Preserved Topic: Does anyone have experience in print production? (Page 1 of 1)

I am curious about something about print production. I may be working on a project involving making some labels that need to be 3 color printing. I am using 2 colors and black with a gradient between the colors. Can gradient count as 2 colors or do you have to count all the inbetweens. I put together a sample to see if what I had in mind matched the possible clients vision. You can find it at: http://www.finlinson.com/Bob/index.html It would be ona pre printed packaging label.

<img src="http://www.finlinson.com/portfolio/images/Quarath%20signiture.jpg" width="125
" height="50">

Arrggh
Sorry Never actually posted before
http://www.finlinson.com/Bob/index.htm

I hope the sig file works this time.

It helps to read the directions I hope it works this time. If not then I'll try again another day.

Maybe this time. Maybe not

Arrggggggghhh!!!

HA! the problem seems to be that you're not using capital letters...I guess UBB stuff needs to be capitalized.

No, capital letters are not required, but having a space in the middle of an image name doesn't play on the WWW! aybe for viewing locally, but that just can't work on UNIX. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

As to your problem, yah, I have bunches of pritn experience, I'm sure I'm not the only one. First question, how many copies are you planning to print?

If the quantity is small, you can probably go with digital printing in which case colors don't matter.

If you're going to try and save some money doing a print with "spot colors", I can see this as blend from the orange to nothing, and a blend from purple to nothing, two halftones merging together. Then a print of black to trap the two, letting the type leak out. Doing a good spot color separation can be a pain if you don't know what you're doing, you need an output for each color, and a series of targets so they can be lined up during printing.

You could also treat this as a 4/color process job, with CMYK colors, and simply avoid all these problems. You'd end up with an extra color, but the image handling is easier.

Of the last two, I'd usually want to do follow the spot-color option, possibly creating all of the graphics as an Illustrator EPS file. This way I could be sure of a nice smooth print of the "bob morgan" name, the type on "jerky" is rather fine, I'd be paranoid about the 4/c process of that. Before I did either of the last two though, I'd get a nice digital printout of them, Kinko's does this kind of stuff, relatively cheaply. Good luck to you!

Your pal, -doc-<P>

I reckon Doc O with his silkscreen background is best qualified to answer this. How do you figure you're going to create this? I think it looks more like an Illustrator/Freehand job than Photoshop; those drawing programs have their own ways of speccing inks. I don't see why it couldn't be done with three spot colors, going from 100%-0%, but I would wonder about banding, and about contamination in the transition area of two pretty much opposite colors. Ink on paper does something different than phosphors on screen, and I don't know how to predict it accurately. I'd hate for you to go from purple to yellow with a huge band of gray in the middle where both colors overlapped at low tints! Since the black logo doesn't do anything to mask that transition I personally would figure out who was going to print this and have a nice cozy chat with somebody in the shop more technical than an account rep before promising a client I could do it. (Account reps are employed to get business; ANYTHING is possible if you're in sales.) I'm the intrinsically nervous type.

Hope it works for you; the comp is real pretty!

The intended use fort this is for a printing company to print up huge rolls of labels with the image on it. It may not be this one this was just an idea draft. The labels will be used on an industrial label printer that will print ingredients and nutrition info over the pre printed label for different flavors of Jerky. Eventually If I end up doing it there will be 3 different sizes. it looks like a good time to try illustrator. I'm fairly new to this and haven't used it a lot yet.

I hope the Sig file works this time I changed the filename. My server doesn't seem to mind spaces but I thought that I would try that next. Anyway I guess we'll see.

Also the potential client had a bid for 4 color and was looking to change it to 3 color to save money.