Printing

Do you ever wonder how a particular paper product is made? How posters are so vivid? How a book’s pages stay consistently even?

                There is a lot of work going into a product you can buy, wear, and experience.

                Getting an image on a poster or other media requires RIPing it; Raster Image Processor. RIP interprets a post script or PDF file information and converts it to a bitmap image; it then instructs many things that output the image.

                Dpi, which stands for dots per inch, it describes the resolution of a printer. Lpi stands for lines per inch, which is the frequency of halftone dots. Ppi stands for pixels per inch, describing image resolution. These things measure how crisp your image is before printing.

                Two-color printing just means that only two colors are being used for printing, such as black and white.

                CMYK coloring is an effective and widely used for printing. There is a wide range of colors produced by CMYK, making for easy and accurate print jobs. However, there are limitations to the range of color CMYK can produce. Spot color covers the rest of the range of color the human eye can see. However, it wouldn’t be completely accurate when printed.

                Registration is important because inks are applied in a certain order. Registration aligns each color up, making for an overall accurate color job, which is crucial.

                Picas are a unit of measurement related to inches. Whereas points are smaller than picas, they are also related to inches.

                Variable data printing; VDP for short personalizes products by entering a recipient’s name and address.  Image setters are digitally driven devices for imaging film.

                Die cutting makes a complicated cutting job easy as it uses pressure and shaped metal to cut a printed piece into interesting and complex shapes.

                Folding dummies consist of a blank sheet of paper folded in a certain configuration; like a sample used in finishing a job.

                Finishing; the final process a printed product goes through before selling. It’s the manufacturing processes when a job leaves the printing press.

This information was used from Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications; chapters: one, two, and three.  free image from shutterstock.com.