Salt Gain

If a recipe calls for a measuring of salt, very rarely is it ever a good idea to add all of it in the beginning.  Cooking is a delicate process that requires continual attention and tasting along the way.  Adding too much salt to a recipe is an easy way to overpower a dish and unfortunately, you can't take that salt away.

When you cook, you should salt as you go.  If you finish cooking and your dish isn't just right, then you can add salt to achieve the desired taste.  Simply put, salt is much easier to add than to take away.

The same can be said of ink.  Primarily due to dot gain, ink is easier to add than take away.  Dot gain is the phenomenon that is caused by halftone dots increasing in size during the printing process.  A nice, round dot will grow on press as it is transferred to paper and the result can be an average 15% growth of the dot causing the dot to look darker than expected. 

Unfortunately dot gain is unavoidable so printers must compensate by creating curves in prepress that eliminate the effects of dot gain.  Because dot gain is greater in the midtone values (around a 50% tint) and less in the extremes (5-10% tint or 90-100% tint) a tint reduction on a linear curve is needed to lower midtone plate values.  Simply put, you can't just lower the ink densities on press if the midtones are too dark as this would also result in the dark image areas to look light and faded.  So to achieve the optimal printed image it becomes necessary to remove enough dot on the front end to compensate for the dot returning during the printing process.

Why Upscale Restaurants Don't Have Pictures on the Menu

Selecting a meal at a fine dining establishment is often an arduous task that requires a great deal of food knowledge. The menu never contains pictures and you have to interpret the meal through the written language of food. This is no easy task either as these restaurants are less likely to use descriptors such as tender or juicy, instead opting for a basic collection of ingredients to identify the food.

The simple fact that the menu isn't designed for all to comprehend or understand creates exclusivity not found on picture menus, not to mention that many view pictures as tacky. An upscale restaurant needs that exclusive quality as that is exactly what makes it appeal to someone who is willing to pay a lot of money for their food and services.

By taking a seat, an unspoken agreement is created between the customer and the restaurant. The customer trusts the restaurant to deliver a quality meal and the restaurant trusts that the customer has the know how to order something they want.

A similar unspoken agreement is formed every time an offset printer proofs a job for press. Unless you're printing digitally, seldom do you receive a proof that is printed on the exact same type of paper that your final product will print on. While you might see a collection of unprinted paper samples, there is no way to know for sure how something will look and feel on a particular type of paper until the job is actually printed.

If you specify a particular type of paper, the printer will usually assume you know what you want and that you have the knowledge and understanding to imagine how the finished product will turn out. You are indicating your professional expertise and acknowledging that you don't have to see the final product to order it. If you are unsure though ask the printer, never guess. Just as a waiter in a restaurant is there to clarify menu items, a sales rep at a printing company is there to help you make sense of paper options.

Master Sommeliers of Printing

A sommelier is a trained expert on everything to do with wine. They are extremely knowledgeable individuals that understand all aspects of taste and how these tastes will pair with an entire menu of food. Among other things, a sommelier might build a wine list for a restaurant, create suggestions for wines that complement particular foods and assign wine ratings.

Any person who has a great deal of expertise on wine can become a certified sommelier but only a small number of individuals can claim the title of Master Sommelier. Master Sommeliers have gone through years of rigorous training and these individuals can claim the right as masters of their trade.

Just as the case with a sommelier, any person with a great deal of expertise in printing can become a certified commercial printer however only a small number of printers can claim the title of master. Master certification in the printing industry is conducted by IDEAlliance and G7 Master & Expert certifications are given to those small few who can prove they are masters of the print trade.

G7 Master Printers are able to ensure the highest level of color match consistency from proofing to printing. This standard means the company uses the most modern technology and techniques as it applies to proofing, printing and color calibration controls. G7 Experts are individuals that are deemed as master specialists in color management, proofing, plate making and printing of all varieties. To put it simply, a G7 certificate deems you an expert on all things color as it relates to printing.

Does this mean that non-G7 printers aren't good at color management? Absolutely not as many printers have a number of practices and procedures in place to ensure their proofs match what prints and that color remains consistent from press to press. You can still rely on the expertise of a non-G7 certified printer as after all, this is what they do for a living! In addition, there are numerous other certifications available that prove a printer has high-quality control standards.

I am still of the belief that the most successful printers will always be the ones that place the client first, care and are passionate about the work they do (master certified or not). It's just like walking into an established wine store and seeking out the expertise of the owner. It's highly unlikely they are a Master Sommelier but these people have the knowledge and resources to guide you into a purchase you'll be happy with to ensure you return in the future. However, there is something to be said for the printer that takes the time to go through the certification process to prove they are masters of their trade.

