Design Tips For Digital Printing
If you're designing a job for the ULTRASTREAM with the exception of black and yellow, when considering the use of other large areas of solid color or flat tints we recommend using a spot fifth color. If your budget does not allow for the use of the fifth color, keep in mind while solid colors and tints created from CMYK values used to pose a major problem with the earlier E-Print 1000 the banding associated with them has been almost 99% eliminated. Which ever option you should choose, if you have any doubts about how something might turn out, you may want to add noise (variation in color) to create a texture. The Quickmaster DI is a lot more forgiving in this area. Be careful using spot colors or other special colors such as metallics. Some digital presses can handle spot colors while others convert spot colors to the closest CMYK values. Avoid using metallics when printing in CMYK there are simply no PMS matches that will print metallic. If you would like a color chart of spot color conversions for our Ultrastream 3000 please call and request one.

The Real Deal On File Preparation
Some page layout programs and many prepress service providers and printers cannot produce acceptable results if you use True Type or specialized fonts. Most recommend PostScript Type I fonts for the best output results. When adding boxes or rules to your work, always specify the line width. Never use the default hairline of your software package. The width of a hairline is resolution-dependent, and on a high-resolution platesetter such as our Trendsetter, default hairlines tend to disappear. Convert type to a graphic in EPS files to minimize output errors and prevent font substitution. If type edits are needed later, remember that converted type is now art and no longer a font. The color gamut of your artwork is often larger than that of the printed piece.

Last, But Certainly Not The Least!
If you pay close attention to the Top Ten Problems before you submit your files, your job will be produced with more accuracy, a lot faster and less expensively than if you ignore them.

Top Ten Preflighting/Output Problems:
• Wrong or missing fonts
• Image trapping
• Banding
• Incomplete or corrupt files
• Excessive sizing/rotating of EPS, TIFF files in the page layout program
• Spot colors not converted to process colors or vice versa
• Nesting files (causes poor output)
• TIFF files not converted from RGB to 4-colorCMYK mode
• Inadequate bleeds
• Lack of reformatting previously used storage media.