Advances in computer technology in recent years have impacted on many industries. However, the printing and publishing industry in particular has been radically changed forever.

Processes and techniques that five years ago involved a team of specialist "tradespeople" using very expensive equipment, can now (it appears) be done by anyone with a standard home PC.

The process of creating a "mass produced publication" ready for printing, previously could have required the services of authors, copywriters, designers, typesetters, scanner operators, film strippers, platemakers and finally printers. (The term "mass produced publication" here refers to any printed piece, whether it is a small advertising leaflet, business card, large glossy magazine or newspaper.)

Many people (authors in particular) have realised that a reasonable home PC, inexpensive scanner and desktop colour printer can eliminate the need for many of the previously mentioned tradespeople. There is a huge range of software tools that assist in the production of publications. So why shouldn't "everybody become a designer" and design/produce their own publications? Why should we hike off to some expensive design house or graphic designer when we can do it all ourselves at home on the dining room table?

The answer is, there is no reason why you shouldn't do it yourself... as long as you know what your doing, have some aesthetic skills, and recognise when to call in outside help. (Mowing your own lawn and laying a few pavers yourself may make sense, but totally re-landscaping a ten acre block may be better done by hiring a "BobCat" operator.)

What Can We Do Safely and What Is Available?

Well, what type of publication do we want to produce?

Listed below are several typical categories of publishing jobs you might wish to produce. I have given a rough idea of what I believe is the best technology for each job (Obviously someone different may have a slightly different opinion of exactly where one process begins and another finishes).

Black and White (Mono) jobs

• 1 to 10 copies - Black & white inkjet printer
• 1 to 50 - Black & white laser printer.
• 50 to 500 - Xerox docutech/photocopies etc.
• 500 upwards - Single colour offset printing.

• 1 to 10 copies - Colour inkjet printer
• 1 to 50 - Colour laser printer.
• 50 to 500 - Xerox docucolour/photocopies etc.
• 500 upwards - Offset printing.

On the other hand if you need to produce 2000 brochures publicising your company, then you will need a completely different set of tools.

First of all, let's go through the various categories of software tools we can use. These fall into the following basic groups of software:

• Word processing (Keystroking)
• Image capture (Scanning)
• Image manipulation
• Drawing/Graphics
• Page layout

Word Processing Programs

The list is seemingly endless with the obvious big ones being Microsoft Word, WordPerfect and AMI Pro. While the more sophisticated programs undoubtedly make major editing functions (such as search/replace, sorting etc) very easy, even simple tools such as NotePad or Write make very effective keystroke capture programs for publishing purposes.

All the big word processors also offer a degree of page-layout and graphics capabilities, which for professional publishing purposes, is not a particularly good thing! The point is that word processors should be used only for keystroking and text editing. Text formatting and layout should be done in a dedicated page layout program.

Image Capture (Scanning) Programs

Almost all scanners on the market today come with their own image capture or scanning software, and as the saying goes, "you get what you pay for".

While there are some very good scanners available for $200-300, these scanners are not as capable as scanners in the $2000-3000 range. However, that is not to say that a $200 scanner will not be as effective for certain jobs as the $2000 model. (The small barrow versus the massive tip truck . . . I'll pick the barrow every time to get rid of a small pile of leaves, but when it comes to moving three tons of bricks...?)  

Image Manipulation Programs

Most inexpensive image capture programs do not have much in the way of image manipulation features. Some offer the basics of lightness/darkness control etc, but for advanced "cloning", filters and colour correction you will need one of the more powerful programs such as Adobe PhotoShop or Corel PHOTO-PAINT. One of the most important features/capabilities of your image capture/manipulation software is what "colour space" it creates. For professional purposes it must be able to scan or convert to CMYK. (See "Colour Space" discussion later).

Drawing/Graphics Programs

Again, there are many different programs available with the big ones being Adobe Illustrator, Freehand and CorelDRAW More important than the particular features within a program, are the "export" capabilities of a program.

For home use, drag and drop or cut and paste from one open program to another works well. However, for professional purposes graphic elements need to be exported or saved into a suitable robust format that can later be used in a page layout program. The normal format for graphics that will be used for professional publishing are EPS (Encapsulated Postscript files). So, any graphics program that can produce good EPS files will be fine for graphics creation.