Related Links and References:
Guild of Sommeliers
International Sommelier Guild
Court of Master Sommeliers
Sommelier Facts on Wikipedia
IDEAlliance
ColorWiki
G7:  What is it - and Why Should Print Customers Care?

Designing for Digital Printing - Part 2: Design Stage

Avoid large solids on the fold marks to reduce the noticeability of cracking. Heavy ink coverage
along the spine/fold is important for thicker stocks, especially in instances with toner-based digital printing. Toner sits on top of a sheet and doesn’t absorb into the paper. When the paper folds, the fibers pull apart at the fold (crack) and while all printing can show the presence of cracking, toner-based print projects will magnify the problem.

Solids and gradients can be especially problematic when printing digitally and are prone to banding. Avoid large solids and tints in your document by adding filters that add additional noise and texture to help ensure a smooth and even finish. Try to break up solids with photos and other design elements to eliminate any streaking. When designing a gradient, the move needs to be greater on a digital press for it to be noticeable. You might not even identify a 10% to 30% gradient but a 10% to 70% will start to give the effect you desire. In general, avoid long gradients with small, light color changes.

Create smart files. The digital press will most likely print in CMYK so design your file in CMYK. RGB has a greater color gamut and those RGB colors you see on your screen may not be possible to reproduce in the CMYK color gamut. In addition, to ensure good print resolution, create and save images at 300 ppi (pixels per inch). Also, when saving your files, quality PDF’s generated in the proper settings are best for digital printing.

Does your design incorporate variable elements? When designing multiple versions, create a common design and have a few select areas that will be interchangeable with unique content depending on the specific audience. Also, if the variable element you design is to be determined by a field in a spreadsheet, proof and test the longest word (highest number of characters) in the database field to ensure that it fits properly within your design.

Why Do Print Projects Take So Long to Produce? Part 2: Knife Sharpening

When using knives in the kitchen, you are more likely to hurt yourself with a dull blade. This is because you're applying more pressure which causes you to be less stable with the knife. In addition to the safety benefit, a sharp blade will save you time by cutting the food faster. Also, it allows you to make equal and consistent cuts that ensures your food cooks evenly and looks more appetizing.

The kitchen isn't the only place you need a sharp blade. We cut printed materials in almost every stage of the print process. Cutting may look quick and easy but we spend just as much time maintaining, setting up and replacing sharp blades as we do actually putting them to action. Continual maintenance is what it takes to be a cut above the rest.

Proofing

When you make bread, one of the first steps is proofing the yeast. You do this to ensure the yeast is active (or living) and thus will enable the bread to rise. If the yeast is dead, your bread will not rise and the finished product will resemble a rock. To proof yeast you dissolve in warm water (not too hot as yeast dies at 140 degrees), mix with a pinch of sugar and wait a few minutes for the yeast to foam up. If the mixture is foamy, you know your yeast is active and ready to be used. However, if after 5-10 minutes nothing happens, then your yeast is probably a dud.

There are no guarantees with yeast, and you must proof to ensure everything is going to turn out right. The same holds true in printing. When submitting artwork to a printer, they will proof your files to ensure everything is going to print like your intended design. When receiving the proof, it is then YOUR responsibility to make sure everything looks right. I don’t mean to be harsh by putting the blame solely on you if something is wrong with the proof and you don’t catch the mistake, but the reality is that many printers view a signed off proof the same as a contract. Hence the commonly used term “contract proof” that specifies that you think everything is okay to print. Hopefully you have a true partnership with your printer, where they will also look for issues with files and proofs to ensure all is okay. However, not giving a proof the respect it deserves can seriously cost you some big time bucks.

Why do I stress the importance of a proof, or better yet what can go wrong with a proof? Just ask any printer and they can give you a laundry list of potential issues. For example, your document may have missing fonts and images or low-resolution images. Text may not flow properly causing layout issues (Google “prepress reflow”). The color might not look the same as it does on your monitor. Images on the edge of the trim may be missing bleed (additional image needed to ensure the image runs off the edge of the sheet if small printing, binding and trimming variations occur). If you are uncertain of everything you should look for when deciding whether to approve or not, ask your print sales rep, their prepress manager or search the web.

