unfitness of the first version. In addition, in the process there was a conflict with the illustrations — they are both horizontal and vertical. If you limit them to the typing strip, you get large margins that are disharmonious with the text block. I decided to place the illustrations “under the crop”, but this worked for the vertical illustrations, the horizontal ones continued to “cut the eye”.

Vertical illustration

Horizontal illustration

At this stage, the author refused to combine Hebrew and Russian in one book — it was the best solution.

I went ahead and removed the Hebrew-language text. Now the text blocks seem too massive and the lines too long. It is uncomfortable to read such text, your eyes get tired quickly. The font size cannot be increased, it is already large enough.

I’m thinking of a solution:
— Since we no longer require a two-column layout, there’s no longer a need to stick to the square format. Why not change it?

Taking into account that all the illustrations are drawn on A4 paper, I chose the proportional format — A5 — for full harmony.

When working on the square version I relied only on my aesthetic taste, but with the A5 format I had difficulties. In my search for a harmonious proportion of strip sets, I discovered Jan Tschichold and his “The Form of the Book” — a delightful “textbook” about book layout and design.

Following the Van de Graaf’s canon, the strip set began to look like this:

The illustrations also fit into the strip of the set. At the same time, I made up the cover to fit the new format

Van de Graaf canon of page construction

Harmony for text blocks and illustrations has been found. There was no need for a large font, so for ease of reading, I reduced it from 12 to 11 pt, now a line holds an average of 5–7 words.

I chose two fonts for the text: Newton for the main text (combines high readability and features of old-style fonts, under the eternal themes touched upon in the narrative) and Jakob for the headings (handwritten font, perfectly harmonises with the graphic illustrations).

Working on the text, I also followed Tschichold’s recommendations.

I centred the headline, typed it in capitals with a small spacing of letters, and separated it from the main text with an indent. Therefore, the first paragraph is not indented to the left:

The wide margins allowed for greater leading spacing, which added air and harmony to the typographic plane. In addition, I was able to keep the typing strip intact and place all the footnotes in the margins:

13.jpg.

To visually equalise the border of the text block, I partially moved the punctuation marks beyond it:

Wrong

Correct

When punctuation marks are inside the block, geometrically the border is flat, but visually it is floating and curved. If the signs are partially taken out, then visually the border is levelled and looks nicer. For clarity:

5.gif.

Separately I would like to talk about “hanging” prepositions. It is correct to move them together with the related word to a new line, but I often encounter neglect of this rule. Most likely this is due to unwillingness to transfer them manually or not knowing how to automate this process. That’s why below I’ve described how to do it in InDesign.

Removing “hanging” prepositions in InDesign

Open the document and create a Character Style with the only setting “No Break”, and give it the same name:

Next, create a Paragraph Style for the main text and go to the GREP Style tab. There we click the “New GREP Style” button and in the drop-down list “Apply Style” choose our previously created “No Break”:

In the “To Text” field, type all prepositions:
(?<= )((в|‬на|‬под|‬с|‬со|‬во|‬без|‬то|‬ли|‬бы|‬или|‬да|‬но|‬что|‬а|‬и|‬у|‬уж|‬так|‬как|‬для|‬перед|‬через|над|‬‬при|‬по|‬до|‬от|‬о|‬об|‬‬про|‬к|‬ко|‬не|‬за|‬из|‬ни|‬нас|‬я|‬он|‬она|‬оно|‬они|‬мы|‬ее|‬её|‬его|‬вас|‬ты|‬вы‬|‬все|‬всё)( |\. |, ))+

Next, create a new GREP Style by analogy with the first one, but for capitalised prepositions:
((?<= )|(?<=^))((В|‬На|‬Под|С|‬Со|‬Во|‬Без|‬То|‬Ли|‬Бы|‬Или|Да|‬Но|‬Что|‬А|‬И|‬У|‬Уж|‬Так|‬Как|Для|‬Перед|‬Через|Над|‬‬При|‬По|‬До|‬От|‬О|‬Об|‬‬Про|‬К|‬Ко|‬Не|За|Из|‬Ни|‬Нас|‬Я|‬Он|Она|‬Оно|‬Они|‬Мы|‬Ее|‬Её|‬Его|‬Вас|‬Ты|‬Вы‭|‬Все|‬Всё) )+

To make it clear:

The condition (?<= ) means: only if there is a space before the preposition;
(?<=^) means: only if the preposition is at the beginning of the paragraph;
(‬в|‬на|‬под|‬с|‬со|‬во‭|...|‬вы‬|‬все|‬всё) — a list of all prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions that should not be left at the end of a line;
( |\. |, ) — signs after prepositions: space, dot+space, comma+space. The \ symbol indicates that the dot after it is treated as a dot, not as a GREP metacharacter);
+ indicates that the condition also applies to consecutive prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions, e. g. “but we thought it was interesting”.

Read more about GREP metacharacters and principles of operation in the GREP manual.

Result of work:

Book cover

Illustration style front endpaper

The title page is typed in the shape of a cup and inscribed within the frames of the set band

Horizontal illustrations, unlike vertical illustrations, are located directly in the text

There are footnotes in the book. To avoid disturbing the text, I have placed them in the wide margins rather than below the text

The book is divided into five parts, with the beginning of each part decorated with an illustration-style frame and handwritten text

A book in life

Project members

Designer
Tanya Sokolovskaya

Author
Lea Wedensky

Illustrator
Masha Roitman

Literary editor
Gulnara Sabrekova