Of interest to graphic arts
professionals, designers, production peopleUpdated on Wednesday, September 30, 2009
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KEY:
Of interest to graphic arts
professionals, designers, production people
Of interest to people working
with color management systems
Of interest to Multimedia
designers and producers
Of interest to photographers
Of interest to designers of art and systems
for the World Wide Web
1 page monochrome
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches
PDF format (requires Adobe Reader 5.0 or greater) The file is not compressed
Last updated: October, 2007
Description: This is a template, in PDF format, that you print, mount on a sheet of cardboard, then cut out with a straight-edge and X-Acto knife. It provides three wedges that you place between your artwork and the edge of your scanner to remove moiré patterns. Start with the 5° wedge, and escalate to the higher-value wedges if that one fails. One of them will work, I promise!
By scanning already-printed artwork at a correct angle, the beat interference created by the scanner itself can be eliminated from the resulting image. Scan off-angle, and then rotate the result in Adobe Photoshop to get an image that is moiré-free.
Intended audience: This essay is designed for the graphic artist, designer or photographer.
2 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches
PDF format (requires Adobe Reader 5.0 or greater) The file is not compressed: 3.4MB
Last updated: August, 2006
Description: This flyer explains the relationship between the resolution of images intended for press reproduction and wide-format ink-jet printers.
Intended audience:
This essay is designed for the graphic artist, designer or
photographer.
6 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches
PDF format (requires Adobe Reader 5.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last updated: October 22 , 2006
Description: This essay describes several techniques for simple portrait lighting for professional portraiture. It concentrates (I wanted to say "focuses") on how to make lovely professional portraits with a minimum of equipment. Using simple, or even available light, a reflector and good posing techniques, you can make anyone look professional in a portrait. Three portrait lighting techniques are illustrated, each of which will produce a lovely portrait.
This was prepared as a class handout for the IGAEA Conference at Cal Poly State University where I teach. The conference is an annual gathering of graphic arts educators. The essay is designed as a basic tutorial on portrait lighting.
Intended audience:
This essay is designed for the graphic artist, designer, journalist,
newsletter editor or photographer.
3 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches
PDF format (requires Adobe Reader 5.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last updated: October, 2006
Description: This essay describes the SWOP specification,
and why it may not be correct for CMYK setting in Adobe Photoshop
for most of us.
SWOP is a valubale industry asset, used reliably by many in the
advertising and web-offset printing segment of the printing industry.
But, it's inappropriate for most sheet-fed printing.
Intended
audience: This essay is designed for the graphic artist, prepress
professional and printer.
1 page color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches
PDF format (requires Adobe Reader 5.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last updated: February, 2005
Description: This is a description of a clever technique for automating the production of PDFs in Acrobat Distiller. It works with any combination of settings and the usual distiller-compatible files. Give it a try! It will improve your productivity.
Intended
audience: This essay is designed for the graphic artist, prepress
professional and printer.
7 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 4.0 or greater). This file is not compressed.
Last revised and updated: April, 2005
Description: This is an introductory essay on the virtues of, and techniques for making panoramic images with a regular camera, a tripod and special software that completes the task of "stitching" images into a complete (or incomplete) panoramic photo. Includes new information on making your own panoramic camera mount and indexing strip.
New sections added include a discussion of how to set exposure for panoramic images, how to set the nodal point for rotation, and what films to use for best results.
Intended audience: Photographers,
experimenters, Web page designers, graphic artists, all who prepare
artwork for distribution over the Internet or inclusion in multimedia
projects.
1 page black and white
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 4.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last Updated: August 16, 1999
Description: Challenged by punctuation usage? Do you find it difficult to use apostrophes correctly? You're not alone. Judging from the books and magazines I read, we need a good deal of punctuation education!
This one-page document answers questions on how to use the apostrophe and the open-quote character. Seeing the misuse of punctuation raises my hackles (whatever hackles are) and causes me to write stuff like this.
This page has little to do with the graphic arts except that we, as members of the greater publishing community, are responsible for the protection and preservation of printed language, and by extension, of punctuation. When Exxon uses improper punctuation in a two-page national ad, we need help!
1 page color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches (can be enlarged to poster size)
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 4.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last Updated: June 18, 2005
Description: Challenged by alumni usage? Are you tongue-tied when it comes to the use of one of the few words in English which has number-and-gender declination?
This one-page document explains how to use the four different words for graduates: the various forms of the word alumni.
I put this poster together so that alumni departments in the English-speaking world can download it and post it where their workers will have access to it. I have found that so few people understand these words, that it's useful to make the effort to teach them how. If you work in an Alumni Department, help yourself! Enlarge it and print it for a wall poster with my best wishes. I assert no copyright on the chart.
1 page color
Size: 11 x 8.5 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 4.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last updated: New June 21, 2005
Description: This diagram describes how embedded profiles can help get color right in all forms of electronic publishing.
Intended audience: This
essay is designed for the photographer, graphic artist, printer
or prepress specialist.