Why do things go wrong with a proof when there was nothing wrong with the files sent to the printer? To put it simply, the printer changes your file. They have to put it in a format that their equipment can read. When this change occurs, ironically known as RIP, formatting related issues can cause unexpected changes (especially with un-preferred file formats). The printer does this because files come in so many different formats and platforms but the plate processors or digital presses can only read the file in one common language. You can save yourself some pain by finding out what types of files the printer prefers to work with and then design your files in those formats. However, even if you design your document in a preferred format, issues can still occur.

In the new age of printing, where every print project started today needed to ship yesterday, it is certainly easy to quickly scan through a proof to get the project into production right away. Working with multiple customers though, I have personally seen and dealt with the pain of what happens when errors are not caught in the proofing process. A circle of blame ensues where the result is everyone loses.

Why Do Print Projects Take So Long To Produce? Part 1: Washing

We have all heard about the dangers of cross contamination and why it is important to wash your hands so frequently when cooking. That isn't the only thing we have to wash though - think about all those fruits and vegetables we cook and eat? With fruits and vegetables, we rinse them with water so we can get any pesticides and herbicides off our food. With meat and poultry, we frequently wash our hands and keep everything away from our raw food to guard against E. coli and salmonella. Also, we wash utensils and plates while we cook to avoid a sink full of dishes that no one wants to tackle after a meal. By the end of your day in the kitchen, if you stop and think about it, you have spent half your time just washing things whether it is food, your hands or the dishes. No wonder so many people skip out on a home cooked meal.

Believe it or not we have to go through the same time consuming process of washing multiple things in a print process that you go through when you're simply cooking a meal in your kitchen. We have to wash our hands to remove potentially dangerous chemicals and to prevent grease and dirt from marking on a plate or a press sheet. We clean the tanks in the image processor to keep sediment from damaging the plates. We clean out toner in a digital press or ink-jet head to ensure a clear image. We wash the blankets on a press to guarantee a high-quality image transfer. In addition to the blankets on a press, we wash the rollers to prevent ink build-up and roller deterioration.

Today, even with technologies such as automatic wash-up devices that take away the need to clean a press by hand, the process can be time consuming and it must be done often enough to produce consistent, high-quality printing. Just like buying paper, washing is always going to be an element of the print process that you just can't get around. So the next time you say to yourself why do print projects take so long to produce, remember washing.

Reflex Blueberries

Would you eat blueberries while wearing an expensive white shirt or dress? Sure they may taste great, but they are exceedingly messy and stain everything they come in contact with. This is a characteristic similar to the rubbing results found in the printing of pantone color Reflex Blue. Reflex Blue is very common, as it is used to build a number of different PMS colors. However, the chemical properties of Reflex Blue make it difficult to dry on paper. Some printers will say it never completely dries, but despite this here are a few things you can do to eliminate issues if you must work with Reflex Blue:

• Do not design Reflex Blue where it will come in contact with other white space on your print project. Reflex Blue will rub if not dry and your clean white area will have blue marks all over it.
• If working with a coated sheet, aqueous coat Reflex Blue to help seal and dry it faster.
• Give your printer a few extra days to allow Reflex Blue to properly dry (ironically enough blueberries take longer to dry and dehydrate than almost any other fruit).

Also, before heading to press, be willing to compromise on color. Reflex Blue has been known to look slightly different on every single print run. This is because the chemicals it contains react with other chemicals in the printing and coating process. If you can accept that every single print run might have slightly different factors influencing it, then be willing to accept that Reflex Blue might look slightly different in appearance. Does every blueberry look the same? No, there are subtle differences in shape, color and acidity that distinguish each one you eat. Sometimes when you eat blueberries they appear to be a vibrant blue and sometimes they look bluish-purple. Expect the same with Reflex Blue. Yes, even in printing where color reproduction is a science, a Blue can look Purple!

Spoilage

I was making bread yesterday from scratch and things didn’t turn out so well. I had just purchased a new food processor and was excited to test it out. After puting the mixed liquid (water, sugar and yeast) into the processor I was ready to add my flour mixture. Little did I know that my food processor would automatically drain the liquid from the mixing bowl if the levels rose to high. With me being very careful not to go too fast and mis a step, I added half of the flour mixture and let that sit a minute before I started mixing. Before I had a chance to push pulse all the liquid drained out, leaving my counter top in a mess.

After a few minutes of peeving at my dilemma, I thought I would start from scratch again and give it another go. This time around I was able to start mixing immediately upon adding the flour to begin forming a solid that was impossible to drain from the processor. I slowly added more and more flour but in my efforts to get it just right, I over mixed it, causing the mixture to seep out into the motor and overheat the entire dough. I went ahead and completed the bread but it hardly rose at all and I realized later that I had probably killed the yeast by letting it get too hot in the processor. The third time around was a success, and my bread turned out pretty good, but I was too bummed out to enjoy it.

