which design package for printed brochure layout

[Donna Kempster]

Hi

I use photoshop CS2 to design our printed catalogues, flyers and mailouts. When they are printing litho the press quality output works fine and there are no problems at all. I am trying to get a couple of postcards printed digitally for PR and product despatches but becuase they print as at a lower resolution than the litho printers it is 'pixelating' the text and looks dreadful.

I can't afford to get illustrator or in design just for the digital jobs we do and wondered if anyone knew a way to get round this within photoshop or if there was something else I could do (other than pay for someone else to artwork it.)

TIA D

[pinbrook]

What type of printer are you using?

what is the output resolution of the image you are printing?

[Donna Kempster]

We are using a digital printing company. I've output the PDF for press quality which is supposed to hold the text as vectors layers but when this printer imports the PDF into his 'system' it changes the text and makes it all fuzzy! As you will know from previous posts I'm not techinally minded (!!) and I've read the manual, googled and followed tutorials but I can't seem to get round the problem - which might just be ad his end and a different digital printer may not have the same issue? Digital printing is all new to us - we were used to litho printing so don't really know if the printer is just pulling a fast one or not. Thanks D

[pinbrook]

Have tou asked the printer how he wants the input to come to him?

You say his system messes your PDF maybe he has a preference for how stuff comes to him

[fergusw]

If your image is at 300dpi in Photoshop then whip it out as a TIFF and send it to him. Make sure it's at least 32-bit CMYK for a litho print.

[Donna Kempster]

Thanks Jo, he wants me to use illustrator or in design but getting a copy of that for a few digital jobs is out of our budget unfortunately. We got phototshop last year to produce our catalogues in house as this saved huge design bills and have done our magazine advertising artwork with it as well but now have the problem with outputing for this small job (only doing 150 copies of one piece and 300 of another).

I could get it artworked in illustrator but again I wanted to keep the costs to a minimum. At the moment we only need one feature and the job will pay for itself add more costs and it all becomes marginal then.

If we'd have understood it all last year we'd have prob got a better solution in terms of package but that's just not option at the mo. I was hoping if someone had come across this problem before and found a miracle solution or printed digitally and knew the process better than I do. I don't suppose you know if there is any free ware that would do a conversion on the text to stop it pixelating - or am I clutching at huge straws now!!

Thanks again, D

[Donna Kempster]

If your image is at 300dpi in Photoshop then whip it out as a TIFF and send it to him. Make sure it's at least 32-bit CMYK for a litho print.

All the various elements are each 300 dpi and the file is still in all it's layers but his system flattens it all and then messes up the text. Will outputing as a TIFF stop the text bluring at his end?

Cheers D

[fergusw]

Whoops - just re-read your original post.

Photoshop should be sufficient. If you have created the original image file at teh right size then 300 dpi should be fine. If it is for litho then CMYK TIFF or EPS should be fine. For your standard desktop inkjet then its RGB (unless printer is CYMK ink!)
If your font is pixelating then it may be because of forced constraints on size or rendering of text, hence getting the right size and format to begin with should eliminate any post-processing the printer should have to do.

[fergusw]

Will outputing as a TIFF stop the text bluring at his end?

TIFF or EPS should be sufficient and handle the text properly. I'm no expert in this area though - I worked at litho press company in IT so the info I have is by osmosis!

Photoshop should be all that you require though.

[Donna Kempster]

I've output it as cmky - perhaps I should have output rgb as digital and not litho - but would have thought they would have converted on input and that shouldn't mess up the rendering of the text only the colours?

I don't really understand the difference between the processes so not sure whether it's just this particular printers problem and if I found myself another one it would be fine. He is blaming the phototshop pdf and says becuase he prints at a lower resolution than litho this causes the problem.

Thanks, I might try speaking to a different printer and see what they say.

D

[pinbrook]

Thanks, I might try speaking to a different printer and see what they say.

I would do that as i also think Photoshop is fine for what you need to do

[leehack]

Are you using a strange font Donna? Sounds like they don't have the font you are using installed their end.

[Donna Kempster]

I'm using Eurostille didn't think that was strange - we've only got the basic package and it's in there!

Have spoken to a different printer and sent him the file to have a look at so hopefully he will be able to sort it for me. Will let you know the outcome.

Thanks everyone, as always such a valuable source of advice. D

[Donna Kempster]

Hi all

I've spoken to a new printer and he can see no problems with the files and thinks that the problem lay with the other printers kit.

Thanks again for all your advice and reassurance.

Donna

[jont]

Are you using a strange font Donna? Sounds like they don't have the font you are using installed their end.

It should not matter if you are exporting the "text as curves" options with the EPS or the PDF formats... you are always best exporting the text as curves as this negates the need for installed fonts and allows scalability (not possible once the text is rasterized)

I can wholeheartedly recommend CorelDRAW .. which I now use in place of WORD for even basic letters .. it's text handling is superb as well as the vector output.. and works very well alongside CS2