Vector that, Charlie!
A quick study in file types, history, metaphors and apple pie
4 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 4.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last updated: New July 21, 2002
Description: This essay describes vector and raster files, and shows the differences between them. It's basic, but it answers some of the questions that come up from time to time in my lectures.
Intended audience: This
essay is designed for the photographer, graphic artist, printer
or prepress specialist.
Years of upheaval in the graphic arts--
this is not the printing industry of 1985!
8 pages color (prints nicely in black and white)
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last updated: July 21, 2002
Description: This essay is an overview of the changes in the printing industry since 1985. It discusses conventional printing technologies and typographic systems, and the "primordial ooze" that created desktop publishing.
Intended audience: This essay is designed for graphic artists,
printers or prepress specialists.
4 pages color (prints nicely in black and white)
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last updated: July 23, 2002
Description: I prepared this for the 1999 Presidents' Conference of the Printing Industries of America. It describes how color management works, how devices are profiled and then how the profiles are put to work in graphic arts production.
Intended audience: This
essay is designed for photographers, graphic artists, printers
or prepress specialists.
4 pages color (prints nicely in black and white)
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Last updated: Updated July 23, 2002
Description: I prepared this for the 1999 Photoshop Conference in Monterey, California. It discusses the SWOP color standard, color gamuts, and how ICC profiles are made for output devices - laser color printers, ink-jet printers, and printing presses.
Intended audience: This essay is designed for the graphic
artist, prepress specialist or printer.
4 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 5.0 or greater) The file is not compressed
Last updated: Updated October, 2006
Description: Color film is corrected for incorrect color balance in the lab. Digital cameras often exhibit a color cast that is a result of the light being wrong for the current camera settings. In this short essay I show how I took similar photos using different settings on the camera (to get these effects on purpose), and then I show how I fixed the problems visually. In each case I got a good result with pleasing color.
Intended
audience: This essay is designed for the graphic artist, prepress
specialist, consumer or professional photographer, or color production
person. Anyone who uses a digital camera will profit from the
information in this essay.
4 pages color (prints well in black and white)
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0 or greater)
Last updated: New, December, 1998
NOTE: In Snow Leopard (OS 10.6) Apple removed the scriptability from ColorSync, alas.
Description: This is a basic introduction to the scripting of ColorSync 2.5 for building productivity applications on Macintosh computers. It begins with a basic description of AppleScript and its command structure, and then follows with an example of a droplet script that will embed a ColorSync profile in a TIFF file. It also explains how hot folder applications work, and how new folder action scripts work.
To complete the scripts, a modest understanding of AppleScript will be necessary, though some basic material is included.
Intended audience: This essay is designed for the graphic
artist, prepress specialist and color production person.
5 pages color (prints nicely in black and white)
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0 or greater)
Last updated: New, January, 1999
Description: I prepared this for the 1999 Photoshop Conference in Monterey, California. It discusses methods for restoring images from fading, and fogging, and describes a technique I recently used to restore a painting damaged by age and cracquelure.
Intended
audience: This essay is designed for the graphic artist, photographer
and retouching artist.
3 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0 or greater)
Last updated: New, March, 1999
Description: This essay describes how the World Wide Web can be an asset to commercial printers and other graphic arts firms. It explains how the Web forms one arm of a concerted marketing program.
Intended audience: Printers,
service bureaus, graphic arts professionals.
5 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0 or greater)
Updated: May 7, 2000
Description: This essay is an explanation of dot gain, a phenomenon common to all printing processes and substrates. It explains how dot gain occurs, why it is important, and how to measure and control it using electronic tools such as Photoshop's Curves control.
Related items: The 100-step grayscale EPS file is useful to completing some of the tasks recommended in this essay. You can download it from this site (see the reference to it, lower on this page).
Intended
audience: The Dot Gain essay is intended for printers, prepress
specialists, graphic designers, production artists anyone
who is responsible for the correct reproduction of images in print.
8 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0)
Last updated: September 22, 1999
Description: The art and science of Kodak's obsolete Photo CD scanning technology is described in this essay. For years I was an enthusiast for Photo CD, but now Kodak has discontinued the product and there are few, if any labs making them. This essay will be helpful to historians who are researching good technologies that were overwhelmed by changes in the industry.
Intended audience:
The Photo CD essay is intended for printers, prepress specialists,
graphic designers, production artists anyone who is responsible
for the correct reproduction of images in print.
4 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0)
Description: Making monochrome images from color can be done by a variety of methods. Photoshop offers a simple mode change to monochrome, but is the result the best you can get? This essay describes a technique for hand-processing monochrome images for the best result.
Intended audience:
Black and White from color is written for anyone who makes
images on a scanner for reproduction. Good black and white is
possible with a few extra minutes of effort.
7 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
Last revised: May, 2003
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 4.0 or greater) The file is not compressed.
Description: Resolution is probably the most confusing issue that faces the graphic artist, designer, prepress pro and desktop publisher. Controversy follows this subject around. With this essay I try to answer the basics of resolution and the mathematics behind it.