How many times have you been in the kitchen and despite taking all the precautionary steps and double checking your work, the meal ends up ruined, over cooked or just doesn’t taste right? This cooking example is comparable to the comedy of errors experienced when a typical print job goes bad.

It’s not that your printer doesn’t care about doing a good job. The process is so customized that it is inevitable that things are going to happen. While we can’t avoid the occasional mishap, we can be prepared. To help your printer and your kitchen experience, I have offered a few easy tips to better prepare you for the next time problems arise (or don’t “rise” at all).

• Take ownership of problems in the same way you would successes. Avoid the blaming others and don’t get defensive. This holds true on print projects and when cooking with a significant other!
• Assume the worst possible outcome and take preventative measures to eliminate that from occurring.
• Respond immediately to problems. If your dinner plans fall apart do you just decide to not eat? No, you figure out what resources and options you have left and work immediately to establish a new game plan.
• Don’t take anything in the process for granted. Whether it is in cooking or in a customized manufacturing process, actions have a ripple effect and neglecting one process can cause a series of errors.
• Always establish open and honest communication about the product and process. I want to know what is in the food I eat and how it got there the same way I want to know the exact type of materials used and the production process for my print project.

Oil & Water

Have you ever noticed how certain recipes always ask you to pat your poultry or fish down dry after rinsing it with water? We do this exercise but why? The reason for this is because oil and water just don't mix. If you wash a piece of chicken by running it through water and do not dry the chicken before adding oil, the water will repel the oil. If you pat the chicken dry it will be more receptive to absorbing the oil and you will achieve a nice coating.

This same concept, that oil and water do not mix, is the main principle behind offset printing. The poultry in printing would be your plate. Not to be confused with something you put your food on, a plate is a metal sheet that attaches to a cylinder on press.

The plate contains the actual dotted image that will be printed for each color we use (CMYK). The plate’s image area contains chemicals that are highly receptive to oil based inks but naturally repel water. When we attach the plate to the cylinder on the offset press, the plate will rotate and come into contact with dampening rollers (water) and then ink rollers (oil). The water dampens the plate and when this happens the oil receptive image area will repel the water, while the non-image area will receive the water. When the plate comes into contact with the oil based ink, the ink will only adhere to the oil receptive image area and it can not adhere to the non-image area because that part of the plate is coated with water. Because plates do not transfer the cleanest image to a sheet of paper, the inked image is then transferred (or "offset") from the plate to a durable rubber blanket that conforms to the surfaces of all types of paper stocks. The blanket prints the image to the paper completing the process of offset printing.

Prep Work - Part 2: Cooking Preparation Tips

The preparation that you put into a meal is just as important as cooking the meal. Good prep makes cooking easy.

• When de-frosting meat, poultry or fish I have found that it is more effective to place the frozen food in a leak proof plastic bag and put this in a sink filled with hot water. It de-thaws much more evenly than a microwave will.
• For most recipes, chopping your vegetables should be one of the very first things you do. This will save you much time for those later steps in your meal.
• Google it. How many recipes have you discarded because you didn't have a particular item it calls for in your fridge? If you Google that item, you'll find there is a substitute for just about anything. Also, sometimes when my refrigerator is about bare, I will Google four or five items together of whatever I have left in my fridge (ex - "chicken, bacon, cheese, oil, vinegar) and do a quick search. You won't believe how many recipes you can find online that get you by with your limited food inventory.

Prep Work - Part 1: Pre-Press at the Print Shop

Prep work consists of various steps in a printer's prepress department. There are thousands of different topics on prepress so in the interest of your valuable time I will focus on merely one: alteration charges.

Many of you have been hit with excessive alteration charges at some juncture in your printing lives. Often times you don't know about it until you receive the invoice. That is why it is extremely critical that you keep these things in mind:

• Do you anticipate there could be any changes after the first proof is created? If so please ask your rep to notify you of the alteration charges before hand.
• Simple does not always equal cheap. Whether you are making a small type correction, replacing photos or altering your layout, in most cases the printer will still need to start from scratch on that entire page and go through the process of putting your file in a printable format again.

Any prepress activity after the first proof and before final approval usually has some type of additional charge to it. Simply put, ask your rep "What will this cost?" and you can avoid an expensive surprise.