Printing FAQ's

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There are some small differences. Scanners and digital cameras create images using combinations of just three colors: Red, Green and Blue (called “RGB”). These are the colors that computers use to display images on your screen. But printing presses print full color pictures using a different set of colors: Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Black (called “CMYK”). So at some stage your RGB file must be translated to CMYK in order to print it on a printing press. This is easily done using an image editing program like PhotoShop, PhotoDeluxe, or Corel PhotoPaint. Caution: It’s Best If You do the RGB-to-CMYK Conversion of Your Images!
You will have more control over the appearance of your printed piece if you convert all of the images from RGB to CMYK before sending them to us. When we receive RGB images, we do a standard-value conversion to CMYK, which may not be perfectly to your liking. We want you to be happy, so please, take the time to prepare your file properly. We cannot be responsible for sub-par results if you furnish low-res images or RGB images.
Be aware that it is possible to make colors in RGB that you can’t make with CMYK. They are said to be “out of the CMYK color gamut”. What happens is that the translator just gets as close as possible to the appearance of the original and that’s as good as it can be. It’s something that everyone in the industry puts up with. So it’s best to select any colors you use for fonts or other design elements in your layout using CMYK definitions instead of RGB.

It’s best not to colorize small text. What happens is that all printing presses have a little bit of variance in the consistency of the position of the different color plates. This is called mis-registration. The cyan, magenta, yellow and black portions of the text characters don’t line up exactly. So, the result is little colored halos around the characters. It’s ok to use colored text on large, headline type, or smaller sizes down to about 14 point size, but much smaller than that will be too noticeable and you won’t like it. The same thing holds true for white (knock-out) text on a dark or colored background. You can do it but don’t use point sizes smaller than about 14 point. Otherwise, the words may be hard to read, and it will look unprofessional.

Be careful about using photographs for backgrounds. If you put text (any color) on top it can be very hard to read. So, the secret is to lighten the photograph a lot–more than you may think is necessary. Use a photo editing program like Paint Shop Pro or Adobe PhotoDeluxe.