print question

[profzippy]

Trying to help out a friend with some print work I came across a problem.
The printer wants the print ready work done in line art form. I am not sure
what was meant by this and he didn't have the time to explain it. Can anyone
give me a brief example of what line art is? The design was done in
Illustrator, so I checked the help files and the manual for any clue I could
find, but came up empty. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Ken H

[Tim Murray]

Line art is a broadly defined term. On paper, I think of ... well, art done with lines. A coloring book is an example. But what created it could be anything -- EPS, TIF, WMF, etc. Then, you have to ask if you take a drawing and add something like, say, a fill, or something more complex like a gradient, is it no longer line art? Depends on whom you ask. I think the average joe may call a solid fill still line art, but a gradient, maybe not.

If the printer won't work with you more closely, I would switch printers. Even a Kinkos will spend more time with you than that!

[Carol Ott]

Well it sounds like you have what he wants. But the smart thing to do would
be to go back and ask him to clarify.

--Carol

http://home.earthlink.net/~csott
For your viewing pleasure.

"profzippy" <ke...@nls.net> wrote in message
news:ITxH6.54614$E63.6...@news1.onlynews.com...

[Stan Wojda]

What he is probably asking for is black and white print outs that he can
photograph and make negatives from. If you have any photos or gray areas in you
job, you will have to have print outs made on a laser printer with the proper
screen. However this is not the best way to proceed. Tell your printer that the
art work has been generated in Illustrator and you could provide disks to him.
He will probably be able to generate the film negatives directly if not I would
look for a different printer. If he can work with the Illustrator files make
sure you include all the scans and fonts the job calls for.

[Mr. Man]

Not necessarily, Perhaps he has linked or placed a tiff or other raster art
into illustrator.(Someone might have told him to do it in Illustrator so he
plopped a a gif logo from the net into illustrator and a... "well it printed
fine on my bubblejet" scenrio ensued. I have the script right here.)

"Carol Ott" <cs...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:ebyH6.1080$9w6....@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...

[Carol Ott]

Right -- I didn't think of that. But I do think that he should go back to
the printer and ask *him* what he wants. We can only speculate and maybe
give wrong answers.

--Carol

http://home.earthlink.net/~csott
For your viewing pleasure.

"Mr. Man" <miles_h...@telus.net> wrote in message
news:t0AH6.8257$si5.6...@news0.telusplanet.net...

[Mike Minovski]

"profzippy" <ke...@nls.net> wrote in article
<ITxH6.54614$E63.6...@news1.onlynews.com> :

>Trying to help out a friend with some print work I came across a problem.
>The printer wants the print ready work done in line art form. I am not sure
>what was meant by this and he didn't have the time to explain it. Can anyone
>give me a brief example of what line art is?
>

Most probably by 'line art' the printer means he wants to have only solid colours (both for fills and outlines), no halftone screen areas. That is, your seps have to consist of only black or transparent areas (no dots).

This means that in your file you can't have: a) colour or grayscale bitmaps, and
b) gradient fills. You should also make sure all colours you use are obtained by mixing 100 or 0% of the basic CMYK inks (no intermediate values), i.e. your choice of colour would be limited to: 100C (cyan), 100C100M (violet/blue), 100M (magenta), 100M100Y (red), 100Y (yellow), 100C100Y (green), white (no colour), and black.

There are also three additional 'versions' of black: 100C100K (cold black), 100M100K (warm black), and 100Y100K (dull greenish black). All of them look lousy, if you ask me... :) 100K typically looks somewhat greyish (depending on paper stock and printing parametres).

Alternatively, instead of using CMYK you can do your file only in specific spot colours (using PANTONE; again, only 0 or 100% allowed). This would be a solution if you want to use colours that are not among those mentioned above. You'll have to limit the number of spot colours to four, though. Of course, this is not an option if your project will be printed together with something else on the sheet. By all means you'd better discuss all this with the printer.

Printing solid fills is much easier than printing halftone screens - they don't have to bother about fine adjustment of ink feed and print pressure while following the densitometer scales. This may be one reason for your printer's wish - especially if the paper is low-quality (like newspaper stock) or has some rough texture that easily absorbs ink.

Another reason may be that it is a low-budget project where originals will not be output from an imagesetter (on film) but from a laser printer. Laser printer halftone screens give headaches to printing shops because the screen dots are rough and uneven due to technology limitations (can't be avoided unless you intentionally print the seps at low screen frequency, like 30 lpi for a 600 dpi printer).

mike m.

--- Observing equilibrium. ---

_______________________________________________
Submitted via WebNewsReader of http://www.interbulletin.com

[profzippy]

Thanks to all for the help!
Much appreciated.

Ken H
"Mike Minovski" <donot...@interbulletin.bogus> wrote in message
news:3AEF512B...@interbulletin.com...

[Michael Greco]

I think your printer wants hard copy or otherwise known as camera ready
artwork. What we tell customers to do if they can't supply the piece on disk is
give us line work color seperated then we shoot it on camera. You may just have
a communication problem with the printer.