High quality color reproduction is a complicated
matter, under the best of circumstances and in the most skilled hands. The
advertisement you create on your computer monitor may look quite different in
print. So we have prepared this simplified guide to help Natural Life
advertisers design ads that look good and are easily readable.
Color
Registration:
Natural Life is printed on coated stock a high-speed, heat-set web offset press.
Although we pride ourselves on the high quality of the magazine and our printer
produces an excellent product, reproduction of your ad will only be as good as
the ad copy supplied. Since any one color in your ad is a combination of many
colors printed over top of each other, the edges of very small letters and
objects can look blurry if you have not strictly followed our specifications.
When you create an ad, any graphics or colored
type must be in CMYK format (see below), except for black and white ads, which
should be saved as gray-scale. However, all black type and line drawings must be
100% black so as not to take on color properties and lose clarity.
Color Accuracy:
Reversed lettering will reproduce best when it is
white on a dark colored background, using a 10 point or larger bold-faced,
non-serif font. When using colored type, please avoid font sizes smaller than 10
point and avoid light-faced fonts and fine serifs, and use background tints of
not more than 30% and not less than 70% to ensure sufficient contrast and,
therefore, optimum legibility. Also avoid extremely thin lines.
CMYK, which is the color model we require, uses
a mixture of four process colors to make other colors:
Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black. CMYK is the standard color model used in offset
printing for full-color documents. It is a subtractive color process, based on
light reflected from an object and passed through pigments or dyes that absorb
certain wavelengths, allowing others to be reflected. In other words, it begins
with white (as a white sheet of paper) and subtracts color. The cyan, magenta
and yellow pigments serve as filters, subtracting varying degrees of red, green
and blue from white light to produce a selective gamut of colors. In theory, a
combination of cyan, magenta and yellow should produce black, but in reality, it
will create a deep purple brown and the fourth color black in CMYK is needed to
produce true black.
In contrast, computer monitors emit light using
a different color model called RGB, which stands for Red-Green-Blue. The RGB
method of reproducing color is additive; it begins with black and adds these
three primary colors of light in varying degrees. No red, green or blue means
the absence of light, creating dark or black. Conversely, total coverage of each
of the three colors gives white, as you get if mixing colored spotlights on a
stage.
One of the most difficult aspects of desktop
publishing or graphic design is properly converting the RGB colors you see on
your monitor into CMYK colors so that what gets printed looks the way you want
it to. Since your monitor is creating color by shining light, and colors on a
printed page are reflecting light, it is difficult to match colors and some are
impossible to match. Computer monitors vary widely and most monitors are
calibrated at the factory to optimize crispness of text, not color accuracy in
printed documents. For instance, rich, saturated colors will often look duller
in print than when viewed on a computer monitor. In addition, the same color
settings may result in differently appearing colors from one monitor to the
next.
If you send us a color ad saved in RGB format,
we will have to convert it to CMYK. When that conversion takes place, color
shifts can occur and quality can be lost. So you should create your color ad in
CMYK and send it to us in that format (taking into consideration the caution
above about black type).
If you create your ad using Photoshop, that
program’s color settings menu allows you to convert a file to the monitor’s
color space, so that what you view on your monitor is closer to what will print.
This only affects the display, not the file. Photoshop assumes that the file’s
true colour space is the one defined in the appropriate Setup dialog box. You
may also want to calibrate your monitor (most professional graphic software
programs allow this) to ensure that the CMYK settings are relevant to print
production. Pantone colors (PMS) cannot be matched exactly using four-color
process inks.
Careful reading of software manuals will show
you how to set your software and calibrate your monitor. If you are not
comfortable doing this, either use basic colors and be sure to send us your file
in CMYK, employ a graphic designer who is used to working in the print medium,
or hire us to create your ad for you.
