An excellent article from www.creative pro on how to print colours correctly from InDesign was brought to my attention a couple of days ago. The article begins as follows.
Billions of years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, print production managers checked documents with something called “progressive proofs” or “color proofs”. These printed pieces of paper showed how each process color (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) would print alone and in combination with the other colors. They were output as follows:
• The magenta plate alone
• The yellow plate alone
• A mixture of the yellow plate combined with the magenta plate
• The cyan plate alone
• A mixture of the cyan plate with the yellow and magenta plates
• The black plate alone
• A mixture of the black plate on the yellow, magenta, and cyan plates
The production manager used these paper proofs to see whether colors combined smoothly without abrupt drop-offs when one color blended into another. The proofs also revealed whether spot colors were set to knockout or overprint correctly.
While technology has moved on, and few places employ production managers any more, you still need to know whether your documents’ colors are correct. You could let your print shop discover any errors, but who has the time or money to re-do a job when you could have prevented mistakes before going to print? Instead, let InDesign’s Separations Preview panel show you any problems and how to fix them.
It is quite a long, relatively complex and technical article, with lots of illustrations. Highly recommended. Click here to access the full article.