Print Knowledge

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*This Issue*

File Formats

Terminology

Software for the Print Industry

Link to Your Sales Representative

Danny Blevins

Carl Phinney

Donna Phinney

Tim Hoffart

Bob Burnell

Kay Page

Jenny Hoffart

Link to Your Customer Service Representative

Terri Kline

Cherie Roseliep

Debra Hirdning

File Formats

Since the proliferation of the personal computer, the ability to creating suitable graphics for print has been placed at virtually everyone's' finger tips. This has become a great convenience and a great problem. The old adage, "A little knowledge is dangerous", holds true here as well.

Different types of printing require appropriate file formats.

If you are printing to a personal printer such as a laser printer or desktop inkjet printer, almost any program will work. But if you are planning on producing final images on a screen, off set, web or heat set press, large format digital printer or plotter system, you will need to have professional quality and appropriate resolution files.

Below I have created a table comparing the types of printing with appropriate graphic information.

Software of the Print Industry

There are only a few major players in the professional printing software industry. Graphics programs are split into three major types. Raster / Photo Imaging , Vector / Illustration and Page Layout.

The most prominent is Adobe base in California has created a suite of programs dedicated to each aspect of graphic design. For page layout InDesign and PageMaker, for vector graphics and illustrations - Illustrator and for raster / photo images - Photoshop. Adobe also offers FrameMaker for document layout for larger publications such as books and Acrobat which is the industry standard for pdf (portable document file) creation.

Macromedia also offers a fine illustration software package - Freehand, although a large portion of Macromedias' resources have gone to web development software packages.

Procreate f.k.a. Corel has developed its' own suite including Corel Draw, Painter, Knockout and Bryce.

Quark Xpress is a standard in the industry for page layout.

There are several other smaller software developers, but the above mentioned are considered the standards of the industry and should be strongly considered if your intention is to create professional quality print documents.

If you would like further information on our products and services or would like to receive a quote on an upcoming project please drop us an e-mail at: printknowledge@mercurysigns.com

or visit us at:

www.mercurysigns.com

Terminology & Abbreviations

eps - Encapsulated PostScript - vector or raster graphic image.

tiff - Tagged Image File Format - raster graphic image.

pixel - In electronic imaging - a basic unit of digital imaging.

vector - (Sometimes called "object-oriented" graphics). The representation of separate shapes such as lines, polygons and text, and groups of such objects, as opposed to bitmaps. The advantage of vector graphics ("drawing") programs over bitmap ("paint") editors is that multiple overlapping elements can be manipulated independently without using differenet layers for each one. It is also easier to render an object at different sizes and to transform it in other ways without worrying about image resolution and pixels.

raster - The set of horizontal lines composed of pixels, used to form an image on a CRT screen or continuous color/ greyscale photographic images.

d.p.i. - Dots Per Inch - A unit of measurement used for determining the resolution (amount of digital information) a raster image contains.

ink-jet printer - Produces images by using liquid ink which is ejected from the print head by a piezo electric crystal referred to as pump action or d.o.d. (drop on demand) or by vapor pressure from a vaporized droplet of ink (bubble jet or thermal inkjet).

color proof - As the name implies, this is an accurate representation of color, fonts and element placement for a production piece usually created on a high end inkjet printer.

press proof - This is a production piece run directly on the press as if the entire production run were made. A more expensive proof, but the most accurate.

jpg or j-peg - A compressed raster image format designed for viewing images on screen with the smallest possible file size for faster transfer over the internet. Due to the information that is lost in compressing the file size, jpg files are not recommended for high quality graphics printing jobs.