Page Layout Programs

For professional publishing, where your files need to be converted from your PC to film or plates on a printing press, the page layout program is probably the most important piece of the puzzle.

The main (and reasonably expensive) programs are PageMaker and Quark Express, followed by other less expensive (and capable) programs such as Corel Ventura, PagePlus and if we must - Microsoft Publisher!

What Are The Best Programs?

How long is a piece of string?

If all you want to do is limited publishing on your own system using a printer attached to your system, then the answer is use anything that works! Microsoft Word has some fairly good layout and graphics capabilities. Microsoft Publisher is more advanced again with regard to layout. Hook either of these up with a cheap scanner and your on you way to produce half a dozen news letters on an inkjet or colour laser printer.

The problems arise when you want to take your "creation" to a printing company so that they can produce several hundred or thousand newsletters from your files.

The Offset Printing Process

To understand the problems, we need to have a brief look at the basic principles involved in offset printing presses.

For most high run printing, an image master of the item to be printed is created on a thin metal "plate" (more about plate-making later).

Without going into all the fine detail of how the image is transferred from plate to paper (involving the principle of oil and water don't mix etc) all we need to keep in mind is that printing presses (or parts thereon can only print one colour ink at a time. Sure, we have 4, 6 and 8 colour presses, but essentially these are just 4, 6 or 8 smaller one colour printing presses bolted together in a straight line (Mr Heidleberg, please forgive us for the over simplification).

Because we can only print one colour ink at a time, we need to create a plate for each colour in the job. If our publication involves 1, 2, 3 or 4 colours we will need to create 1, 2, 3 or 4 plates accordingly. If our job involves more that 4 colours however (in most cases) we still only need 4 plates.

Using combinations of what are know as the "process" colours, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK, we are able to produce almost all the colours we need.

(Yellow + Cyan = Green, Magenta + Cyan = Blue/Purple, Magenta + Yellow = Red, etc).

In theory 100% of each Cyan, Magenta and Yellow makes black, however slight impurities in the inks results in a "muddy" brown/black (see centre of 3 circles), so pure black is added. This is also useful in that the text in most colour jobs is still printed in black and it uses less ink to print large areas of text in just one colour. (A full discussion of the CMYK process belongs in another article.)

Now . . . back to our publishing project. That beautiful colour job we have on our computer screen, needs to be split up into the individual colours so that we can make a plate for each colour.

How do we make plates?

While it may well be within the reach of a home or small office user to have an inkjet printer or colour laser; offset platemakers and presses are normally not standard issue in the small office!

This means that we have to take our files to either the printing company that is going to print the job, or to a Bureau who make plates for the printers. At the present time most plates are made from large negatives; although, new "computer to plate" technology is being used by many printing companies to bypass the need for film. However, whether your files need to be taken from "computer to film", or "computer to plate" does not really matter to you- the processes and issues are very similar.

Imagesetting or platesetting machines are essentially very large laser printers using film or thin metal plates instead of paper. As almost all of these machines utilise the "Postscript" page description language, the program files you supply must also be able to either support postscript directly, or a least somehow be brought into the postscript work flow.

Many bureaus or printing companies will only accept files from programs they are familiar with, and in most cases this will be PageMaker, Quark Express, Adobe Illustrator and to a lesser extent CorelDRAW.

What's Wrong with Word and Publisher?

Very few bureaus will accept Word or Publisher files. So before you do that 2000 page family history in Publisher, check with your bureau first!

Word and Publisher files cause difficulties for film/plate outputting because of these reasons -

• Many bureaus are MAC based and with Publisher having no MAC equivalent means they can't deal with the file. PC Word files can be opened on the MAC but missing fonts can not be easily found or replaced. (PageMaker and Quark files are far more cross-platform sympathetic and have a very good system of warning about missing fonts.
• Word and Publisher do not support CMYK colour separation of photographs.
• Manual imposition, where pages need to be lifted, rotated and placed next to other pages is very difficult.

