[Kim Mackenzie]

If you search the archives for “moire,” you’ll find a couple of techniques.

Here’s an old post – I swear by this method.

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Date: Jan 16, 2003 at 6:41 pm
Subject: Re: Removing printing artefacts

A book called Photoshop Shop Manual by Donnie O’Quinn has a really effective way to remove moir

[Kim Mackenzie]

I’d advise against changing the piece if the client has already seen and approved process swatches. That’s not to say it wouldn’t look better if the red and blue were run as spot colors instead of process. But in my experience, it’s not a good idea to make changes like that after you’ve gotten an approval.

[Kim Mackenzie]

There are a couple of new royalty free stock photo sites that are ridiculously cheap and decent quality. They follow a different model than traditional stock sites — anybody can submit photos, which are screened for resolution and quality before they’re posted to the site. The submitters are paid a percentage of the download price, instead of the image being purchased outright by the stock site and resold. (I think of it as iTunes for photos.) Prices start as low as a dollar or two, and go up based on popularity of a specific image and resolution.

Try http://www.istockphoto.com and http://www.dreamstime.com – we had our company buy a chunk of credit so we can download as needed, instead of having to run get someone to input a corporate credit card number every time we need to spend $3 on an image.

– Kim

[Kim Mackenzie]

If you save the file out as a PDF or EPS, you can try opening it into Illustator, and anything that’s type or vector, you can able to color with the correct spot colors in Illustrator – it can be a little tricky because of the way Photoshop handles fills in EPS files. Instead of a simple shape filled with color, it sends raster data (like a Photoshop layer) and uses the shape as a clipping mask. So there will be a lot of extra junk in the file you’ll have to get rid of.

Also if there’s any raster data (photographic elements, glows, drop shadows, etc), you won’t be able to color those items in Illustrator.

Might be easier to stay in Photoshop can work with Spot and Pantone colors, but it’s a fairly complex process to get the files set up properly if you’ve never done it before (you have to make the file Multi-Channel, then get all the information you want printed in Red more or less pasted into one channel, and all the information you want printed in Blue pasted into the other channel). It’s kind of a pain in the butt.

That being said, one trick that production artists use for 2-color Photoshop jobs is to set the file up as CMYK, then only use 2 of the channels. Use Cyan for anything you want to be Spot Blue, and Magenta for anything you want to be spot red. Make sure the Yellow and Black channels are empty. Then instruct your printer to use your specific spot blue in place of Cyan and your red in place of Magenta.

Ultimately, a channel or separation is just a greyscale image – there’s no color data tied into it. It’s up to the pressman to use the ink specified. So this method is fine as long as you communicate with your print shop, and show swatches to your client so they’re not confused.

Last option – if it’s crunch time, find out how much your print shop’s prepress dept will charge you to set the job up as 2-color.

– Kim

[Kim Mackenzie]

Yeah, they expanded and renamed that feature. Go to View > Smart Guides and it’ll snap to guides (plus snap objects to other objects, etc.)

You can toggle it back and forth by hitting Command (or Control) U.

k

[Kim Mackenzie]

They should open fine. Make sure you use a file extension. (I can’t remember if it’s .ai or .ai9.)

Also, if there is any text in the file, convert it to outlines (under the Type menu). That will prevent cross platform font issues.

k

[Kim Mackenzie]

If you send a PDF or an EPS with vector data included, you won’t need to send any fonts, and the text will still be vector so it’ll print crisply.

You shouldn’t have to worry about linked images.

For the future -Extensis Flightcheck Collect will do what you need. I’ve never tried it with a Photoshop file, but I think it supports it.

[Kim Mackenzie]

ImageReady – bundled with Photoshop.

[Kim Mackenzie]

Yeah, faux bold is kind of hidden – this is a common annoyance (happens to everyone once).

Bring up the Character palette
Click the little arrow in the upper right of the palette to access the flyout menu.
Uncheck Faux Bold

Ta da

[Kim Mackenzie]

If it’s going to be printed in Greyscale, then work in Greyscale.

Running “desaturate” doesn’t convert to greyscale – if you’re in CMYK, it’ll still be a 4-ink file. So just start/end in Greyscale.