Quick Tips
Desktop Design has years of experience in
all areas of design and production. On this page you will
find some of our most popular and timely tips in PDF format.
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Always build your pages to the final printed
size (trim size in printing terms). The New Document
dialog box from QuarkXPress at right shows a page to be printed at 8.5" x 11",
the final trim size. In this example the Margin Guides
at the default, 1/2" or 3 picas. Facing pages is
turned off and an automatic text box is turned on...
Converting to grayscale from a digital
color image is more than just Image> Mode>
Grayscale. Photoshop uses 30% Red, 59% Green,
and 11% Blue in an RGB image when converting to
grayscale. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for
every image or even very many images so at best it generally
serves as a comparison for other methods...
The printing process starts with a digital file. The file is processed for printing during prepress
and printed to an imagesetter or platesetter as process
separations: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The process
inks are translucent and printed at different angles.
The printing plates are mounted on the press during
what is called makeready...
Perfect register, exact register —
sometimes called a “kiss fit” — is
the printing term used to describe color objects that
precisely touch each other. The GATF
Encyclopedia of Graphic Communications uses the
term, hairline register, and defines it “In process
color printing, abutting successive colors with no color
overlap.” (Graphic
Arts Technical Foundation) While this is very easy
to create with an illustration program like Illustrator,
it isn’t always as easy to reproduce when applying
ink to paper...
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Overprints can be confusing as what you
see on the monitor isn’t always what you get in
print. In the example on the right, the top figure is
what the monitor will show whether or not the word is
set to overprint of knock-out of the background. The
word should knock out of the cyan background and be
trapped, otherwise the result when printed will look
like example on the bottom. Print separations to your
laser printer to see how the file will print on press... |
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De-aging: Wrinkle Removal
- Open an image to de-age.
- Create a new layer from the background image, Cmd/Cntrl-J
- Use the Healing Tool to remove wrinkles. Initially
make a select (Option or Alt
key) on a smooth area such as the cheeks.
- With all the wrinkles removed the image looks fake.
Adjust the layer opacity to bring back some of the
underlying wrinkles. Around 50% usually works well.
- To whiten teeth, use the Select> Color
Range. This will select too much so use the
Marquee and Lasso to deselect (with the Option/Alt
key) unwanted areas...
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Blemishes
There are a number of ways to remove blemishes
and other undesirable elements in a portrait. Here are
a combination of techniques to “improve”
this image.
- Start by duplicating the original image.
- Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur.
The Preview box should be checked. Start with the
slider on the left and slowly drag to the right until
the blemishes disappear. The image will be very blurry,
but the next step will fix it. Click OK.
- Window> History to show the
History palette. Click on the icon of the image at
the top of the palette. Click in the box to the left
of the Gaussian Blur state. This will allow painting
for the selected state on the original image.
- Select the History Brush. Choose an appropriate
size brush. Change the mode to Lighten. Paint out
the blemishes. The Lighten mode removes the blemishes
without painting in blur...
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Portraits can often be improved by lightening
dark shadows under the eyes.
- Select an image that would improve with dark eye
shadows being lightened.
- Use the Clone tool and select a brush that is a
little smaller than the areas you want to cover in
one pass.
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Vector graphics are made of bezier curves
and created with object-oriented drawing programs such
as Adobe
Illustrator, CorelDraw,
Macromedia
Freehand, and CAD applications. Bezier curves are
made up with points described mathematically on an x-y
axis (Cartesian geometry). Vector graphics are resolution
independent, unlike bitmap (Photoshop) graphics. They
print out at the resolution of the printing device:
laser printer, imagesetter, platesetter, etc. Vector
graphics can be scaled an keep their clean sharp look... |
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Copyrighting images to restrict image usage
is a pro photographer stock in trade. Particularly for
images placed on the Web for client review, stock or
portfolio protecting images is essential. Photoshop
will add copyright info to images when it is included
in the File Info information and add the copyright symbol
to the title bar. Consider making this function an action
to save time when copyrighting a number of images. For
proofs and images you may want to protect on the Web,
add a copyright onto the image itself. Creating an action
for this function is also useful to save time. Here’s
how: |
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Page Building Tips