OK, you designed this beautiful piece of art, and now it's time to print it. Then you can show it to your mother who will be very proud of you and hang it on the refrigerator door (although she still doesn't know what exactly it is that you do).
Printing is an important part of the design process. If what you are designing will be used in print, it is a good idea to see how it looks on paper as opposed to onscreen. Sometimes it's difficult to visualize your art onscreen, and you can get a better grasp of it when viewed on paper. This is especially true with type. It might look okay at 12 point onscreen, but when you print it out on paper, you will realize that 11 or even 10 point would be much better. These subtle things often cannot be picked up onscreen. This chapter discusses:
One of the most basic functions of your computer is the Print command, and it works the same way in Illustrator as it would in just about any other program. To print a document, choose Print from the File menu (see Figure 22.1), or press (Command-P)[Control-P].
Choosing Print from the File menu.
Way back in Hour 2, "Customizing Illustrator," we discussed the different settings in the Document Setup dialog box. There is also a Page Setup dialog box specific to your printer and print driver software. This dialog box is accessible through the Document Setup dia- log box.
First, choose Document Setup from the File menu. Notice on the far right of the dialog box, under the Cancel button, is a button to open the Page Setup dialog box (see Figure 22.2). Your Page Setup dialog box contains settings for what paper tray to use and what orientation the page should print (portrait or landscape--tall or wide). Page Setup is Ilustrator's direct link to your printer, so the dialog box will be different based upon which printer drivers you are using (Laserwriter 7, Laserwriter 8, and so on), and the options available will also depend on what printer you are using.
The Page Setup button in the Document Setup dialog box.
Not everything can fit on an 8 1/2x11 sheet of paper. When you have artwork that is larger than what your printer can handle, you can print the artwork in pieces and then paste the pieces together after the entire file has printed.
To indicate which part of your file gets printed, you use the Page Tool (H) (see Figure 22.3). Once the Page tool is selected, press and hold down the mouse button, and an outline appears (see Figure 22.4). Whatever is inside the borders of the outline will print. The artwork in your file is not affected in any way; you are simply instructing Illustrator as to which part of your document to print.
The Page tool.
Indicating which part of a document should print with the Page tool.
Before color artwork can actually be printed on press--be it CMYK, spot color, or Hexachrome (see note)--it must be separated. What that means is each color is printed on a separate page. If, for example, you are printing a four-color process job, you need to have four pages or plates--one each for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The process of making these plates is called color separation (see Figure 22.5).
Just A Minute: Hexachrome was developed by Pantone to address one of the main shortcomings of CMYK printing: difficulty in printing bright and vibrant colors, specifically in the orange and green areas. By adding two more colors, Orange and Green, to CMYK, a much larger gamut (range of colors) is attainable. Essentially, this results in a 6-color job (CMYKOG), hence the name Hexachrome.
A separated file.
In most cases you send your files to a service bureau that prints the separations for you on film and provides you with a Matchprint (a high quality color proof, made directly from the film). But not every job needs to go to film, and there are times when printing separations on your laser printer are adequate. There are also times when I'll print separations to my laser printer to make sure they print correctly. Over the years, this has saved me thousands of dollars in potential film costs.
If all of this talk about magenta and film is making you nervous, put down the book, take a deep breath, sip a beverage, and pick up the book again. Now let me tell you that printing separations is real easy in Illustrator. There are two ways to open Illustrator's Separation Setup dialog box.
After choosing one of these, you are presented with the Illustrator Separation dialog box (see Figure 22.8). Here you can specify how the separations should appear, as well as specify which colors should be separated, and how.
Choosing Separation Setup from the File menu.
Choosing Separation Setup from within the Print dialog box.
The Separation dialog box.
The first step you need to do is open a PPD file. A PostScript Printer Description file contains information about your printer such as resolution, available page sizes, and line screens.
Just A Minute: On a Macintosh your PPD files are located in a folder called Printer Descriptions. This folder can be found in the Extensions folder in your System Folder.
In Windows, your PPD files are located in the Windows subdirectory.
To specify a PPD file, click the Open PPD button (see Figure 22.9), navigate to where your PPD files are and click the Open button.
The Open PPD button.
After a PPD file is loaded, you can specify options for your separations such as Page Size, Orientation, Emulsion, Halftone, and Image (see Figure 22.10). If you don't know what specifications you should use, consult your printer or production expert.
General PPD options.
This is the most important part of separating a file: Choosing which inks will print, and how they will separate. In the center of the Separations dialog box is a list of colors that are used in your document. A printer icon in the box to the left of a color indicates that the color will print to its own plate (see Figure 22.11).
In this example, magenta and black print, but the yellow plate does not.
To print spot colors, uncheck the Convert to Process checkbox (see Figure 22.12). Otherwise, spot colors are converted to process and separated as a process color, as indicated by a process color icon (see Figure 22.13).
The Convert to Process checkbox, located in the lower-left corner of the Separation dialog box.
In this example, the icon indicates the spot color brown will be converted and will print as a process color.
You can also position the separation on the page by grabbing the edge and moving it as shown in Figure 22.14.
Positioning the artwork on the page by grabbing the cropmarks and dragging.
Cropmarks are very important. They indicate to the printer where to trim the paper around your artwork. If your artwork contains bleeds (where the artwork goes past the edge of the paper), then crop marks are the only indication as to where the page should end. Follow these steps to create accurate cropmarks:
Making cropmarks.
You cannot move or edit cropmarks after you make them unless you select Release Cropmarks from the Object menu. If you do not have a rectangle selected when you choose Make Cropmarks, Illustrator draws cropmarks based on the page size.
Just A Minute: You'll remember that back in Hour 17, "Vector Filters," we learned about a filter called Create Trim Marks. Trim marks (FilterCreate
At the heart of Illustrator is the PostScript printing language. Developed by Adobe, PostScript is probably responsible for the success of the desktop publishing industry as well as the use of computers for graphic design services.
In order to take advantage of Illustrator's capabilities, you must use a PostScript printer. If a printer does not have PostScript, or a PostScript interpreter, you will get undesirable results, such as noticeable jaggy edges and the printed colors may not match what you see onscreen.
Although we hope it never happens, there are times when a file fails to print due to an error. Many times it is because the document is too complex for the printer it is being printed on, or there is a software incompatibility. If such an event occurs, try the following tips:
Things started out real easy as we learned to print our Illustrator documents. Things got a bit harder when we learned all about color separations and trapping issues. As if that weren't enough, we finished with a flair as we learned a bit about the PostScript printing language.
Well, I had a lot of fun, and I hope you did, too, as you learned all about Illustrator. Because the computer field is ever-changing, visit my web site at http://www.mordy.com for the latest information on Illustrator. And don't forget to send me email at mordy@mordy.com.
PostScript--A programming language developed by Adobe Systems for printing and page layout purposes.
Separations--The process of preparing individual color plates for printing.
Tiling--Splitting up a large page into smaller parts for printing purposes.
Cropmarks--Marks or lines that indicate to a printer where to cut the paper.
Hexachrome--A six-color printing process developed by Pantone, Inc.
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