How to Print Color Copies

Video Transcript

"I'm Alexis Neubert of Alexis, Alexis Design and we're going to go over how to print or prepare to print color copies. So before printing color copies or sending your file off to have someone print color copies for you, there's a few things that you want to keep in mind to make sure that you get the best quality; that things look as close to how you expect them to look as possible. So I have for example a basic 8 1/2 X 11 document that incorporates color images, color text and also has what it's called a full bleed style which means the color and images go right to the edge. So the first thing that I want to think about is the color format that I have. For printing in color, as opposed to web color, you want to have your images all in CMYK format and not RGB. So, in order to convert or make sure that your images are CMYK, you want to open each one in Photoshop, use your image menu and check the mode. This one is already in CMYK but I can easily convert it to RGB and if it starts in RGB I can convert it back to CMYK. This will also give you a clear picture on the screen of how your colors will look printed versus on the web because screen color can often be a lot brighter than printed color. So, you won't have as many surprises if you convert your file first. So then make sure all of your images have been updated in your layout file and you have your CMYK images in there and if you do want to print as a full bleed, then want you need to do is take anything that's going to the edge and extend it beyond the edge of the page, like so. So this red line here shows my bleed guide which is 1/8th of an inch beyond the actual page size that will be trimmed off. So I extend everything out there and then I want to create a print optimize PDF to print from or to have someone else print from. From end design you can simply go to the file menu, choose export and Adobe PDF is the first option. Choose a place to save it and name for it. When you hit save, you get a second box with some more options. You can use a simple, high quality print which is a preset for the PDF format and if you're doing this full bleed style then what you want to do is go to the marks and bleeds section in your options and you want to select prop marks and that will show your printer or yourself where to trim the document once it's printed. And then you want to put in a bleed setting; and a standard setting would be .125, that's 1/8th of an inch and therefore when printed or when this PDF is made, it'll show the information outside of the actual page size that will be trimmed off to achieve that full bleed look. And then you can hit export and it saves and then it'll automatically open in Acrobat and show us how this looks so you can see where the crop marks are the page has created. It's larger than 8 1/2 X 11 but that way when trimmed, it will be a full 8 1/2 X 11. So you may have to print on larger paper to achieve that style. If you don't want to bother with the full bleed, simply make sure that everything is pulled in at least of an eighth or quarter of an inch inside the edge of the page so that nothing gets cut off and just create some simple even borders; so on and so forth. So you can see now there's a little bit of white space on the edge of the page. It can vary depending on the type of printer and then you can make a PDF using the high quality print and you don't have to modify any of the settings. Just the standard setting is fine; it'll do it to the page size that you have an 8 1/2 X 11; we'll create your PDF. It's now ready to print to your own printer or to send off to your local copy shop to have your copies made. And that's how you make some color copies."