Postscript and Acrobat

Sometimes, while not supporting your particular programs in its native format, bureaus etc will accept postscript or Adobe Acrobat files.

Fortunately with Windows, almost all desktop publishing type programs print to the standard Windows printers. Even if you do not have a postscript printer attached to your own computer, you can install a postscript printer driver, print with that driver to a "file" and thereby create a postscript file and Acrobat (using Adobe Acrobat Distiller).

If your bureau or printing company support Postscript and Acrobat files then these are probably the best format to supply your files.

Normal page layout programs such as PageMaker and Quark do not store the images, graphics or fonts inside the application file. This has the advantage that the PageMaker or Quark file is relatively small and quick to page through. On the other hand, this means that you have to provide the application file plus all the image and graphics file and all the fonts to the bureau if you require the job output to film or plates.

However, Postscript and Acrobat files are "self-contained" in that all the images and fonts are built into the single file. As a result there is less likelyhood of text moving or graphics being forgotten.

(A full discussion of postscript and Acrobat will be the subject of another article.)

Colour Space and RG13, PMS, CMYK?

We have already touched lightly on the CMYK colour system for offset printing. However, we need to know about two other colour systems so we can choose the correct one for a particular job.

If we have a colourful brochure or leaflet requiring printing that uses 4 or more colours then in most cases we will require to convert the job to CMYK. (In some special jobs, special colours such as metallic gold and silver or varnishes are added to the CMYK to make a 5 or 6 colour run.).

For simpler jobs where you might only want to print in black and say one other colour, then the second colour is normally specified by the "Pantone Matching System" or PMS.

PMS involves a standard sample book of thousands of small colour samples each with its own unique number. All printing companies have the PMS book so that when you specify that your job is to be printed in black and PMS032, they can look up the number and find not only the colour but the special mixing formula to create that specific colour.

If you want to work with PMS colours and see accurate results on the screen, then your page layout program must be able to display PMS colours. Once you get up to four or more PMS colours in a job the program should be able to automatically convert those PMS colours to combinations of the CMYK inks.

So Where Does RGB Come In?

Your computer monitor (and TV), and inexpensive scanners work in RGB (Red, Green, Blue). If you are scanning photographs for use on Web sites, inexpensive scanners that scan in RGB normally give a really good result because they are scanning in the same mode as the required output. However if you are going to use the images for offset printing then they will have to be converted to CMYK, a task that some scanning software either cannot do at all or at best poorly.

Programs such as Word and Publisher use the RGB colour model to describe colour used for printed output, which is fine for simple RGB inkjet printers but of no use for commercial offset printing.

Page Imposition?

Your special project might be a 32 page magazine which you have neatly set out in PageMaker or Quark as a single 32 page document. The printing company however, at the very least will want page 32 next to page 1, page 2 next to page 31 etc so that when the printed sheets are folded and stapled, the pages end up in the correct order.

In many cases (including production of PC Update) the imposition is much more complex where 4, 8, 16 or even 32 pages may be required to be printed on one large sheet before being folded several times, then stapled and trimmed.

The files you present to a bureau or printing company will need to be correctly imposed before being output onto film or plates. Can you impose the pages yourself or will you get an expert to do it?

Does you page layout program provide any form of imposition or can it at least be imported into the professional imposition programs used at your bureau?

Questions To Ask Yourself About Your Program Of Choice

In order to produce output suitable for offset printing we need to run the program you intend to use through a check list of "must have" features.

• Is it supported by your bureau or printing company?, or
• Can it produce postscript output?
• Can you create Acrobat files?
• If you want to produce coloured offset printing jobs, can the program produce colour separations?
• Does it support CMYK and PMS?
• Does it do any page imposition or can the files be imported into an imposition program.

If you plan to do a reasonable amount of publishing work, then spending a bit of money on good DTP programs would prove to be cost effective. For a "once in a lifetime" project don't bother setting it up in a program that won't do the complete job - resist the temptation to "be the designer" and call in the experts.

My first (and second) choices of programs would be:

• Word - for word processing only
• BinuScan - image capture
• PhotoShop (CorelPaint) - image manipulation
• Illustrator (CoreIDRAW) - graphics
• PageMaker (Quark) - page layout.