[Ralph Barnette]

The info pallette will give you the basic information but two other things are more important. (1) Pre-determine the SCREEN resolution with the printer – 150 line, 200 line, etc. Your CMYK resolution in pixels would need to be at least 300 dpi, 400 dpi, etc. to deliver the appropriate line screen. What matters is the proper resolution being achieved on-press which in turn relies on you giving the printer the appropriate resolution to work with in the artwork. (2) In converting to CMYK, the photos should have the proper black, mid and white points set. This will vary from printer to printer and photo-to-photo as each pressand each photo is different. Paying attention to this will give you the best reproduction of your photos. Setting this up properly also includes creating CMYK conversions with ‘rich black’ settings established by the printer. If the printer cannot give you these settings, get another printer for your book, or be prepared for a less-than-stellar-looking final result.

Finally, as an option you should use a varnish overprint. It really makes the photos pop like originals. The UV offered by many printers is good too but there are many variations of varnish and you can choose the one that is as stark or as suptle as your photos require. Varnishes are usually offered by small art presses like Nexus Press in Atlanta ( https://www.thecontemporary.org/pages/nexuspress/nexuspress.html ).

[Ralph Barnette]

Mike, thanks for the reply. The original info comes out af an Excel file. After importing topics and setting up references, the column swap won’t work because there are entries without cross references, so when the index is generated there is no tab to work with (the index has 5M entries). Your response does give me an idea though. I’ll try to generate the whole index with extra tabs used as separators, swap the colums I need to the proper positions, then delete the extra columns that are unneeded and paste back into InDesign. I’ll let you know it this works.