Intended audience:
Anyone who uses a scanner or digital files for reproduction
in print. This essay focuses on the printed page, and covers the
conversion of continuous-tone images into successful halftone
images.
Watch for volume two, coming soon, that will explain the resolution requirements for dye-sublimation and ink-jet printers (a work still in progress).
6 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0)
Description: This essay was originally written in 1993 for a lecture I delivered to printing industry executives. My purpose was to argue that desktop scanners were good enough to begin replacing the process camera as a method of getting continuous-tone images into the computer. I have updated it a few times, and it still works to show the basics of monochrome scanning on inexpensive desktop scanners.
Intended audience:
Anyone who is interested in using a desktop scanner to produce
real production halftones for print.
Also recommended: Resolution, A technique for calibrating desktop computer systems
4 pages, color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0).
Last Updated: November 7, 1998
Description: This is a brief description of the problems of getting color to register on-press, and some of the solutions provided by modern electronic trapping software and hardware. My book, The Complete Guide to Trapping, is currently out of print (alas!) and I hope that this brief essay will allow people to get a few answers while I ponder the revision and publishing of the Third Edition of the book.
Intended audience:
Prepress people, designers, printers, hunters, and others who
need to know about register problems and electronic trapping solutions.
5 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0)
Description: Many visitors to WWW sites find that the delay in getting images transmitted is overwhelming. This essay explains the nuts and bolts of image color depth and transmission times.
Intended
audience: Web designers, graphic artists, all those who prepare
artwork for distribution over the Internet.
Also recommended: Images for the Web; managing sizes, resolutions and speed
6 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0)
Last updated: October 13, 2000
Description: More information on web images and transmission times. Time is critical to all web pages, and oversize images are the most common problem on the Web.
Intended
audience: Web page designers, graphic artists, all who prepare
artwork for distribution over the Internet.
Also recommended: Color depth for the World Wide Web; less is usually more (bandwidth)
6 pages color
Size: 8.5 x 11 inches with margins for three-hole punch
PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader 3.0)
Updated: October 13, 2000
Description: This essay contains in-depth information on transmission times, web page image formats, color depth, size, resolution and good netizenship.
Intended
audience: Web page designers, graphic artists.
Also recommended: Color depth for the World Wide Web; less is usually more (bandwidth)
This is an Adobe Illustrator EPS file that can be used to print to any single-color printed project. The purpose is to measure and calculate actual dot gain for any printing technology and substrate.
Use this file in conjunction with the essay "Know thy enemy Understanding dot gain and its effects" to build corrective tonal curves in Adobe Photoshop. For process color work, download and print the 4C Step Chart, below. It contains four copies of the same chart carefully separated into C,M,Y and K for measuring the gain of individual process colors.
This is a great tool for controlling grayscale images for the best possible reproduction.
Intended audience: The
Gray Step Chart is intended for printers, prepress specialists,
graphic designers, production artists – anyone who is responsible
for the correct reproduction of images in print. The file is a native Adobe Illustrator file compressed with ZIP compression. You can place the image into InDesign and print it, or open it in Illustrator and print from there.
Also of interest: The essay, Know thy enemy: understanding dot gain and its effects, describes in detail how to use this and the other gray scale charts offered here. It is described in detail at the top of this page. Jump to the Dot Gain essay.
This is an Adobe Illustrator EPS file that can be used to print to any process-color printed project. The purpose is to measure and calculate actual dot gain for any printing technology and substrate.
Use this file in conjunction with the essay "Know thy enemy Understanding dot gain and its effects" to build corrective tonal curves in Adobe Photoshop or any application that can build curves. This contains four copies of the same chart carefully separated into C,M,Y and K for measuring the gains (and losses) of individual process colors.
This is a great tool for controlling full color images for the best possible reproduction.
Intended audience: The
4C Step Chart is intended for printers, prepress specialists,
graphic designers, production artists anyone who is responsible
for the correct reproduction of images in print.
Also of interest: The essay, Know thy enemy: understanding dot gain and its effects, describes in detail how to use this and the other gray scale charts offered here. It is described in detail at the top of this page. Jump to the Dot Gain essay.
This is an Adobe Illustrator EPS file that is used to measure the gray balance of gradients in printing. The file consists of 100 discrete steps of CMY values (all equal). You can print it on any printing device, and analyze the results for color casts.
Intended audience: The
CMY gray step chart is intended for those who wish to measure
the performance of printing presses, printers, imagesetters, and
proofing technologies.
Also of interest: The essay, Know thy enemy: understanding dot gain and its effects, describes in detail how to use this and the other gray scale charts offered here. It is described in detail at the top of this page. Jump to the Dot Gain essay.
NOTE: Some of these files are compressed with StuffIt. You can get a copy of StuffIt Expander for Macintosh or Windows FREE from http://www.stuffit.com
This index is always under construction, and many of the essays are dated by technological advances. I leave many of them up for historical purposes. It amazes me that these printing processes change so quickly and so dramatically.