JAWS! The best method to send us your MS Publisher document. Tips for optimizing your MS Publisher Filesfor printing at our print shop
Publisher has many features which, if used correctly, will make it much easier for us to prepare your job for the printing process. The following tips will help you prepare your Publisher jobs for high-quality printing or digital copying If you have questions about preparing your job, it is always a good idea to talk to us before you start your project.
Tip 1: Always use Microsoft Publisher 2003 Many of the following tips apply only to Publisher 2003, which includes new and improved features that were designed to be used by professional printers.
Tip 2: Choose your color model early Before you spend a lot of time designing your publication, you should decide whether or not you want to print your publication in color. If you want to print in color, there are several different ways to do it. If you will print your publication to a high-quality digital color printer, you don't need to worry about color. However, if you will have your publication printed on an offset printing press, you need to consider that the cost of printing will increase depending on the color model you use. Also, be aware, that graphics and pictures printed on a offset press must be of high quality (discussed below). Graphics and pictures must also be grayscale or full color (cmyk), because Publisher does not support two-color or three-color file formats. RGB color cannot be used in an offest printed project. RGB color can be used on a digital full color printer. One other critical consideration is the printing colors of your logo. If your logo is designed to be printed in one color, then any color model will do, as long as that color model includes the color of your logo. However, if your logo is two or more colors printed then you must include those colors. If you want to print your project on an offset press, you must provide your logo seperated into those colors. Your logo cannot be in the RGB color model, because RGB files print on an offset press as shades of gray. Publisher does not accomodate two spot color graphic files, so, to print a two or more color logo on an offset press using Publisher may require printing in full color (cmyk) mode.
Offset printing requires that a skilled professional press operator set up and run the print job. Every ink needed to print the job requires more setup for the operator and increases the cost. The number of inks you need depends on the color model you choose. When you set up color printing for your publication, you can choose from the following color models:
In Publisher, when you choose a color model, the color picker is restricted to only those colors that are available in that color model. For example, if you set your color model to Single color, you can only choose line, fill, and text colors that you can make with that single ink color. If you set the color model to Spot colors, you can only choose line, fill, and text colors that can be made using your spot-color inks.
To choose the color model for your publication, do the following:
Tip 3: Make sure your publication pages are the correct size -- Before you create your publication, you should decide what size you want the finished printed publication to be. Once you determine the page size you want, set it up in the Page Setup dialog box. Take care at this stage to make sure that the page size you choose in the Page Setup dialog box is the size you want. It is difficult to change the page size after you start designing your publication. Also, we will have trouble printing your publication to a different page size than the one you set up
*It is important to note that in page setup and printing, page size and paper size are two different things: Page size always refers to the size of the finished page. Paper size always refers to the size of the sheet of paper on which you will print the publication.
*It is important to note that in page setup and printing, page size and paper size are two different things:
In many cases, the paper size will need to be larger than the page size in order to allow for bleeds and printer's marks or to enable you to print more than one page per sheet of paper. If you want to print multiple copies or pages on a single sheet of paper, you can do it easily in Publisher. However this is practically limited to things like business cards and post cards or a simple booklet that uses two-page printer's spreads. Printing multiple copies on a page is called imposition. As a general rule, whether you are going to use imposition or not, you should set your page size to be the final size of the item. For example:
Whatever you do for steps 7 and 8, we will make sure that the printer and paper settings are correct for the device we will be usingin to print your booklet.
If you have elements in your publication that you want to print to the edge of the paper, you will have to set these up as bleeds. A bleed is where the element extends off the publication page. The publication is printed to a paper size that is larger than the finished page size, and then trimmed. Bleeds are necessary because most printing devices, including offset printing presses, can't print to the edge of the paper. To create a bleed in Publisher, simply enlarge the elements you want to bleed so that they extend off the edge of the page by 0.125 inches. If the element is an AutoShape you created in Publisher, you can easily stretch it. However, if the shape is a picture, you have to take more care to ensure that you don't get the picture out of proportion or that you don't lose part of the picture you want to keep when the page is trimmed.
Tip 5: Use linked pictures -- Insert pictures into your publication as links whenever possible and make sure to include the linked graphics when you hand off your publication to your commercial printer. If the picture is a link, your commercial print service can edit any of the pictures if they need to. This is especially important if you use Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) graphics. This is because you can't save a picture from Publisher in EPS format. The EPS graphic will only be available to your commercial printer if it is supplied as a separate linked file. To insert a picture as a link, do the following:
Tip 6: Size digital photos and scanned images appropriately -- Graphic that are created by a paint program, a scanning program, or a digital camera are made up of a grid of of differently colored squares called pixels, which is short for "picture element." The more pixels a graphic has, the more detail it shows. The resolution of a picture is expressed in pixels per inch (ppi). Every picture has a finite number of pixels. When you scale a picture n Publisher you are not changing its total number of pixels, you are changing its resolution: the number of pixels per inch. Scaling a picture larger decreases the resolution (fewer ppi). Scaling the picture smaller increases the resolution (more ppi). If your picture resolution is too low, it will print blocky. If the picture resolution is too high, the file size of the publication will be unnecessarily large and it will take a longer time to open, edit, and print. Pictures with more than 1,000 ppi may not print at all.
