When you're creating a job that's going to print on a digital
device, there are some special color
considerations you might want to keep in mind.
Just a few little things to think about.
One of those things concerns gradients.
Now banding may occur in light areas.
This is not something that's limited to just digital
devices we've seen it on offset presses as well.
And so over the years, we've come up with this solution.
Create the gradient in Photoshop instead
of Illustrator or your page layout program.
And then go into Photoshop and add a little bit of noise or texture.
Now a very pale gradients may still be an issue,
and as I said, it's not just on digital presses.
So let me show you how easy it is to fix this.
Now I'm in Photoshop.
And, if you're seeing any banding currently.
It's as a result of video compression.
So, I'm going to ask you to use your imagination
and pretend that this is an utterly nice smooth gradient.
So what would happen if I had banding on press?
Well, I have accentuated this for dramatic effect,
but you can see those little stripes, I hope.
So what we do is, we apply sort of
an optical illusion and break that up by adding noise.
So here I've duplicated my layer and I want to give myself
some flexibility, so I'm going to turn this layer into a smart object.
And that way if I don't like the results of my first application of noise, I
can just change that because it's a smart object and I get a fresh start every time.
So to do that, I'm going to go to filter and choose convert for smart filters.
And Photoshop confirms what I just told you,
it's going to turn it into a smart object.
You can see that little icon at the lower right of
my layer thumbnail that tells me that it's a smart object.
So now to add some noise, I'm going to go to Filter > Noise and Add Noise.
Now, I'm going to accentuate this just for drama here.
You wouldn't want to add that much, but I want to point out some settings.
I'm accentuating the amount of noise because I'm hoping that
you're going to see some little odd colors in here,
that's a blue grading, but you might see some little
bits of red and some bright green slipping into this.
If you don't choose monochromatic, you're going to see
that happen, so remember you're trying to replicate
a flat gradient and not have that be modified at least as far as color goes.
So you're going to want to choose monochromatic.
Now Gaussian actually tends to be a little bit noisier, a little bit rougher.
So, I say go for uniform.
And of course, you'd never add this much noise.
Usually, you're going to find that about one or two percent is enough.
So I'm gona reduce it to the value that I would use, about 2%.
Again, because of video compression it may be very subtle on screen.
You may not see any noise at all.
But I'm going to zoom in and now I'm up to
600% so that'll give me some sense of what's going on.
So, this optical illusion is going to break look of banding on press.
You can see now because I use smart filters that
add noise as a separate entry in the layers panel.
I can turn it off, I can turn it on.
If I decide that I need to change my settings,
all I have to do is double click, add noise.
It brings up my little dialog and if I wanted to change my values, there we go.
Now, very pale gradients are an issue not
just on digital devices but also on offset presses.
So again, we've had this approach, this cure, for years.
We can see some banding here.
Now, I wannna point out too that often now, we provide
our customers with proofs that are generated on ink jet printers and
some of those, even though they're very tightly calibrated, may be
prone to a little bit of banding in really, really light areas.
So, if you're creating a job that's going
to actually print on an offset press, but you're
getting this ink jet proof, if you see banding
in very very pale pastel gradients, ask the printer.
He's probably going to say, yeah that's sort of an artifact of
the digital proofer, but it's not going to be like that on press.
And if he says that, believe him, because he's telling you from previous experience.
And again, the fix is to turn this into a smart filter layer, because of the
flexibility, add a little bit of noise by going to Filter, Noise, and Add Noise.
And it remembers the setting I had before.
Again, I'm probably not going to go above about two, and you want to
stick with monochromatic because you don't want any other colors coming in.
It would be really obvious on a gradient like
this that goes from a pastel pink down to white.
So, it might seem odd.
Usually we're trying to get rid of noise,
but, in this case, noise is actually beneficial.
You also may have to deal with some issues that come
about when you're printing large, solid areas on toner based devices.
You may see some mottling occur.
You don't have a nice even tone of your color.
The fix is very similar to what we
do for banding in gradients, you go into Photoshop.
Although generally we add texture rather than noise.
So let me show you what I mean.
Here in Photoshop I've made an image, it's just a flat color and it's the same values
that I used in a bit of illustrator
artwork that I had placed in my page layout.
And to fix this I'm going to add a little bit of texture.
And again to give myself flexibility, I'm going to use Smart Filters.
Remember that makes a smart sbject and I'm going to
add that texture by going to Filter and Filter Gallery.
Now, that's some texture, isn't it?
But that's really not what I had in mind.
So I'm going to go to Texturizer and there are a number of options here.
There's, I'm going to scale these up so you can see them.
Brick, that would certainly hide any modeling effect.
And Burlap, you're going to see that tiling.
So that's usually unsatisfactory.
And Canvas, you're going to see the same thing.
You can see where the repeat is.
However, with the sandstone, there is a tile but it's really not obvious.
I think you'd have to look hard and I think, it's
the sort of thing that people aren't really going to look for.
Now if I increase the relief value, then you
start to see the real nature of the texture.
I don't think you want something quite that pronounced.
Generally speaking, if you're a bit below 100%, you set this
relief down to 1 or 2, that's enough to do it.
You can't go below 1 or you have no relief at
all, and in that case it's back to being a flat tint.
But, I say, try the 1 and a bit below 100% and see if the results are satisfactory.
You should also ask the printer, because
they likely have prior experience with this and
they may some settings that they've come up with that they know are going to work.
And again because I made this a smart filter,
I can turn it off, I can turn it on,
if I want to change my settings I can just
double click filter gallery and it brings this back up.
I decide I want to scale down a bit, there we go.
And a nice thing about smart objects is that if I change
my mind two weeks from now, I can still always start afresh.
That's what makes them so great.
Something else that you have to consider is heavy coverage.
And one of the things that makes this sort of an issue is the fact that on
an offset press the ink actually sinks into
the paper, becomes part of it in a way.
But on a digital press, the toner is pressed onto the surface
of the paper, and it adheres to it because of heat and pressure.
So, it's slightly separate from the paper itself, it's not absorbed into it.
And, that can lead to cracking if that
stock, especially if it's heavy stock, is folded.
Often, the solution to that is to score that stock first and
then fold it, and that can really minimize that tendency to crack.
But, one thing you might want to do is design to avoid heavy coverage over folds.
That might prevent the problem from happening at all.
And here's something a little bit odd but the way that toner is applied
to paper is pressure and heat that's the same way you laser printer works.
So if you're creating lets say your letter
head and having it printed on a toner based
press, very heavy coverage might result in that toner
flicking off or perhaps melting inside your laser printer.
And that doesn't sound like fun, does it?
So for something like letter head, you either go for very light coverage or you
might consider having your letter head printed offset
rather than on a toner based digital press.
Now what about Spot Colors?
Now the solutions vary actually by press vender.
Special mix toner and inks are available by most digital presses.
But you may find that you don't have a complete PANTONE offerings.
You have a wide gamut but maybe not that pale green you have your heart set on.
But here's something to consider, the gamut
of inks on large format inkjet printers
and toner base presses even though they may be called image with yellow and black.
They're capable of printing a much wider range of color.
So that actually makes the matching of spot colors easier.
You may find that you come closer on a digital press than
you do on an offset press if you're just printing processed colors.
That's kind of good news.
And we're also starting to see some metallic digital inks available.
So this is just a sign of things to come.
We're going to have a wider and wider color
palettes to pick from as time goes by.