Color pictures that you will have printed should be between 200 and 300 ppi. You can have higher resolution—up to 800 ppi—but you should not have lower. The following table lists the maximum and minimum sizes at which you should print various sizes of digital photos:
Pixel dimensions Minimum size Maximum size 640 x 480 (0.3 megapixels) 0.6 inches x 0.8 inches 3 inches x 2 inches 1024 x 768 (0.75 megapixels) 1.25 inches by 1 inch 5 inches x 3.5 inches 1200 x 900 (1 megapixel) 1.5 inches x 1.125 inches 6 inches x 4.5 inches 1700 x 1300 (2 megapixels) 2.125 inches x 1.625 inches 8.5 inches x 6.5 inches 2000 x 1500 (3 megapixels) 2.5 inches x 1.875 inches 10 inches x 7.5 inches Note: You may sometimes see picture resolution expressed as dots per inch (dpi) instead of ppi. These terms are often used interchangeably.
Effective resolution -- Every picture in your publication has an effective resolution that takes into account the original resolution of the graphic and the effect of scaling it in Publisher. For example, a picture with an original resolution of 300 ppi that has been scaled 200% larger, has an effective resolution of 150 ppi. To find the effective resolution of a picture in your publication, do the following:
Reducing high-resolution graphics -- If you have just a few graphics whose resolution is too high, you may have no problem printing them. However, if you have several high resolution graphics, your publication will print more efficiently if you reduce their resolution. You can reduce a graphic's resolution using a third-party paint program or you can use Publisher. Before you reduce the resolution of a graphic, you should consult with us. We will be able to tell you exactly what resolution you need. In Publisher you can reduce the resolution of a picture by exporting it with a new resolution, and then exchanging the exported picture for the one in your publication. To do this:
Tip 7: Proof your colors on your desktop printer -- Before you send your file to us, print a copy of it on a color desktop printer as a color proof. Printing a color proof will give you an idea of how colors in your publication will look when printed. Some colors will appear brighter on screen than on paper. Printing your file to your printer will never give you the exact colors the we will achieve with your file. The best way for you to know what color we will achieve, consult a Pantone Color Guide.
Tip 8: Avoid using synthetic font styles -- Typefaces are typically designed with different fonts to represent variations in the typeface. For example, the typeface Times New Roman is actually four fonts: Times New Roman, Times New Roman Bold, Times New Roman Italic, and Times New Roman Bold Italic. To simplify using the variations, when you apply the bold or italic style to text in Publisher, Windows applies the appropriate font if it is available. For example, if you select some text in Times New Roman and then click Bold on the Formatting toolbar, Windows substitutes Times New Roman Bold for the text.
However, there are many typefaces that do not have separate fonts to represent bold and italic. When you apply the bold or italic style to these fonts, Windows creates a synthetic version of the typeface in that style. For example, the typeface Comic Sans MS does not have an italic font version. When you apply the italic style to text in Comic Sans MS, Windows will make it look italic by slanting the characters.
Synthetic font styles will print as expected to most desktop printers. However, high-end print devices, such as imagesetters, will likely not print synthetic fonts as expected. Make sure that you don't have any synthetic font styles in your publication when you hand it off to your commercial printer.
To be sure that you don't have any synthetic fonts styles, you need to know what typefaces you are using and what variations are available as separate fonts. To see what typefaces you have used in your publication, do the following:
Tip 9: Avoid using tints for text at small font sizes
If you use colored text in your publication use solid color when text is at small sizes. In this sense solid color means black or spot colors, or if you are printing in full color then only cyan, magenta, black or yellow may be used. Yellow is not usually a good choice for type of any size unless it is being printed on a dark background or is being reverse printed from a dark colored box or object. Avoid using a tint of a color. Publisher prints tints as a screen, or percentage, of a solid ink color. When viewed close-up, the screen appears as a pattern of dots. For example, a 50% tint of green would be printed as a 50% screen of the solid green ink: When the tinted text is at a small font size, the dots that make up the screen may not be sufficient to clearly define the shape of the characters. This may result in text that is blurred or speckled and hard to read. For text at larger font sizes, roughly 18 points and larger, tints are not a problem.
Tip 10: Use the Pack and Go Wizard to prepare your publication file -- Microsoft Publisher includes a useful feature for preparing a file for you to take to a commercial printer. This is the Pack and Go Wizard. When you pack your publication using the the Pack and Go Wizard, Publisher does the following:
To run the Pack and Go Wizard, do the following:
Send us the packed file, (it will be the one with the ".puz" last name) using the On Line Print Center tools. Publisher will also make a file called "unpack.exe" . You do not need to send us this file.
